When it comes to setting and sticking to a new routine, it’s important to know whether the habits and tasks you’ve set in place are effective. While routines are beneficial for individuals with autism, only effective routines will stand the test of time.
If you’re trying to help a child with unique learning needs stick to a new routine, being able to chart its effectiveness is even more important. After all, without the right routines and procedures in place, it can be hard to get anything done – and to prevent social and emotional problems that arise as a result of a disruption to routine.
Creating a routine is only half the battle. Creating an effective routine is even more important.
Here are tips on how to track the effectiveness of a new routine for yourself and for your child with unique needs.
How to Track the Effectiveness of a New Routine: 8 Tips
1. Know What Goes Into a Great Routine
Routines can help you and your child reduce stress and prevent the major waste of time that occurs when you spend too much time thinking about what you should be doing. When you have a good routine, you’ll be able to get more done – and with less stress.
You’ll save time, maximize your energy, and ensure your productivity, and eliminate the need for willpower, coaching, or bribing.
2. Understand the Difference Between a Routine and a Habit
When you’re working toward creating a new routine with your child, it can be hard to differentiate between a routine and habit. However, it’s important to be able to make that distinction since it will likely dictate the effectiveness of your routine.
A habit is something that you do every day without giving it a second thought, like brushing your teeth. A routine is a set of habits that you do consecutively. For example, your morning routine might consist of little habits like brushing your teeth, then taking a shower, then brushing your hair.
Since a routine is a series of interconnected habits, a routine can sometimes fail because the habits aren’t quite in place. It’s important to emphasize the difference between the two so that you can work to create healthy, productive habits with your child that ultimately lead to a successful routine.
If you find that your routine isn’t working, sit down and rework some of the habits. This might help you determine whether it’s the entire routine that’s flawed or just one or two components. When it comes sto tracking your new routine, you might find that it’s too daunting to try to keep track of whether the entire routine is working. To that end, you may want to work with your child to pinpoint just one or two habits within the routine that you want to keep track of.
For example, you might come up with a joint goal of tracking toothbrushing every day during the first week. The next week, you might track putting dirty clothes in the hamper. You can work piece by piece to track these habits until you work your way up to the full routine.
3. What Do Energy Levels Look Like?
If you find a piece of your child’s routine that just isn’t working, it might help you to go back through and see if you can shuffle things around based on your child’s energy levels. If you’re a morning person, chances are, your energy levels are highest early in the day. The opposite is true if you are a night owl.
When you’re determining whether a new routine is effective, it might be more helpful for you to consider your child’s energy levels. Are they struggling with the routine, or just struggling to carry out a certain task at a certain time? Can you rework the routine so various components are scheduled at a different time?
For example, perhaps your child loves being awake early in the morning and is good-natured and productive then – but not so much so right after school. Rather than forcing your child to sit down and do half an hour of homework immediately upon arriving home, is there a way to work that into the morning routine instead?
4. Track Progress Every Day and Check In Often
Tracking whether a routine is effective shouldn’t be done in a sporadic, “when I get around to it” fashion. Instead, you need to make sure you track your progress in one way or another every single day.
Later in this article, I’ll tell you about some apps you can use to jot down whether you are successful in sticking to your routine. These apps, also known as habit trackers, allow you to keep track of everything in one place – and to hold you and your child responsible.
You don’t need to stick to the routine perfectly – that’s not the point. Instead, just write down your most important tasks, plan your day based on your energy, and track your routine each and every day. That way, you’ll know how close you and your child are getting to hitting the target.
At the end of this article, I’ll Tell you just how long you should give a new routine before deciding whether it is effective (hint – it’s 60 days!). However, you shouldn’t wait until the end of the 60 days to check in on your progress. If you can, chat with your child every day – perhaps at dinnertime – about what aspects are working and which are not.
5. Basic Calendaring
Again, you don’t need to use an app to track whether your routine is effective – you can even just use a calendar or a journal. If you use a calendar, you can just cross off the days in which you stuck to your routine or completed various tasks in your routine. That way, by the end of the week, you’ll know exactly how successful you were in staying on track.
Tracking the effectiveness of your routine with visual aids like these is valuable not only because it will serve as a reminder of which aspects of the routine worked (and which did not) but it will also motivate you and your child to continue. It will keep everyone honest, too!
6. Check in With Your Child and Other Stakeholders
As I mentioned earlier, it’s crucial to block out time to get a feel for how your child is doing with the new routine. What is working well and what needs to be changed? Does your child feel like the new routine is making a difference in his stress levels or productivity?
It’s a good idea to get some feedback from other stakeholders in your child’s life, too. Ask your child’s teachers and paraprofessionals to monitor how well the new routines are sticking – and whether they’re impacting behaviors in a positive negative way. This is something I’ll address more in detail below.
7. How Are Behaviors?
Often, the easiest way for you to track the effectiveness of a new routine is to also track behaviors. Although you may have some hiccups early on in the adoption of the new routine, you will likely be able to track the effectiveness of the routine as you progress just by looking at how your child acts.
Are you seeing a reduction of behaviors at certain times of day, such as right before leaving for school or upon arriving home? Jot down any positive or problematic behaviors as you notice them. Even if you aren’t sure what the triggers might be (or aren’t sure they’re in relation to the new routine), having the behaviors written down to refer to later as you evaluate the routine’s effectiveness will be immensely helpful.
8. Consider Using an App
If you’re really stuck and aren’t sure whether your new routine is effective, you may want to consider using an app. There are plenty of resources out there that can help you and your child stay on top of a new routine. While it’s totally fine to track habits on paper or even using a spreadsheet, many children – particularly those with unique learning needs – respond well to apps.
One example is Day Designer. Day Designer will help you write down the steps in your routines and habits that you need to stay on top of and will remind you when you’re getting off task. This is a great way to stay on top of the things that need to get done and comes with alarms and other signals to notify your child that it’s time to change to a new task.
Another option is Strides, an app that not only lets you set a routine and implement new tasks in your day to day but also to track your progress and set goals.
Even something as simple as using a phone timer to mark transitions between tasks can be effective. A visual timer that shows how much time is remaining is particularly effective for individuals with unique needs.
Some other helpful habit tracking apps include:
While these apps are tailored primarily toward older children and adults, they’re great options for evaluating whether a new routine is making a difference.
Give It Time
Don’t expect to successfully implement a brand new, effective routine overnight. Make sure you give yourself and your child time to evaluate whether the routine is successful and to see the positive impact it has made in your lives. It may be rough going at first – especially if your child is resistant to the changes. However, by sticking with the new routine for a minimum of 60 days, you’ll likely see some progress.
When it comes to tracking the effectiveness of a new routine, patience is everything. If you get off track one day, don’t panic. Start again the next day!
Remember that adopting a new routine can take some work, and it will take just as much work and reflection to evaluate whether that routine is effective.
Further Reading
- University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Rules and Routines
- Autism Focused Intervention Resources and Modules: Build New Routines
- Elizabeth Larkin: 5 Steps to Create a Personalized Daily Routine
- Rebekah Pierce: A Step by Step Guide to Building a Daily Schedule
- Rebekah Pierce: How to Recognize Triggers and Cues BEFORE Routines Are Disrupted