How to Help Your Kids Develop Good Habits

If you look at good habits as something that would be “nice” for your kids to have, it’s time to take a second look. 

Instilling good habits in your kids is crucial. It should be a top priority in your parenting.

Why?

Several reasons. First, it makes life easier when they’re younger and prone to temper tantrums and cases of the “nos,” no matter what you say.

As they grow older, good habits will help your child have an easier time in school and enable you to give them more responsibilities around the house without quite so much nagging.

And ultimately, the habits they develop now will translate into more success in their work or business ventures.

In short, every good habit you help your child develop today will cut out that much more of the other hard parenting tasks you’re faced with.

And even more importantly, these habits will make it easier for your child to navigate life.

How to Introduce New Habits to Your Kids

As you might imagine, no matter what age they are, your child’s first reaction to “today we’re going to start forming a new habit” will be about as excitement-filled as when the teacher announces the next math test.

You can preach to her about how life-changing this new habit could be for her, but expect an eye roll and “I might believe it when I see it” attitude.

No worries. When you’re first showing your child the power of a good habit, two things are essential to getting her to have some level of buy-in to it.

First, try to choose a habit that she might actually be interested in. 

Let’s say your child often experiences frustration at night because she doesn’t have enough time to Snapchat her friends or play computer games at night.

You might ask her, “How would you like to develop a habit that frees up an extra hour of your time at night?”

Second, let her help in defining the habit and setting the new course.

We’ll talk about the mechanics of how to develop the habit in a minute, and you can let her help with any or all three of the stages of habit development.

Cautions to Be Aware When Forming New Habits

The big one here is to make sure you don’t turn this into a New Year’s Resolutions kind of experience where you set out to change your family’s entire life in one big sweep.

Tackle one habit at a time, because it’s all most people can handle and because one good, firmly established habit will lead to other habits coming easier.

Also, make sure you don’t turn into a drill sergeant, demanding perfection and constantly focusing on the progress of this new habit.

It will likely take time to change, or you’d already be doing things differently.

And perfection isn’t required or even expected. Use gentle verbal or non-verbal reminders when your child goes off track, relate to him by acknowledging that you’re still a work in progress too, and try to make the whole process of change as much fun as you can.

The Mechanics of Habit Formation

While many experts in this area have described it similarly, Charles Duhigg in his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business has the easiest and most kid-friendly framework for new habit development.

According to Duhigg, whose work is based on eight years of research, habits come in three-step loops consisting of a cue, a routine, and a reward.

For example, let’s say you eat a sugar-filled dessert before you go to bed every night. 

Your cue may be that dinner is over and you’ve cleaned up the kitchen. 

Your routine is to go to the freezer, take out the ice cream, get the chocolate sauce from the fridge, pull out a bowl and spoon, serve up your ice cream, and retreat to the couch and read a book under a cozy blanket while you empty the bowl.

The reward of course is the delicious taste of your favorite flavor and a full tummy at bedtime.

To develop a new habit, you just need to replace the routine.

For example, if you’re trying to eat healthier or lose weight, your new routine would be to fill that bowl with grapes, or frozen blueberries, or some other fruit you find satisfying.

The cue remains the same, and the reward remains the same, it’s simply the routine you’ve replaced.

Implementing Habit Formation in Your House

It doesn’t matter how crazy your house may be, your kids may be, your schedule may be, you can do this, and should do it for your own sanity and for the long-term success of your children.

Either pick a habit that you’re desperate to change around your house, or work with your child to come up with one that would really benefit him. It will depend on his age, but starting out will be easiest if he can actually buy into the benefit.

The cue for the habit can be natural or something you create. 

If you’re working on his morning routine, an alarm clock or waking up to his favorite song may be the cue. 

If you’re working on getting the recycle to the curb before the truck comes each week, his cue may be  emptying the bin in your house each time it’s at the top, and taking the cart to the curb just before his favorite show comes on TV.

The routine should be as simple as you can make it. The more steps that are involved or the harder it is, the more resistance you’ll encounter, naturally.

Letting your child develop, or at least participate in developing the routine, will also cut down on the resistance.

As for the reward, it should be intrinsic as much as possible rather than some outside “treat.” 

If the new habit involves being on time to school, the reward could be getting to spend time talking with friends before school starts, or having time to go to the cafeteria for a snack.

For taking out the recycle in a timely manner, the reward could be a cleaner space (which yes, even kids appreciate), or not having to rush around and miss their favorite show in an effort to get it done at the last minute.

Avoid external awards with no relation to the task, such as candy or special outings. 

First, rewarding kids for something he should be doing anyway builds unrealistic expectations.

Your child is going to need to develop a lot of different habits as he grows up.  He usual won't see unrelated rewards for them, and needs to learn to recognize and value how they naturally make his life better in some way. 

Second, it’s not sustaining to offer something “special” for all of the good habits you’re going to build. These are lifelong habits we’re teaching, and they will become habits for your kids without the external reward.

Imagine what problems you could be creating for the future if your child expects a piece of candy for every good habit he engages in. (Sounds like we’ve just created a bad habit!)

There’s no reason to start doing something as a reward that you’re eventually going to need to wean your kids from.

Forming Good Habits is a Family Affair

The best way to get the good habit train moving is to ride it with your kids.

You can either choose a habit you can all work towards together, or you can pick your own habit and let your kids hear and see how you’re doing with your new habit.

And if you’re a work at home mom, or would like to be, Kids Party Characters can help you develop both the business and personal habits you need to run a successful business while actively raising your kids.

Kids Party Characters owner Cheryl Jacobs knows what it’s like to have both mom duties and business duties, and one of her passions is mentoring others to success.

Cheryl has created a great opportunity with membership to Kids Party Characters that allows you to have your own business, including an exclusive territory in which to book parties, and all the tools she’s used to grow a six-figure business. 

Cheryl created this opportunity with busy moms in mind. Set up a free, no-pressure chat with her right here to get all the details and discover whether this is the opportunity that would be the perfect fit for your life.

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