In our house, my husband and I use a white board with a monthly calendar to help our young child anticipate less routine happenings, such as days we will each be out of town for work, birthday parties, afterschool activities and the like and review it with my child each week. Since most of these events have been put on hold, like many other families, we have had no need to write down the specifics of each day because they're all the same.

When schools started closing and the "safer at home" orders went into effect, my family was already ill. Our routine had already been disrupted and we had stopped holding our regular weekly family meetings. As my child got better, my husband and I were still ill. I had to accept we would be in a bit of a survival mode for quite a few days. Because I wasn't able to support my child in the way I typically do, the TV and iPad were turned on more than we would usually allow. Wake-ups and bedtimes were not at regular times anymore and there were no prescribed learning activities. I remember feeling badly that I couldn't pull it together to develop a new routine for my family. I had to have grace and was reminded caring for others starts with being well yourself. We would create our new routines once we felt a bit better.

A lot of us have started to adjust. There is no "right" way to approach adapting to this crisis. What matters most is that we all find the way that works for our own families keeping in mind a couple of key principles.

Children, like a lot of adults, thrive with consistency and predictability. This means there is an order the day generally follows, certain things happen on weekdays vs. weekends, and certain behaviors lead to predictable consequences. Routine and set expectations help establish a sense of stability and safety. What we know of the brain and the body is to work, learn, and achieve optimally, we have to orient from a safe and calm space.

Another key principle is flexibility. Changing restrictions and varying guidelines mean we are constantly taking in new information and continually adapting our plans. This uncertainty necessitates adjustments. Even as we practice our new routines, we should expect times when we are more or less interested in certain activities or more or less able to tolerate certain demands.

For example, there are times when my child starts missing classmates a lot more than usual, and, in that moment, it is simply not enough to say that we'll FaceTime friends later that day. Instead, we've started pausing whatever we're doing, logging in on the class's social app, reviewing videos left by friends and the teacher, and posting a new video for them. We can then resume our scheduled activity or move on to the next one and still have fun.

We still use the whiteboard at home, but it looks different now. Our monthly calendar is in miniature to help maintain our time frame of reference and highlight important family dates. We now have a daily schedule from wake-up to bedtime. That schedule has a predictable order with particular types of activities (self-care, learning, art, play, exercise, meals, etc.). It also has options within each activity category and no set start and end times, so no matter how we are feeling throughout the day, we can participate to the best of our ability and maximize our success in following our new routine.