I Finally Got My Family Into A Routine. Unfortunately, It’s October.

Every August, the parenting internet collectively decides we need to get our shit together. Summer is OVER. It is time for ROUTINES. Suddenly my social media feed is full of color-coded calendars, meal-prep containers, adorable morning checklists, perfectly organized backpacks, and mothers explaining that their children simply thrive when they go to bed at exactly 8:07 every evening. And every year, I buy into it.

This year will be different. We will have structure. We will have consistency. We will have designated places for things. Nobody will be screaming “WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES?” while standing directly beside the shoes. We will become Routine People. And honestly? For a minute, we kind of do. September is rough, obviously. September is basically family boot camp. We drag bedtime back from the summer abyss. We remember how alarm clocks work. We relearn the horrifying truth that people apparently expect dinner EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. We establish homework routines. We figure out activity schedules. We sign 4,000 forms. We locate lunch boxes.

Slowly, painfully, the machine starts running again. By late September, I start feeling almost smug. Look at us! Bedtimes! Calendars! Predictability! I have created STRUCTURE. And then I look at the calendar. It’s October.

Fuck.

Because October means Halloween. And Halloween isn’t a holiday. Halloween is the opening ceremony for approximately two straight months of routine destruction. First come costume days. Pumpkin patches. Halloween parties. Trunk-or-treats. Candy. So much freaking candy.

The children are now going to bed wearing face paint with the blood sugar of a hummingbird. Then daylight saving time arrives to remind parents that clocks are merely a social construct and your child’s circadian rhythm does not give a shit what time your iPhone says it is. And before we’ve recovered from THAT: Thanksgiving. School breaks. Travel. Relatives. Different beds. Different meals. Different schedules. Pie for breakfast because Grandma said yes.

And then December kicks the door down carrying a festive mug and a clipboard. Holiday concerts! Class parties! Cookie exchanges! Family gatherings! Secret Santa! Spirit week! Pajama day! Festive sweater day! Bring-a-$10-gift day! Some mysterious school event your child absolutely told you about even though this is the first you have heard of it and it starts in 23 minutes! By mid-December, the beautiful routine I worked so hard to establish in September is lying face-down in a ditch covered in tinsel.

And every year, parents act surprised. We wonder what happened. Why is everyone dysregulated? Why are the kids exhausted? Why are mornings suddenly terrible? Why are we eating chicken nuggets at 8:36 p.m.? WE KNOW WHY.

Because family life between Halloween and New Year’s is objectively bananas. And maybe the problem isn’t that we’re bad at maintaining routines. Maybe the problem is that we’re expecting ourselves to maintain September routines during December circumstances.

I’ve started thinking about this differently. Instead of asking: How do I keep our entire routine intact through the holidays? I’m asking: Which parts of our routine actually keep us functioning? Because those are not necessarily the same thing.

Maybe bedtime needs to remain relatively protected on school nights, but Saturday night can go completely off the rails. Maybe we keep the morning routine because nobody needs additional chaos at 7 a.m., but dinner becomes whatever requires the fewest dishes. Maybe the family calendar becomes sacred while meal planning becomes “there is food in this house; congratulations.” Maybe some nights we say no. Maybe other nights we say yes and knowingly accept that tomorrow morning might suck. Maybe December isn’t the month we optimize our lives. Maybe it’s the month we maintain the load-bearing walls.

That’s the energy I’m bringing into the holiday season. Protect the load-bearing walls. Sleep. Connection. Getting to school with pants on. Whatever keeps YOUR particular family from collapsing. Everything else? We’re grading on a curve.

And I think parents desperately need permission to do that. Because somewhere along the way, consistency became another parenting virtue we’re supposed to achieve perfectly. But consistency doesn’t have to mean doing the exact same thing every single day regardless of circumstances. Family life has seasons.

September has one rhythm. December has another. Summer has another.

A random February Tuesday when absolutely nothing is happening is basically a luxury vacation compared with the week before Christmas break.

Our routines can bend with those seasons without disappearing completely. And when January arrives, we can adjust again. We don’t have to declare that everyone has “fallen off track.” We don’t need a family detox. We don’t need to spend January 1 aggressively reorganizing our pantries while making our children swear allegiance to a new bedtime chart.

We just return. Back to earlier nights. Back to school mornings. Back to regular dinners. Back to whatever our normal looks like. The routine isn’t ruined. We didn’t fail. We lived through the holidays. That’s it.

So this year, when Halloween arrives and begins its annual hostile takeover of the family calendar, I’m not going to spend two months desperately trying to preserve September. I’m keeping the routines that matter. I’m loosening the ones that don’t. I’m saying no sometimes. I’m staying out too late sometimes. I’m probably going to forget a spirit day. Someone will eat an unreasonable amount of candy. Dinner will occasionally be nutritionally questionable.

And sometime around December 19, I fully expect to discover that the family routine I worked so hard to establish back in August has once again gone completely to shit. That’s okay. We’ll find it in January.

Danielle Kelly is the host of the ADHD parenting podcast Chaos & Caffeine, which reaches thousands of families each month and was recently named one of the Best Kids With ADHD Podcasts of 2026 by PodRanker.