For a long time, I thought of routines mostly as the practical things that help our days run a little more smoothly. Wake up, get dressed, go to school, come home, have dinner, read our books, go to bed, and start again the next morning.

Then my children taught me that a routine can mean much more than a schedule.

On January 7, 2025, my family left our home in Pacific Palisades as the fires changed life in our community. We did not return to live there for approximately 16 months. The home needed repairs because of damage from the fire, and during that time, my three children and I lived in Westwood.

Sixteen months is a long time in the life of a young child. It was long enough for me to see something about children and routines that I do not think I fully understood before.

“Which Home, Mommy?”

After I picked my children up from school, I would often say something completely ordinary.

“We are going home.”

And, after the fires, they would ask me, “Which home, Mommy?”

They did not ask me once or twice. For at least six months, and perhaps even longer, I heard that question again and again. Monday through Friday, after school, I could say we were going home and one of them would want to know which home I meant.

“Which home, Mommy?”

It became such a familiar question that I almost expected it.

At first, I thought they were simply asking where we were going. Over time, though, their question made me think more deeply about what the word home meant to them.

Before the fire, “going home” did not require an explanation. They knew where we were going. They knew what came next. Home was part of the rhythm of their day.

Suddenly, it wasn’t that simple anymore.

Children Find Comfort in Knowing What Comes Next

Adults sometimes think of routines as boring or repetitive. Children often experience them very differently.

Knowing what happens after school, where they will sleep, which toys they will find when they arrive, where they sit for dinner, which books they read before bed, and what happens when they wake up the next morning can create a sense of familiarity.

Young children have very little control over the structure of their lives. Adults decide where they live, when they leave, where they go to school, what time they eat, and what happens next. A familiar routine gives children something they can recognize and anticipate within a world largely organized by adults.

I began to understand that when my children asked, “Which home?” they were not necessarily asking a complicated question about the meaning of home. They were young children trying to understand what came next.

And sometimes knowing what comes next is enormously comforting.

Routine Does Not Have to Mean Perfection

I am a mother of three young children, so I certainly cannot claim that every day in our house follows a perfect schedule. It doesn’t.

Some mornings go smoothly. Others absolutely do not. Plans change. Someone cannot find a shoe. We are running late. A child suddenly needs something just as we are trying to walk out the door. Real family life rarely looks as organized as it does on paper.

But I have learned that consistency and perfection are not the same thing.

A routine can simply be a collection of familiar moments that children recognize.

One of ours is reading together at night. Another is the rhythm of coming home after school. There are ordinary things we do so frequently that I might barely notice them, while my children may experience those same things as important parts of their day.

That realization has made me appreciate our ordinary routines much more.

Home Is More Than a Building

Our experience also made me think differently about how children understand home.

A home is obviously a physical place, but to a child it can also be the collection of things that happen there. It is knowing where your favorite toy is. It is recognizing the way your room looks at bedtime. It is sitting in a familiar place at the table. It is knowing what happens after you brush your teeth or where you put your backpack when you walk through the door.

When those little things disappear at the same time, children notice.

That does not mean children cannot adapt. Mine did. They went to school, played, laughed, learned, and continued being children while we were living in Westwood. We created routines there too.

But their repeated question reminded me that adapting to a new situation and missing what is familiar can happen at the same time.

Returning to Pacific Palisades

When we were finally able to return to our home in Pacific Palisades, my children were so happy.

Of course they were excited to be back in a place they remembered, but I also noticed the happiness that came with returning to familiar routines.

There were things they did not need to ask about anymore. They knew where we were going after school. They recognized their surroundings. Ordinary parts of our day began to feel ordinary again.

After everything that had changed, ordinary felt very good.

It made me realize that some of the things I once considered mundane were actually worth appreciating.

What My Children Taught Me About Routine

I used to think routines were something parents created for children.

Now I think children can teach us why those routines matter.

A routine does not have to be elaborate. It does not need a beautiful chart on the refrigerator or a perfectly planned schedule. Sometimes it is simply breakfast in the same place, a familiar goodbye before school, coming home at the end of the day, or reading a book together before bed.

These small repetitions can help make a very large world feel more understandable.

And when life changes unexpectedly, perhaps the goal is not to recreate everything exactly as it was. Sometimes we cannot. Instead, we can create small points of predictability wherever we are.

What will we do after school?

Where will we put our things?

What happens before bedtime?

What can stay the same today?

Those may seem like small questions to an adult, but after listening to my children ask “Which home, Mommy?” for months, I no longer think the small things are necessarily small.

The Lessons Hidden in Everyday Life

Backus BrightBots grew from my interest in helping make big life concepts easier to understand. I originally found myself thinking a great deal about money, choices, saving, giving, homes, and work. But raising my children continually reminds me that education also happens in moments we never planned as lessons.

Sometimes the teacher is not the parent.

Sometimes it is the child in the back seat asking the same question again.

My children taught me that routine can provide more than organization. It can provide familiarity. It can help children understand what comes next. And after a period when so much of life felt different, I learned just how meaningful the simple experience of going home could be.

Today, when I tell my children we are going home, they know exactly where we are going.

I don’t take that ordinary moment for granted anymore.

With love and a heart for service,

Claudia Backus, MBA
Founder, Backus BrightBots