Checklists Have Never Worked in My House. Here's What Does.
I have abandoned so many checklists I’ve lost count. A chore checklist. A morning routine checklist. An evening routine checklist. None of them have ever stuck, not once. I’d try for a couple of weeks, get zero real success, and quietly let it die. I don’t fully know why – maybe we never stuck with any of them long enough for it to become habit, or maybe a smart kid’s brain just rejects being told what to do by a piece of paper. I’m honestly not sure which.
What actually works instead has nothing to do with a list. If I want the lawn mowed, I say so the night before – just a heads-up, nothing more. Then the next day, I follow up with a real time limit. I want the lawn mowed in the next hour. That’s the whole approach, if you can even call it one. Putting the same request on a list has never once gotten it done.
It’s not the same for all three kids, either. My middle kid, sixteen, is task-oriented and wants to please. He’ll complete a finite task on Skylight, our family app. But it’s not the app doing the work. A paper list would do the exact same job for him; it’s just easier for me not to have a handwritten list cluttering up the kitchen. My oldest and youngest are the opposite. They forget to even read the list, any list, and then use that forgetting as the reason the job didn’t get done. What works for those two isn’t a better list. It’s getting everyone in a room at the same time. “Kids! I need help in the kitchen right now.” Nobody’s allowed to disappear again until I’ve confirmed everyone’s job is done.
Mornings run the same way, on a smaller scale. Every single night, we talk through the next day before bed. What time people need to leave, and working backward from there to a wake-up time. It sounds like: okay, let’s plan for tomorrow. Ready? I have a meeting at 7am. You want to be awake at what time? Is 7:45 enough time to get dressed, make a lunch, and eat breakfast if we leave at 8:10? Okay, so you want to be up at 7:20? Got it. For my son with ADHD, I go one step further. I check what time he’s set his alarm for, and set my own alarm for that exact time, so I don’t forget to make sure he’s up. We got here after too many mornings where he overslept and the whole day fell apart because of it: forgotten homework, no lunch packed, lunch packed but left on the counter.
The biggest version of all this is homework, and it’s the one I’d credit the most. Roughly once a week, for my two older kids usually on the weekend, for my youngest on Thursdays. We sit down and go through everything due, and build an actual plan together: Monday you’re doing this, Tuesday that, Wednesday this. For my youngest, currently, we go a step further and estimate how long each assignment will realistically take, and use that to work backward to what time she needs to start on Friday. We’ve been doing some version of this for about six years now. Sometimes, it wasn’t weekly at all. It became daily, sometimes multiple times a day, when that’s what it took. I think this system is the only reason my oldest graduated.
It also falls apart sometimes. When I forget to do it on a weekend, or when I take a kid’s word for it that everything’s under control and it wasn’t. And there’s no worse feeling as a parent than realizing you didn’t take the time to review, support, and stay engaged, and then watching a grade drop a lot because of it.
None of this is a universal law, though. If a checklist might work for your kid, here’s where to start by age.
Names and identifying details in this post have been changed to protect my kids’ privacy. “Annie Hart” is a pen name for the same reason.