I remember well the multitude of fights that occurred in our household when I was a child because each child believed he or she should be the one to choose the music in the car, or the TV show we watched, or be the first to play with a coveted toy.
I thought about this long and hard when my twins were babies and even more when our third son was born just 15 months later. I came to the realization that we would need a system or our boys would NEVER stop fighting! After a lot of thought and many prayers, we came up with a solution that has worked very well in our family for the past six years. We assign each child his own “day.”
Essentially, this is a constant rotation that begins when a child in our household turns two. On his second birthday, he is added to the rotation. Here’s an example:
Let’s pretend we have four children named A, B, C, & D (in birth order). We choose to start our rotation next Monday. Our rotation would look like this:
Monday: A’s day
Tuesday: B’s day
Wednesday: C’s day
Thursday: D’s day
Friday: A’s day
Saturday: B’s day
Sunday: C’s day
Monday: D’s day
Tuesday: A’s day
Wednesday: B’s day
…(and so forth).
In our family, when it is “your day,” you get to choose the TV shows we watch (parents have ultimate approval, of course); you get to choose what songs we listen to in the car or at home (parents’ approval pending); you can choose the first toy in the playroom; and you are first to play the Kindle. You are also first to take a bath, do your chart, read scriptures, and pray at bedtime.
If a decision needs to be made (for example, what fruit we will eat with our lunch), we consult the child whose day it is. If one of us needs to run to the store or on an errand, we choose that child to go with us for some one-on-one time. Sometimes, we choose two people—so if it happens to be C’s day, we will choose C and D.
This system has prevented a lot of fights in our home. We don’t worry that we are constantly favoring one child over another because we are following this simple system and not choosing someone over someone else. I think it has helped our children to feel equally important and valued in our home (at least I hope so!).
Because we do this daily and maintain the same rotation, we don’t need to write it down. It is very easy to remember! It is also easy to enforce because every child knows and understands that his day will come. It is very common for us to come downstairs in the morning and hear someone turn to the person whose day it is and say, “What do you want to watch?”
There is no bickering or arguing. There are no “You got to pick yesterday!” accusations. In a house with four boys, this tiny victory feels huge. Don’t get me wrong, my boys find plenty of other things to fight about. But, in this one area of our lives, we have a system that works.
I share this with you today in hopes that it may help you and your family as well. Maybe you can take this idea and put a spin on it to make it work in your family, or maybe you have something even better in place. Either way, I’d love to hear about it!
QUESTION: What systems or traditions work for you? Feel free to share in the comments!
CHALLENGE: Counsel with your partner and/or children to address issues that are constant topics of contention. Brainstorm a system to help solve these recurring arguments.
Edited by Briana Heinonen and Nollie Haws.
Image provided by the author; graphics by Anna Jenkins.
I love your article, You’re a wonderful mom. And I witnessed your method in your household, it works! When I’m there visiting , your babies know who’s turn it is. They are awesome and I love them so very much
I know that this works to remove most of the contention among children. My children each had their ‘Special Child’ day. With five children very close it age (our oldest turned 6 two days after our fifth was born), I wanted to make sure each was getting personal attention. We used the days of the week i.e. our oldest’s day was always Monday, our second, always Tuesday, etc. through Friday.
We raised our children in the 80s and 90s so things were a bit different. The ‘special child’ got to sit in the front seat of the car and got to control the radio (if we turned it on). Our other privileges were the same as yours except for one other, my favorite, and theirs… the ‘special child’ got to stay up an hour longer than the others.
My husband and I are serving a church mission in Russia right now. It was easy and fun to continue our ‘special child’ tradition with our specialized emails.
It really works to have more love and friendship at home!!!
I love this! I grew up in a family with 5 children as well and we each had our own day to lead prayers at meals, I was the middle child and my day was Wednesday. It always made us feel special, and now that we are all grown my parents continue this everyday when they pray at meals and pray for each of us (and name each of our spouses and children!) on our days. I’m going to take it further like your example and of the article and make it a special day for decisions too! And I know my kids would LOVE the bedtime an hour later idea 😉
For the math geeks out there: I am a mathematician, and so at our house we use modular arithmetic to decide the person of the day. Here is how it works:
If the date is evenly divisible by 3, then it is the oldest’s day. If the date has a remainder of 1 when divided by 3, then it is middle’s day. If the remainder is 2, then it is the youngest’s day.
We use this for choosing music and for sitting in the front seat, but also for who has to set the table and help clean the kitchen, who sits next to Dad, and all sorts of other duties as well as privileges.
One nice thing about the date system is that we also use it for things our whole family participates in (praying before dinner, for example) with dividing by 5 instead of 3. With things only our youngest two get to choose, we divide by 2 instead of 3. I don’t have to figure out the day of the week or who was Person of the Day yesterday, all I need to do is look at my phone to find the date =)
Here is the math geeky part: because 3 and 7 are relatively prime (they don’t have any common divisors besides 1), you know that one kid won’t always have her day on Sunday (or any other day), they will rotate through all the days of the week. This was a problem because I get to ride in the front seat on Sunday, so the kids needed to know that they weren’t being cheated of their chance to ride shotgun, that everyone’s day will fall on a Sunday regularly.
Just appealing to mathematics makes some things easier. We’ve probably been doing this for 7 years or so, since youngest was 4. Now he’s 11 and we are starting to use it for cooking dinner. I love the idea of continuing after the kids are grown.
The only trouble is that when the dates go from May 31 to June 1, my middle child gets 2 days in a row. But since there are responsibilities as well as privileges there haven’t been too many complaints.
Love it, totally gonna use it, thank you! (Four boys here too!)