My story is quite similar to every other mom's story. We are all masters at multitasking, but we often find that there is never enough time in our day to do everything. We want the time we spend with our children to be special, filled with love and not confrontation.In the summer of 2003, I had a job with a crazy schedule - traveling out of town for days and even a week at a time. My daughter, Rosana, was in daycare at the time. Her schedule would change daily, with her father taking her to daycare early in the morning when I was out of town and me taking her to daycare late and sometimes not at all when I was in town.Rosana was now ready to leave the house every weekday for pre-school and this manual PET blowing bottle machine would make the timing that much more critical. She really needed to be to school by 8:30AM every weekday, regardless of my schedule. I knew that the best way to avoid confrontation at bedtime and before school was to get Rosana on a consistent daily routine that summer. Not surprisingly, the more we tried to enforce a schedule, the harder Rosana fought us.

I had to find a way to stop NO without arguing or punishment. We needed help.As luck would have it, help was on its way. It is amazing how I would be led by a series of events to develop a solution that would help so many. Who would have thought that this solution would have had such a dramatic and lasting impact on our entire family.An Enlightening Conversation and a Timely VisitMy sister Rebeca, a Ph.D. in Education, came to stay with us that summer before Rosana started pre-kindergarten. She sat back and watched me struggle. Rebeca's genuine concern prompted her to ask questions about my lack of structure. With my college education in Psychology, these questions led to a very enlightening conversation about the benefits of introducing routines and schedules early in a child's life.Soon after Rebeca and I spoke I was visiting a cousin and noticed she had a written schedule on her daughter's closet door. Her schedule was a basic list of activities such as brushing teeth, going to bed and taking a bath, each with a time written next to them. "This is great," I thought, "but how do I use it with Rosana, who is too young to read and too young to tell time?"A Difficult StartHer father and I attempted to implement a verbal schedule with Rosana. We started by saying, "It's bedtime; it's time for school, it's time for dinner etc. After a few weeks, NO was still her favorite answer!"How could I make Rosana understand the need for a schedule? She had so much energy and so many things to do and learn. When it came time for breakfast, school, dinner and bedtime - especially bedtime - she just wanted to keep going.

The key was Rosana had to find the chart fun and interesting and adopt it as her own.I searched high and low for a kit I could buy to start our routine. There were mountains of research and books that highlighted how children crave structure and how important it is to set routines for them, but there were no products on the market that had everything I was looking for something that a young child would understand and own.The BreakthroughI decided to create my own tool for her using stock images of her daily activities - things like bath time, story time, brushing teeth, bedtime and even a reminder to take her asthma treatment. I cut out these images and combined them with pictures of digital and analog clocks showing the time that each activity was to be performed. I then placed all of the pictures in her room alongside real analog and digital clocks. Her first routine was born, and just as important as being easy for her to understand, it was something that her father and I could follow as well.I introduced the routine to her one day after school. I told her that I had a surprise for her in her room, giving it special meaning.