Build a simple daily routine

Pick your child's age and the moments your day already has. Get a printable card with three to five anchors in a steady order and a tip for each.

Short answer: A good routine for a baby or toddler is a familiar sequence, not a timetable. When a child knows what comes next, her mind can focus on what she is learning instead of bracing for the unknown. This card gives your day a few anchors that repeat in the same order; the times can move.

Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere. The card leaves out hours of sleep, nap counts and feeding schedules on purpose: they vary a lot from child to child, and they are a conversation for your pediatrician.

When our team asked Phil Fisher, who leads the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, for the one thing he would recommend to parents, he answered with a single word: predictability. Bedtime, mealtime, bath time and transitions are where that certainty gets built. That's why this card has no times on it: keep the sequence and let the clock flex. In Chapter 5 of Big Bang Baby I call predictability the structure that holds the other forces together; the full why is there. Read the Introduction free, or start with Why routines matter.

Sources

Big Bang Baby, Chapter 5, "The Invisible Forces," section V, "Predictability: The Structure of the Cosmos" (Phil Fisher's principle; routines, reading, meals, bath and bedtime; keeping the routine through regressions; offering naps and watching the child, not the schedule); Chapter 4 (routines as a sandbox of predictability for emotional regulation).
Research Primer to Chapter 5, "Predictability: Fisher's Principle and Its Applications."
Kurdziel, L., Duclos, K., & Spencer, R. M. C. (2013). Sleep spindles in midday naps enhance learning in preschool children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(43), 17267–17272. doi:10.1073/pnas.1306418110 (Rebecca Spencer's nap research, the basis of the book's sleep section).
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2007). The science of early childhood development. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University (serve-and-return).