School is starting. Routines are changing. The TV is off. Dad is sore. Apparently, we decided to change everything at once.
September has always felt like a month of new beginnings.
This year, it feels especially true.
The boys are starting school—preschool and pre-K. They leave excited and come home exhausted. There’s excitement, crankiness, energy, meltdowns, and everything else you’d expect when little kids suddenly have a whole new world to figure out.
And honestly, by the end of the day, they’re not the only ones who are tired.
But school wasn’t the only new beginning in our house this September.
Apparently, we decided to change everything at once.
We Needed a Reset
We started building actual routines for our family.
Not some perfectly organized, color-coded system where every minute of the day is accounted for. Just enough structure that everyone has a better idea of what comes next.
We created routines around school. We made a cleaning schedule. We’re trying to be more intentional about how we spend our time together.
I also started exercising again. Part of that is my own attempt to get back in shape—not for a six-pack, but so I can keep up with my boys.
That part has been humbling.
I’m forty, overweight, and discovering muscles I apparently haven’t spoken to in years. They’re making up for lost time.
And because that apparently wasn’t enough change for one month, we decided to try something else:
No TV for September.
What were we thinking?
Turning Off the Easy Button
TV had become an easy button.
The kids were bored? TV. Dad needed a few minutes? TV. Everybody was getting a little wild and needed to settle down? TV.
Take that option away and suddenly there’s a lot of empty space in the day. And somebody has to fill it.
That means playing. Going outside. Finding activities. Reading books. Going places. Answering approximately 4,000 questions before lunch.
We’re spending more time actually hanging out with our boys. That’s exactly what we wanted. It’s also exhausting. It has also made me think more about putting down distractions and picking up the moments that are happening right in front of me.
There are moments when I’m sore from exercising, the boys are bouncing off the walls, the house needs something, and bedtime feels like it should be moved up to about 4:30 in the afternoon.
But something interesting has started happening.
The Structure Is Actually Helping
Of everything we’ve changed, the routines might be making the biggest difference.
Knowing what we’re doing next seems to help the boys. It helps us, too.
There’s something surprisingly comforting about not having to constantly decide what happens next. Instead of looking around the house thinking about the twenty things that need done, there’s a plan.
Even our cleaning schedule has helped.
We’re not trying to clean the entire house whenever it finally becomes unbearable. Different things get handled on different days. The house feels cleaner and more organized, and my wife and I aren’t constantly staring at the mess wondering who is going to tackle it.
It’s a small change. But small changes can change the feel of an entire house.
We’re Not Trying to Become a Different Family
That’s probably the biggest thing I’m learning from this experiment.
This isn’t about creating some perfectly optimized family.
We’re still tired. The boys still come home cranky from school. The house still gets messy. I’m still sore. There are still moments when turning on the TV would make life significantly easier.
We’re just trying to become a little more intentional about what happens next.
Some of these changes might stick. Some probably won’t. We’ll adjust things. We’ll abandon things. We’ll discover that some brilliant idea we had absolutely does not work with two little boys.
That’s okay.
The goal isn’t perfection.
The goal is movement.
Let’s See Where This Goes
We’re only at the beginning of September, so I don’t know how this experiment ends yet.
Maybe the routines become permanent. Maybe a month without TV changes how we use screens going forward. Maybe exercising becomes part of my life again instead of something I’m always planning to start “soon.”
Or maybe October arrives and we realize half of this needs to change.
That’s part of it.
Dad’s! Let’s Go isn’t supposed to mean having everything figured out before you start.
Sometimes it just means looking at where your family is today, deciding where you’d like things to go, and taking the first step.
That’s what September feels like for us.
A first step.
Here’s to new beginnings.
Dads, let’s go.
