Kid of the Day

“No fair. You always pick!”

“Nu uh. You do.”

“That’s not true. You get your way every time!”

“Your choices are terrible.”

“Yours are the worst.”

“Mooooooooooooom!”

If you’re the parent of two or more children, you might hear a similar dialogue from your darlings. Do interactions like this take place monthly in your home? Maybe weekly? Hourly? Every other minute?

“Kid of the Day” (KOTD) is a system to have in your parenting toolkit to help with sibling squabbles.

My older twin girls went to a local public school for the first few years of their formal academic life. When they started kindergarten, I drove the ladies and their three younger brothers (aged three and a half, two, and newborn) to and from school daily. We needed to head down our driveway no later than 8 AM to make it on time. It was a nine-minute trip one way.  

The morning ritual of disagreements concerning the choice of music began the moment the car seat buckles started clicking together. The bickering slowed us down, and the brief journey led to numerous mom headaches. The only happy child was the newborn. I fed him moments before strapping him into his infant carrier, and he really didn’t have the words to contribute to the commotion.

The clamor for Raffi or the soundtrack to The Muppet Movie or the mega-annoying “Wheels on the Bus Sing-along” would escalate. We’d pick the music for the ride, and most days, someone was unhappy. Sometimes they didn’t compromise. When that happened, we drove without tunes, and everyone was grumpy.

Something needed to change. I did not want every morning to start off on this quarreling note.

It was that same autumn of 2000, I found an article in a parenting magazine that introduced me to the idea of “Kid of the Day.” I don’t recall who originated this brilliant, sanity saving concept. Two decades later, it still works for our family.

Each day, a child is the designated “Kid of the Day.” This label doesn’t remove them from their responsibilities, such as making their bed or doing chores or homework. You don’t turn your beloved into royalty for the day or shower them with gifts and extra treats.

Everyone wants to feel special, and their opinion heard and heeded. In families with more than one child, it gets tricky. With a large group of children, it’s even more difficult to accomplish. The KOTD concept is a built-in, weekly way to achieve the goal of appreciating the individual no matter where the child is in the birth order of the family. When things are fair, the fear of being ignored or not favored is reduced. In addition, Kid of the Day can bring consistency into your week when dealing with the unpredictable soup of emotions and needs of your offspring.

For our family that first year, we started out with each child deciding on the music in the car for “their day.” No arguments, no grumbling from the rest of the riders, including mom. An additional rule of “if you complain, you lose a turn to choose on your day” helped. I never had to implement this extreme penalty. A reminder of this decree sometimes needed to be reiterated. Did this small tweak help achieve peace on our morning car ride? Absolutely. It was a minor miracle and a blessing which adjusted our outlook.

After this successful change, I wondered if this would work for other issues. It did. How could you implement the Kid of the Day rescue in your life?

If your children are old enough to argue with one another, make a list of the things or times where there’s a daily or weekly problem. Examples: seat in the car (especially who gets ‘shotgun’), choice of a family movie to watch, who goes alone with a parent to the store, which child gets in the bathroom first before for bedtime or to take a shower. Kids fight over anything.

Another way we used this idea was to get help with a task. If dad needed to do something with one animal in the barn for a few minutes, he called the KOTD to assist. Sometimes I wanted an extra set of hands to sort laundry or chop veggies for a meal. This arrangement gave me one-on-one chatting time. You could have the child as the designated kitchen helper alongside an adult. If you have older children, it could be their night to make dinner. Weekly, we favored the perks rather than the bonus assignments, but both proved beneficial.

As with any parenting advice, adapt it to your situation.

For our family, we say our daily rosary together. In our intentions, we pray for all the children and “especially for so-and-so because it’s their day.” Like doing laundry, the KOTD gets a little extra “spot treatment” and a special call out. We still do this, and it helps us focus on each child, particularly when they have a challenge or particular concern in their life.

We had five children at the time we started using this system. Everyone got one day a week, and the weekends were for mom and dad. When baby #6 and then three years later, baby #7 arrived, the week was filled. What do you do when your children outnumber the weekdays? I admit, this isn’t a common issue. For us, we doubled up, starting with the older children. The eldest, theoretically, would leave the nest first and “free up” the day for the younger one. By the time the younger child was old enough to care about the idea, the older ones were mature and did not argue with their co-KOTD. All these years later, the designated days have not changed.

For smaller families, you could give each child two or three days during the week. I would caution not to bestow more than one day if your family is not complete in the number of children. It could be a source of resentment if the new baby “stole” someone’s KOTD status on a particular day.

Does this solve all your sibling arguments? Absolutely not. There will be unforeseen issues or some silly thing that causes a riff. There’s no shortcut to peace and tranquility when one son complains his brother is “breathing his air” while you’re in the family van. I don’t have any strategies for that real example from my life.

Siblings can be precious when they express their love for one another or a pain in the neck when they verbally attack their brethren. Kid of the Day is a method to help make your week less argumentative and more pleasant between your children. With a reduction in tensions, there’s more time to enjoy everyone’s company.

I hope this helps. Thank you for reading.