Unplug for the Holiday Season

I recently had an opportunity to appear on Breakfast Television (checkout photo #16) speaking on unplugging kids after the summer.  Many parents are increasingly aware of the amount of screen time their children have over the course of a day.  Think about it: TV, computer (in school, at home), IPOD, cell phone.  Add in there a movie or attempts to look up a reference at the library and a modern teenager could easily rack up over 6 hours of screen time without even trying (2 hours TV, 2 hours homework, 1 hour total IPOD, 1 hour total cell phone).  Considering the kids are only awake for 16 - 18 hours and are in school for 6.5 hours, that's a big chunk of their day.

Here are a couple of tips to get you started thinking about how to help your teenager control their screen time:

• As unpopular as it seems, turn off the email alerts and FB or other social media while they are doing homework.  Multitasking has been shown not to be effective and it will take them longer to get the homework done (more screen time).  Instead, encourage your teen to take regular breaks when they can check in on the pack.
• Insist that your teen take their cell phone out of their room at night and plug it in to charge elsewhere in the house.  This strategy is also helpful to get them up in the morning since that phone will give a snapshot of the pack status for the day as soon as they check their texts/BBM or whatever.
• If it isn't already, consider moving your family computer to a public place.  The worst place for a teen to use a computer is in their room.  They will stay up until all hours.  This is not a life skill worth learning.
• Help your younger teens book physical activity during the week that requires a disconnect from a screen.  Clearly this type of direction gets harder as the kids get older but once the pattern is set, and they have a habit of regular activity, they have learned a life skill that is worth hanging on to.

Getting the Kids "To Do's" into "Got Done"

If you have school age children you are very familiar with agendas, projects, dictation, reading lists and the myriad of tasks that come home for the children to accomplish. You probably even monitor that your children sit down and do homework each evening in order to get through the list. Maybe you go as far as to check that they have the due dates in their agendas.

Have you ever taught them how to write the To List so that it gets done?

Try teaching your children to write their To Do's with action verbs up front. For example:

"Project Outline" becomes
"Write rough copy of project outline".

The task is clear and limited. You will both know what needs to be done and when it got accomplished.

First Term - Out

Has your high school student just finished first term? Is his/her home workspace cluttered with the remnants of first term study?

Do everyone a favour, especially your student, and help them purge out the first term to make room for second term. The longer you leave the remnant clutter hanging around, the less likely it is to be sorted and purged before chaos sets in. Help your student sort through the notes for relevant material to keep such as key assignments and throw out the rest.

Helping students purge on a timely basis helps them learn sorting and prioritizing skills for their "office" before material becomes clutter. In addition, you will be teaching them the value of a clear, uncluttered space. They will be able to focus on the task at hand (second term's material).

You'll both feel better.

The (Dis) Organized Teenager - The Agenda

When I was a student, no one carried an agenda. When I entered the business world, everyone carried a day planner. Nowadays, many school boards create day planners or agendas for the students in their schools. Many day planner publishing companies provide planners targeted specifically for students.

Trying to get a student to use a day planner is a much harder task than just finding one to use. If, however, a student can learn to use the tool on a regular basis they will also learn it is a powerful tool to stay organized and give their brain a break from having to keep a lot of schedule and due date information. Here's some tips to help get your student on top of their agenda:

• Have the student enter into the day planner all the regular activities in their week such as hockey practice, soccer, dance or band practice.
• Have them enter in all the irregular schedule items such as holidays, band concerts or vacations. Most of these items are booked many months in advance and are available from the program organizer.
• Encourage them to write in all their friends' and family members' birthdays. Why? Often there will be parties booked around these dates and with the dates booked in the agenda a student can anticipate a gathering of friends or family around the birthday date. With the heads up on their agenda, they can also budget their funds if they wish to go out to celebrate a friend's birthday.
• Encourage them to keep the agenda with them in their back pack or hand bag at all times. Then it will be available for reference when the opportunity to babysit comes up or when a party invitation arrives.

Organizing Tips for Dyslexia

As a professional organizer, I am often asked about organizing strategies for managing dyslexia and other learning disabilities. This recently written knol provides a collection of organizing strategies for individuals managing with dyslexia. The knol, or bit of knowledge, is designed to be an authoritative article on a subject. Sandra Crux has written a comprehensive set of such strategies which will be helpful to any of you managing this attribute in yourself or your children. I hope you find it helpful.

http://knol.google.com/k/sandra-crux/dyslexia-4-using-organizational/8d8s0hdum67q/5#

Anticipation - The Greatest Time Management Tool

When it comes to time management, there is nothing more valuable than the ability to anticipate an event or events. Isn’t that what our organizers, calendars, day timers, and PDA’s are all about. The multi million dollar industry of calendars is based on the notion that we like to anticipate what is coming in our lives. With anticipation comes the ability to schedule both our time and our resources – like the car for example. When you look to next Tuesday and see that you have four family members going in four different directions at the same time by 4:30 in the afternoon, having a whole week to work on those back up resources like a car pool is very, very helpful.

Children learn to anticipate at a very young age – does birthday party excitement for a whole week sound familiar to you? Young students are now learning in school to use their school issue “agenda” to record their homework.

By the time the kids hit their teens, they have learned to anticipate excitement, record their homework and use their lockers. Unfortunately as adults, we don’t teach them the time planning that goes along with being able to anticipate events. Even as a professional organizer, I have been slow to teach my own teenager how to use her time wisely. Here's the process that I went through with her to get her back on track with time. It’s a relatively easy organizing task and they will thank you for the time management skill later in life.

1. Find a calendar that works for you: electronic, PDA, puppy dogs, whatever. The size, style and platform are really only relevant in terms of what works and what looks good.

2. Enter in all the fixed dates over which you have no control: music lessons, swim practice, band practice, year book committee etc. Put them in for the whole term or year until the known completion date.

3. Enter in all the regularly scheduled flexible time such as piano/instrumental/voice practicing time. If it is scheduled, the intention moves from a 1 (would like to do) to an 8 (really intend to do) and has half a chance to get to 10 (will absolutely make sure this happens) at which point after 28 days it becomes a habit.

4. Enter into the calendar the activities that lead to what you would like to accomplish by year’s, month’s, week’s, day’s end e.g. On Saturday afternoons I will go to the library so that I have books for my English class on Monday.

Have fun anticipating your wonderful life!

Locker Lists

Teenagers are perhaps some of the most preoccupied members of our society. While their minds are tackling social spider webs and academic balancing acts, their cell phones, books, papers, saxophone mouthpieces and gym wear often get left behind. With luck, they end up aging in the locker. Less fortunate are those teens who leave articles on buses, chairs, in the library or who knows where and end up spending their part-time job savings to replace them.

Try a Locker List. Develop a list of items that routinely go to and from school. Organize your list by day of the week. Build it to fit on the inside of the locker door. Have it laminated and have your teenager post it on the inside of his/her locker. I recommend getting your teen to build the list and decorate it before you laminate it. It has to be catchy enough to attract their eye so they will look at the list before shutting the locker door. Here’s a sample to get you started:

Monday
To School: lunch, gym clothes, runng shoes, cell phone
Home: weekly math test for signature, instrument/mouthpiece/ music binder, cell phone,
lunch bag

Tuesday
To School: weekly math test for signature, instrument/mouthpiece/music binder
Home: cell phone gym clothes lunch bag

Wednesday
To School: rugby mouth guard, lunch, cell phone
Home: lunch bag

Back to School Tips

Back to schoool time has come and gone but organization for the students, be they primary, elementary or high school, is an ongoing challenge. As the Wellrich Organizers website is undergoing a redesign, and the tips pages are being archived, I though I would republish some of the favourite tips from this fall.

Keep the Family Calendar Public
To help keep the family organized with schedules, a posted, public calendar is helpful. There are several wall/refrigerator calendars available from special Family Organizing ones to white boards. Whichever style suits your families needs, make sure it is posted where everyone can see it. Schedules are best not kept as a secret. Try using an alligator clip on a hook to keep all time sensitive information i.e. Birthday party invitations, curriculum night close at hand. If necessary, use binder dividers to separate the information by family member.

Label, Label, Label
Children are most likely to lose items that they don't recognize as their own - like all those new back to school clothes, binders and lunch bags. Label everything possible that doesn't normally stay attached to your child. Label lunch bags on the outside so that they can see their name clearly. Try to have the children wear their new clothes several times before school so that the items are very familiar to them. If you don't have access to iron on labels, a pen or laundry marker on the tag will serve the purpose.