by jphilo | Jan 9, 2013 | Different Dream, Educational Paperwork, Time Management/Organization
3 Time-Saving Tips for the School Year
Time-saving tips can make the school year go more smoothly for parents and students with special needs. At the Iowa Learning Disabilities Conference in October, parents who attended my workshop, Managing You Time without Losing Your Mind, shared their favorite time-saving tips during Q & A. Here’s what they had to say.
Time-Saving Tip #1
The first tip came from the mom of a teen who has short term memory issues. Teachers use the record feature on her son’s iPod to explain each day’s homework assignment. This is written into his IEP. It works better than written communication because it’s faster for teachers and can’t be as easily “lost.” What kid wants to lose an iPod?
Time-Saving Tip #2
The second tip comes from a mom whose kids have special dietary needs that require snacks at school. She packs a week’s worth of drink boxes in an inexpensive plastic pencil box. In another box, she packs a week’s worth of snacks. They fit perfectly into the pencil box, which can be labeled with a Sharpie marker.
Time-Saving Tip #3
The third tip comes from a mom whose son whose special needs impact his organizational skills. Long-term projects or those with multiple parts are particularly bothersome for him. He uses a hard document case (The picture is my best attempt at finding what the mom explained…I hope it’s right!) with the slots numbered for the days of the month. The assignments for each portion of the project are filed in the slot corresponding to the date when it’s due. This system makes it easier for her son to “see” what needs to be done when.
Time-Saving Tip #4, #5, and Beyond
The remaining time-saving school tips in this series depend upon you. Leave a comment to share tips that save time and help your child succeed at school. Thanks!
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by jphilo | May 29, 2012 | Different Dream, How Tos and Resources, Time Management/Organization
No, the above photo is not of me. But someone could have snapped a picture similar to it during my years as the parent of a child with special needs. More than once I felt as though I was losing my mind. Those years are indelibly imprinted in my memory. The purpose of the five part series, Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind, is to prevent other parents from feeling as I did. That’s why these guest bloggers shared their best tips with you:
Melissa Gamble in Part 1
Amy Stout in Part 2 and Part 3
Rebekah Benimoff and Laurie Wallin in Part 4
Jolene’s Time Management Tips
To close out the series, here are a few tips I learned over the years:
- Make it fun: Whenever you can, make your tasks fun. My favorite part of elementary school was when our teacher read to us after lunch. My favorite part of teaching was reading to my students after lunch every day for twenty-five years. Now I listen to audiobooks while cooking and cleaning to make it fun. Another idea? Teach your kids to pair and fold socks into a ball. Then have them sort them by shooting baskets into tubs designated for each person in your family.
- Never make just one of anything: If you’re making a casserole for supper, make two and freeze one. Do the same with crock pot meals, pies, cookies, cakes, whatever. Pretty soon you’ll have a week’s worth of extra meals for busy nights or to take to a family who needs a break from cooking.
- Remember, this too shall pass: My mother repeated this phrase often during the first four years of our son’s life, which seemed to last forever. I repeated it to myself when raising our kids (born six years apart) seemed to take forever. Now they’re grown up, married, and moved away and the phrase is a poignant one. I encourage you to repeat the phrase when life as the parent of kids with special needs seems to last forever. Remember, this too shall pass.
Setting Priorities
More ideas about how to manage time can be found in my book, Different Dream Parenting: A Practical Guide to Raising a Child with Special Needs. (Click here to find links to the Amazon pages for the print and electronic versions.) Chapter 12 walks parents of kids with special needs through a series of exercises designed to help them determine God’s priorities for their lives. Between that chapter and the tips in this five part series, you will learn everything from my workshop at the 2012 Accessibility Summit on April 21.
Last Chance to Share Your Suggestions
Before the series ends, please leave a comment about your best time management tips. Or tell how you adapted one of the tips presented by our guest bloggers. If enough tips roll in, maybe they can be put together in a future post!
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 1
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 2
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 3
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 4
by jphilo | May 22, 2012 | Different Dream, How Tos and Resources, Time Management/Organization
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind, Part 4
This post is the fourth in a five part series about time management for parents of kids with special needs. All the strategies and tips have provided by DifferentDream.com guest bloggers. (For Melissa Gamble’s tips in Part 1, click here. For Amy Stout’s strategies, click here for Part 2 and here for Part 3.) Today’s tips come from time management mavens Rebekah Benimoff and Laurie Wallin. Here’s what they have to say about managing your time.
Rebekah Benimoff’s Time Management Tips
One of Rebekah’s sons had juvenile diabetes, the other has sensory issues, and her husband is a war veteran dealing with a traumatic brain injury. The two phone tricks she uses to stay ahead of their needs can be adapted for many other situations:
- Set timers and also reminder alerts on your phone for checking blood glucose levels and when to change out insulin pump sets.
- Set an alert for an hour or two before, and then 30 minutes so you can plan ahead as needed.
Laurie Wallin’s Time Management Tips
Two of Laurie Wallin’s four daughters deal with mental illness. She says she employs these practical suggestions to manage her time:
- Get enough sleep: Parents manage time better and have a better attitude when they’re rested. For us, it meant having family come stay with us a few days a month, swapping childcare with a friend, or at times hiring in-home help so I could nap.
- Plan the night before: If we go into the day with the list and the items we need already prepped, we’re ready to get things done as moments of opportunity open during the day.
- Organize the essentials: Save time looking for misplaced keys by installing a hook for them on the wall by the garage. Have an expandable file folder with slots for each day of the month. File bills and other mail to follow up under the day it’s due.
Laurie adds that life with special needs creates chaos naturally. Organized chaos helps parents spend time on what matters.
How Do You Keep from Losing Your Mind?
Have you noticed how many people are using smart phone technology for time management purposes? Have any of you discovered good apps to pass along? If so, leave a comment about them or any other time savers you use. Come back next week for the last post in the series about how to manage your time without losing your mind.
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 1
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 2
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 3
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 5
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by jphilo | May 15, 2012 | Different Dream, How Tos and Resources, Time Management/Organization
This series on time management for parents of kids with special needs is for anyone who ever feels like the person in the picture. In Part 3, guest blogger Amy Stout is back with five more strategies for parents like you and me. (Click here for Part 2 of the series which showcases Amy’s first five strategies for managing your time. Click here for Part 1 of the series.) Amy passed along these strategies to be included in a workshop I recently presented at the Accessibilty Summit in Washington, DC. See what you think.
Strategy 6: PPPPPPP
PPPPPP stands for proper prior planning prevents poor performance, one of Amy’s husband’s favorite military acronyms. How does it work? Amy and her husband lay out their clothes the night before. Amy buys or makes birthday and Christmas gifts way in advance. The one thing she says they haven’t mastered is meal planning. She calls their family a work in progress.
Strategy 7: Take Time for Yourself While Multitasking
Amy takes time for herself, but it usually involves multitasking. She reads while her nails dry or in the bathtub. She composes emails while watching TV, Facebooks with international students while drinking coffee.
Strategy 8: Choose Imperfection
Amy’s house is very small. Her front door leads into my living room which is also the family room, TV room, toy room, dining room, and the laundry folding room. She says it usually looks like a hurricane hit it. Things are clean, but people are living in it. Sometimes, it bothers her that this is the first room that everyone sees and that by looking at it, they will never guess how organized she is. But Amy made a difficult choice for her personality type. She chose imperfection and reminds herself that her daughter will only be young once, to be thankful she and her husband are crowded into the same room, and that folded laundry isn’t so bad.
Strategy 9: Educate Others
Worrying about what other people think really inhibits time management. Therefore, Amy eliminates educates others about “Kylie World”. She creates lists of how to prepare Kylie foods, how to put her to bed, how to calm her, her favorite toys, her likes and dislikes, what sets her off, phrases that she uses, and how they are interpreted. Other lists explain how to administer her medications, describe favorite activities and toys, and contain emergency contacts.
Strategy 10: Be Diligent about Paperwork
To make waiver renewal time go easier, Amy says it helps to be diligent about filing important paperwork for the previous three years. Papers to file include reports from doctor’s offices, pay stubs, insurance reports, medication changes, incident reports, therapy reports, growth charts, and immunization forms. Looking for all of that on the fly can be a nightmare!!
Time for Your Two Cents
Okay, now that Amy shared her tried and true strategies, how about you? Leave a comment about time management techniques you’ve discovered. Or comment about the tips Amy shared. We’d love to hear from you. While you wait for tips from two more guest bloggers in Part 4 posts next week, check out Amy’s site at www.histreasuredprincess.blogspot.com.
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 1
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 2
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 4
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 5
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
by jphilo | May 7, 2012 | Different Dream, How Tos and Resources, Time Management/Organization
Welcome back to Part 2 of the DifferentDream.com series about time management. In Part 1, guest blogger Melissa Gamble shared her three best time management tips. In this installment, guest blogger Amy Stout shares some of her strategies. Amy says it’s easy to keep herself organized, but things are trickier for her daughter Kylie, who experiences autism. Amy finds organization, routine, and proper expectations are keys to managing time and a child with autism. That said, here are five strategies Amy uses.
Strategy 1: www.cozi.com
Amy uses www.cozi.com to organize schedules of 2 respite providers and 7 respite caregivers who service her family. Cozi allows her to color code each one of them, put their specific information in her calendar, set up repeating appointments and also send them email or text reminders a few days/hours in advance of their work schedule! It is awesome!!
Strategy 2: Routine, Routine, Routine
If Kylie’s routine – remember routine is so important to kids with special needs – has to change or if Amy’s introducing something new, then she utilize a schedule. For an example, look at the x-ray example Amy included in this previous guest post. Amy says social stories can also be applied to this scenario.
Strategy 3: Remain Flexible
Amy tries to keep a proper mindset regarding flexibility. She doesn’t consider her own expectations as set in stone. Instead, her daughter is the most important priority. If she cant handle what is required to complete Amy’s to do list for the day then that item gets moved to a new day. (Example: If Amy need to pick up a few groceries but the lights and sounds in the store are really bothering Kylie that day, then Amy doesn’t go. Nothing is more important than her daughter’s comfort.)
Strategy 4: Work When the Kids Sleep
Amy does a lot after Kylie goes to bed and before she wakes up. Amy calls them her golden hours.
Strategy 5: Multitask
Amy multitasks as much as she can. She never just watches TV. Amy will provide examples of how she multitasks, along with five more strategies she employs, in the next post in this series. In the meantime, you can read more time savers at Amy’s blog, www.histreasuredprincess.blogspot.com.
Share Your Time Management Strategies
Now it’s your turn to share your time management strategies. Or leave a comment about which one of Amy’s tips you’re going to try or how you’ll modify it for your situation. Rest assured, your idea will help other parents trying to organize their time without losing their minds!
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 1
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 3
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 4
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind: Part 5
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
by jphilo | May 4, 2012 | Different Dream, How Tos and Resources, Time Management/Organization
When I read Cheaper By the Dozen in junior high, I totally identified with the father’s desire to organize his saintly wife and children into an efficient, time-saving machine. However, he had much more success with his 12 kids than I ever did with my 2, but my interest in time management never waned. To this day, I love to organize and write to do lists. If it wasn’t such a waste of time, I’d spend hours in the planner aisle at Staples or searching for templates on line.
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind, Part 1
From Day Dreamer to Day Planner
My sister and brother find my transformation from day dreamer to day planner hard to believe. Of course, they remember me as the middle sibling with her nose constantly in a book with no idea of time or place, perpetually late, and very disorganized. Their jaws dropped when they heard I presented a time management workshop for parents of kids with special needs at the Accessibility Summit a couple weeks ago.
If I wasn’t aware of how the transformation took place, my jaw would be dropping, too. But I know that God placed several mentors into my life who showed me how to become organized. One was my best friend Jane, who moved to town the summer before we were freshman in high school. She taught me to complete worksheets on time, organize and turn them in, and to complete read assignments before class began. (Bless you, dear Jane!) Other mentors were the head of the nursing home kitchen where I worked as a dietary aid in high school and college, the teacher who supervised me during student teaching, and several other teaching colleagues.
Special Needs Organizational Mentors
When I began writing about special needs a few years ago, many of the parents interviewed for A Different Dream for My Child and Different Dream Parenting became mentors, too. They shared amazing ideas for managing life with kids who have special needs. Many of them are now guest bloggers here at DifferentDream.com. So when it came time to prepare for the workshop at the Accessibility Summit, naturally, I asked them to share their time management tips. Their tips were so good, I decided to pass them along to you as part of a time management series.
Without wasting any more time, let’s get started!
Melissa Gamble’s Managing Your Mind Without Losing Your Mind Tips
Melissa and her husband Brant are parents of one daughter Ginny. She gives the following 3 tips:
- Weekly Calendar Time: Schedule a weekly calendar time to discuss the upcoming week’s events, appointments, etc. (We usually done on Sunday night before bed.) We also have a shared Google Calendar* that we sync to our phones to keep track of appointments and other things.
- Make Lists: List making is crucial to getting stuff done. I carry a large spiral notebook with me everywhere. Without a list nothing gets done for me. I try to keep a long term list, medium term, and immediate list in this spiral notebook.
- Meal Planning: We couldn’t survive without it. I do it once a month. This helps alleviate multiple trips to the store.
*Jolene’s husband seconds the Google Calendar idea. He says the calendar/phone options keep him organized.
Share Your Managing Your Time without Losing Your Mind Tips
Thanks, Melissa, for sharing your time management tips. If one of those tips solves a problem for you, leave a comment about how it helped. And please, leave a comment with your best time management tip if you like. And come back tomorrow for tips from another guest blogger, Amy Stout.
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind, Part 2
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind, Part 3
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind, Part 4
Managing Your Time Without Losing Your Mind, Part 5
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
