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How often do you feel like there are a million things to do and they all have to be done right now. Isn't it frustrating when well meaning friends tell you to "prioritize"? If all of these deadlines were not equally important, you wouldn't be in this mess. The word "prioritize" just seems to make it all feel even worse. Well, if you feel overwhelmed like this, imagine how you child feels when he has six teachers who each seem to be oblivious to the fact that he has homework in his other classes too. Imagine how he feels when he seems to be backed up in everything. If you are having difficulty with time management, chances are, your child is too. After all, you can't teach a skill you don't have.

There is a way to work on this together if you have an older child. With a little work in time management, you and your child will both feel better. Working on it together will also help build your parent-child relationship. Let's start small. Neither of you can tackle everything at once.
1. Each of you decide what your biggest problem area is. Yours might be meal planning for a tight evening schedule or getting reports out on time at work. You child might be having a problem studying for tests or getting to the school bus on time.
2. Start thinking about what the causes of these problems might be. Your child can probably point out a few for you if you've chosen a problem that occurs at home.
3. Brainstorm solutions for both of you. Don't get too complicated with the solutions. Simple solutions save time.
4. Go through the brainstormed list and pick the solutions that you both think will be easiest to implement. Again, simplicity saves time.
Now that you have simple solutions, try them out. Make sure that your child has the opportunity to help you with your goals. Helping you learn these skills will help him master them. It's like learning a new math concept. He might get it by doing the homework. But he'll remember it when he gets to teach it to somebody else.
Sometimes, you may need to help your child pinpoint his problem area with some visual aides. Follow these steps to help him see what his daily routine looks like.
1. Sit down together and go over his daily routine. Use a graph such as a pie chart or an hour to hour planner. Have him write in each activity in the appropriate times on his chart or planner.
2. He will probably fill in just the big stuff, like getting out of bed, getting on the bus, lunch and getting out of school. So now you will need

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