As your child gets older and closer to going away to college, it’s important that they learn how to manage and organize their time and resources wisely. Here are a few tips to empower your child toward lifelong habits of good time management and organization:

Start early
Just like each child has to learn how to brush their teeth or put away the dishes, there is no time like the present to start your child on the path to good time management and organization skills.

Establish a family calendar and planning center
Start with a family calendar that everyone can see. This could be a wall calendar or even better – an online calendar. Cozi.com has an excellent online family calendar. Have your children add important family events or activities (including details on start and end times and where). Involve them in planning the logistics for transportation, writing out lists for what to bring, etc. You can also subscribe to events from your school’s Tandem calendar into the Cozi calendar so new events are automatically updated.

Use Tandem to help your child plan their own calendar
Have your child create their own custom personal calendar with the MyTandem feature on Tandem where they can subscribe to the groups that they are involved in and receive email or SMS notifications when there is a change to an event. They could also use a personal calendar like iCal, Google Calendar, Cozi, etc. and subscribe to a feed of events for the entire school or just certain groups.

To Do Lists
Let them create “To Do” and “To Bring” lists for their calendars so that its clear what each scheduled activity requires and what other chores, studying, etc. need to be completed each week. Encourage them to use, check and modify their calendar daily according to their needs and goals.

Use a timer or alarm clock
Children (and even teenagers) often don’t have a good sense of time. Kitchen timers, alarm clocks and cell phone or PDA alarms can be useful tools to teach your children how to effectively manage their free time and other activities, such as getting ready to leave the house for school, a family outing or other events.

Lead by example
Parents can teach their children a lot about time management by simply practicing the same time management skills. There are times when even Mom or Dad will be late or miss an appointment – but these can serve as valuable learning lessons for the entire family. Engage everyone – Mom, Dad, and the children – in discussing what happened and how the situation could have been avoided.