As the creator of The Trip Clip, I’ve used these picture lists in a myriad of ways over the years to help my kids and my whole family stay organized. The morning routine and the family chore charts were the most used over the years, but one list I made had an especially big impact during one of the most dreaded time for all parents: Middle School.
Any parents with middle school aged kids know how hard this age is. Your kids start to get more freedom, more responsibility, multiple teachers, the need to manage a much more fluid homework schedule, all while gaining an attitude that boils down to them not wanting to listen to anything you tell them anymore.
I created the list below to help my younger son who seemed to never know what homework he had to do each night and perpetually underestimated how much time he would need, especially once he sat down and started playing video games. We tried not allowing screens until after all his work was done, but quickly realized that after a full day of school he was completely useless until he got some downtime.
Our agreement was that he would fill out this list every day right after school, BEFORE he started playing video games. For each item on the list, he had to indicate what time he would do it. This helped address the problem of him waiting to try to do it all in an hour before bedtime, when usually an hour wasn’t enough time to get all of these things done. Once he filled out the sheet he could play video games, but by filling it out, he had set his own time limit for how long he could play before he would need to stop to tackle the things on his list. Giving him this autonomy made a world of difference in him being able to turn off the video games at the time he’d written down.
I had him enumerate his homework, too, since he refused to use the school-supplied planner (he didn’t see the point when it was all online). We had him log on to his school computer and list each class he had homework for that night, then estimate how long he thought it would take. Previously we had had issues with him not checking how much homework he had until quite late at night, and then suddenly realizing when he turned on his school computer at 9pm that he had something big he’d forgotten about, and it was already really late. Having him fill this out right after school meant he had to log on much earlier and remind himself (and let me know too) how much work he had ahead of him that night. Then we worked together to make sure he started on it early enough.
This list wasn’t a magic bullet, but of all the things I tried to help him stay organized, this was the most effective thing I found. I especially liked that I could include things that weren’t on his school planner, like practicing, and showering! He was always way too willing to skip a shower when his poor time management made him run out of time.
I know some of my customers have also used The Trip Clip to try to help their middle school kids organize their homework. Here’s a chart Heidi from Virginia made to help her daughter keep track of what homework she’d need to do on each day of the week since (except for math) it toggled back and forth each day, and it was hard for her daughter to keep track of it all.
If you’ve created your own list using The Trip Clip to help your kids stay organized, I’d love for you to share it so that others can get ideas too. Email me to show me what you made!
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