ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS

Back to school includes considerably more than the activities associated with shopping, classwork review, teacher acceptability and homework.

Back to school, for the working parent, includes all of the above, but at the top of the list, there should be a headline with the all-important mention of household organization.

An organized family means the employed parent(s) will be able to deliver A+ job- performance ratings.

Who in the family does what and when they do it is the essential ingredient for making sure responsibilities are delivered in a timely manner so that the other team members are able to build upon the task at hand.

Sound silly? Well, if the mom has the task of grocery shopping on her way home from work, but the teenage son is assigned to keep a grocery list in order based upon the weekly menus pre-teen daughter prepares, and that daughter doesn’t see her task as an essential one and fails to get it done, sounds to me like there is no food on the table.

I’m not making jokes here. As the single parent of five kids, I enrolled as an undergraduate at UCLA. My children ranged in age from 1 1/2 years to 11.

When I’m asked, “How in the world did you do that?”

My answer? You guessed it, “Organization.”

Neither the boss nor the professor are interested in excuses. Successful home life is the precursor to excellence in the workplace.

I graduated an honor student as Departmental Scholar in Sociology. This didn’t happen because I was smart but, instead, because I was so organized and because my house full of children helped to make it happen