Time management plan

MasterL is 14 and in year 8 at school. He is Autistic, and struggles with many aspects of the school day.... social interactions, keeping up with instructions in class, unexpected interruptions... just to name a few.  His workload is increasing which means more homework, and he is finding it difficult to balance the time he spends on the things he wants to do and the things he has to do when he is at home. 

To be honest, I struggle with the same thing! So much so that sometimes during the day when the kids are at school I get so caught up in a project that I want to do uninterrupted that I lose track of time. So I did something to prevent me being late. I set an alarm on my phone. At 2.30 my phone asks me if BabyR needs to have a feed before we go pick up the kids, and at 2.45 my phone reminds me to leave to get the kids. Sometimes I get to the school early and I'll be standing there chatting with other parents when the alarm goes off. At first they used to laugh at me. Now they all just say "It's time to go get the kids"!!

Tonight when MasterL was having a bit of a meltdown and telling me how much homework he had and that he'd known about it for a while but now it is due and he doesn't have enough time to do it all..... we decided he needed to set a routine around homework. He already has a few routines he runs for himself during the day so this is not a new idea for him. I suggested that he set some alarms like I have to help him remember when to do things until it becomes habit. He was happy to do this, so we sat down together and set some alarms. 


He decided to have alarms for homework time in the afternoon, getting ready for bed time and lights out time. He must have really liked the idea because then he went on to add alarms for the weekend to remind himself to check if he needs to do homework and to clean his room. 

The great thing was that once he had the alarms set he was so much calmer, and managed to go through the rest of the night easily even though his workload had not changed. It's amazing how having a plan makes everything so much easier to manage.