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Setting Priorities
Keeping the Family Schedule on Track By Sue Poremba
The first thing to do is figure out what is most important to your family. "List10 values you live by and write them down," says Mimi Donaldson, co-author of Bless Your Stress: It Means You're Still Alive (Forthcoming February 2006). By identifying your values, you can begin to sort out where different priorities are within the household.
These values will be different for each family. For example, for Cindy Buchanan, a mother in Alabama, family priorities are children's health, parents' health, car, home, children's education and parents' jobs. The priority list for Amy Racina, a single mother in Healdsburg, Calif., is much different. She lists her family's priorities as empathy, communication, consciousness/awareness, creativity, intelligence, flexibility and intuitive understanding.
Deciding on the priorities should be the result of a family discussion. Parents may be surprised to find that their children agree with responsibilities education, religious instruction and chores being at the top of the list. However, parents benefit by listening to what their child does not consider a priority.
Suzanne Forman, a teacher and senior associate for secondary education at Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc., says that too often parents push their children into activities that do not interest the kids.
"Parents don't let the kids make their own choices," says Forman. "They are setting up schedules for their kids based on what other families are doing. Students at the high school level are burned out and miserable."
Once the priorities ae established within the family, it is up to the parents to enforce them. When Donaldson's stepdaughter wanted to go out with friends on school nights, Donaldson put her foot down. Education was theNo.1priority in her house, while friendships came further down the list. "When you want good grades, you don't go out the night before a test," says Donaldson.