How do you do it?

This one simple question is one that I hear repeated over and over. "How do you do it? How do you have enough patience to care for so many kids? I can hardly handle my own!" I hear this statement a lot. I always respond the same way. Planning and organization! I can not stress enough how much planning has saved my butt.

There are many ways that planning helps. I don't mean just for large families either. I mean for everyone. I am not one of those over crazed people who plan every minute of their child's day. My kids have schedules and routines that are not so ridged we fall apart of we don't follow them, but rather serve as a guideline for what needs to be done. The first step to making a family schedule is to set priorities. Each planned activity should have a purpose and a priority. For example, Soccer ~ yes it provides physical activity for the kids. It also serves other purposes. It works on coordination, sportsmanship, team work. Archery? Provides hand eye coordination, fine motor skill and demands attention to details.

These are extra curricular activities yes, but they serve to also improve on our children's skills in areas that they do need to work on to be well rounded. Now for us priority rank is academic, social, physical needs. A's Tutoring is more important then her Archery..If there is a conflict in schedule ~ archery goes, tutoring stays.
When dealing with multiple children, each child needs to be represented. If everything is about child #1 then child #2 will feel left out. We try and solve this issue by allowing each child to pick 1 activity per season to participate in. We give them the catalog from the local YMCA and see what they feel is fun. We let them pick ~ then discuss their pick. Yes sometimes we veto ~ but overall we let the child pick their activity and build our schedule around them. There are bound to be conflicts, and sometimes you have ask the children to pick something else. (We usually gauge how important this activity is to the individuals needs and then ask the one that fills the least amount of need to change)

The next big thing is keeping everything straight. How can you keep track of everything? Well in the "old" days day planners where a moms best friend. But now days? A smart phone is! I found a really cool app fory phone in the android market. Its called Cozi. It is a wonderful App and so far no real complaints about it. This neat little app has been a life saver. Not only does it allow me to keep track of whose where and when they should be there.(It has a neat "repeats" option so you only have to enter soccer practice on monday 1 time and the app auto adds it every monday there after!)  You can program it to notify you about something. And not just you either. If say I set up a Dr. appointment for Dave, and I have no need to be there/be reminded. I can have Cozi remind just Dave of his appointment. But say its an appointment for the twins and we both need to know, I can set it up to notify both of us. Best of all Dave or I can alter the schedule to allow Dave to add things too. He never has any doubt when to make that dentist appointment because he has our schedule right in the palm of his hand. It doesn't just have a schedule either, it also includes a grocery list and journal options as well. So if Dave uses all the milk, he can add it to shopping list. And for me ~ who half the time would forget my head if it where not attached...I always have my grocery list as long as I have my phone. (Which I don't ever leave home without!)

I also have a visual calender that I keep up in the dining room for the children. This way they know which days they have soccer, which days are "free" days and helps them keep track of when there is a birthday comming up, or a extra day off school. This is an important  thing for them and helps them feel like they have a say in whats going on as well. The "Mom I want to stay over at (insert friends house) on Friday night!" are much easier to handle when you can say look at the schedule what does it say? It also helps teach them time and patience. (No really, your friends party isnt till next week!) Getting a schedule started is the hardest part. The rest is just maintenance and easy to keep up changing things little by little.