Time Management Skills for Jewish Parents

Jewish Parenting Guide: Time Management

If your household is in anyway typical, then you join the ranks of other parents who often feel harried and overwhelmed by everything they are required to do and expected to be. Moreover, if you are like many Frum women of today, you may have entered the workforce, leaving you with even less time to take care of your family and challenged with balancing career with motherhood.

If the any of the following sound familiar to you, know that you are not alone:

· A too-long to-do list

· A never-ending shopping list

· Every time you clean the house, the kids (or your spouse!) mess it up

· The kids are fighting again

· Shabbos is coming, the house isn’t ready, and you have little children getting underfoot

· Yom Tov food is expensive and you lack the available funds

• Menu planning for your Shabbos guests is stressing you out (not to mention preparing for the Yom Tovim and the big-whopper, the Seder!) even before you get to the actual meal preparation and presentation
• You try to handle sibling altercations and misdemeanors calmly and lovingly, but at some point your patience runs out
• The kids are fighting; your spouse steps in, but his raised voice does little to help the situation
• School day mornings are a perpetual and stressful race against clock, with your sleepyheads, slowpokes, and dawdlers falling behind schedule when they should all be out the door
• Your teenagers are acting out and rejecting any efforts at connecting with them
• You feel alone and that there are no solutions to your parenting problems
• You are frustrated that your household management efforts seem fruitless
• There is always too much to do in too little time…

The list goes on and on… The fact of the matter is that like all parents, Jewish homemakers need excellent organizational skills to get through a day and to manage their households efficiently and smoothly throughout the year. Yet life is never smooth-sailing and definitely not predictable, especially with kids.

The good news is that while you can never completely avoid chaos, you can learn how to use your time more wisely and how to maximize the time you have – with your kids, your spouse, and yourself.

Time Management Strategies for Jewish Parents

To help you on your road to Frum parenting success, here are some expert household and time management tips, as well as some good pointers on better organization, problem solving, and budgeting:

• Organize Your To-Do List: A scattered to-do list may contribute to your feeling of being a scatterbrain, so take time to organize your tasks of the day. You can arrange a to-do list in order of priority, in order of difficulty (getting the hard stuff out of the way early on takes the pressure off for the rest of the day, leaving you free to tackle easier, more enjoyable tasks), or by hour. Another strategy is to divide your to-do list into items requiring immediate attention, items you can take care of anytime throughout the week, and ongoing/long-term projects.

· Plan Ahead: You will feel calmer and be more efficient by planning ahead. For example, prepare the kids’ lunches the night before, cook and freeze meals on the weekend, set the table as you unload the dishwasher, fill out forms for the kids at one time, combine your trip to the grocery store and library with your carpooling schedule, say Tehilim while you’re sitting in the waiting room, and more.

· Use Paper Plates: If you’re running late or having a simple meal, save time and effort by using paper plates and plastic utensils. Of course, when it comes to Shabbos and fancier meals, pull out the good dishes.

• Make Your Shopping List as You Menu Plan: A great way to avoid multiple trips to the grocery store and running out of ingredients is to make your shopping list as you plan your weekly menu.
• Establish a Regular Erev Shabbos/Erev Chag Routine: Instead of reinventing the wheel each week, create a standard Erev Shabbos and Erev Yom Tov to-do list and routine, which will ensure that you remember the essentials and don’t end up panicking at the last minute.
• Delegate Tasks to Your Children: There are many small but time-consuming tasks that your children can do on their own with a little bit of guidance and instruction, freeing up valuable time for yourself and helping them develop a sense of responsibility and feelings of self-confidence at the same time. From learning to tie their own shoelaces to setting the table to making their beds and sandwiches and even taking the bus when they’re old enough, delegating tasks to your kids is a winning time-management technique.
• Schedule Quality Time with Your Kids: The Torah recognizes the special bond between mothers and their children and places great value on the role of the Jewish mother. The Torah further specifies specific life lessons a Jewish father is required to impart unto his children. So amidst all the hustle and bustle, don’t forget to take time out of the daily grind to spend quality time with your kids, even if it means scheduling in that precious time. Moreover, don’t forget the value of having fun with your children – at the end of the day, it will make you both feel better!
• Don’t Be a Jewish Superwoman (or Superman): Dedicated parents often fall into the trap of taking on too much or feeling like they have to do it all alone. Don’t fall into the trap of being a super-parent. Delegating tasks to your spouse may help them feel more useful and supportive, while taking family members up on their offers of help is a great way of better managing your time. You can also enlist the service of your network of friends on extra-busy days by setting up play dates, sleepovers, and carpools, offering to return the favor another day.
• Examine How You Spend Your Time: According to the experts, almost everyone can cut one or more hours from their daily schedule by examining how they spend their time and by putting on hold or eliminating certain tasks.

· Pick and Choose Your Battles: When it comes to managing your kids – and your spouse – pick and choose your battles by differentiating between what really gets under your skin and what you can live with (i.e. someone routinely walking over your freshly-washed floors versus making the bed just right).

· Refrigerator Post-Its: Whether it’s a dentist appointment, list of emergency phone numbers, date night with your spouse, PTA meeting, gymnastics/hockey practice, or your grocery list, post-it on your refrigerator, hang a wall calendar in the kitchen, or set up an erasable white board for all to see that keeps track of your family’s schedules.

· Use the Internet: One of the beauties of the Web is that it can be a great time saver if you know how to take advantage of it. To use your time more efficiently, use the Internet to pay bills, do your banking online, shop online or research items before you hit the stores, avoid traffic by checking online traffic reports, and much more.

· Be Storage Smart: You can be better organized by remembering “that birds of a feather flock together” and by storing similar items in one place, i.e. winter clothes, summer clothes, family raingear, sports uniforms, toys, books, videos, shoes, linen, and more.

· Learn to Say “No”: Polish up your assertiveness skills by learning to say “no” when you’re asked for commitments that do not fit your priorities. You can still contribute, volunteer, get involved, and extend your time and efforts for others when it works for you and your family, but saying “yes” at your own expense will only stress you out and derail your time management strategies.

• Take Advantage of Books, Shiurim, Courses, and the Pros: Not everyone has great organizational skills and that’s OK! We are not all equally gifted, so don’t hesitate to consult with the professionals and to take advantage of the myriad of books, Torah commentaries, shiurim, articles, and other teachers to learn important tips, skills, and strategies on how to be a better parent, what to model for your children, how to better communicate, how to discipline, how to run your household, how to manage your time, how to balance your budget, how to prepare easy recipes, and much more.

Parenting Success

According to our Sages and studies published by the American Psychological Association, improved parenting competencies lead to:

• Enhanced relationships between parents and children
• Better marital communication
• More even division of household labor
• Improved anger-management, time-management, and organizational skills
• Happier, healthier, and more functional families

Being organized and learning how to manage your time will help you stay cool, calm, collected, centered, upbeat, and positive, which is a wonderful model for your entire household (and good for own mental health!). Once you have developed strategies to manage your personal stress – through exercise, diet, prayer, downtime, and therapy as needed – you will have more energy to invest in your kids, your spouse, and yourself, and making your household a true place of simcha and nachat.