Thoughts on Visiting the Kid's Program School Pilot Program

I just love sharing this journey with this community! I love that while processing my thoughts auditorily, I get to connect with you and pick your brains. Just like you all do in the online community! I shared with you about the Teacher Pilot and now I want to fill you in on the Kids Program Pilot.

“How did you come up with the Kids Program?”

I should have expected this question. Of course, they didn’t have many organizational questions because they had just completed the after school program their parents signed them up for - The Kids Pilot. And there should have been no surprise that it was predominantly boys. Mom wanted little Johnny to pick up after himself better, I guess! We had 14 children participate. 

They wanted to know how I came up with the Kids Program. 

First Thing’s First

First things first, what is the Kids Program? In my years of professional home organizing, I developed some rules for organizing the kids' rooms.

First, no parents. I wanted the child to feel comfortable to say yes or no to items or clothes they didn’t want in their room. And let me tell you, you can force your child, guilt your child into keeping something in their room, but it isn’t getting played with or worn! Speaking of stuffed animals, and you can apply this to other “collections,” there's a process of elimination I explained. Our brains can get all mixed up when the things we definitely want to keep are mixed up with the things we are ok to let go. 

Also, if the child has a rock collection you don’t want them to have, come up with a compromise. It’s like their passion project and you are completely dismissing it. So instead allow them a certain amount of space or number of items that they can keep. It’s their little passion project, their treasures. You can have an organized room with passion projects in them. 

And clothes are a whole other battle. When dealing with smaller children, the only real question they are considering is how do these clothes make me feel? They don’t care about the occasion they may need it for. They never knew how you dressed as a child or how you envision your child dressing. They wanna be able to play in comfort. I always found in boys it was jeans vs. “swishy” pants. You can buy them all the jeans you want but if they like swishy pants, swishy pants are the only thing getting worn. I want to save the child from the battle with the parent over what they want to wear. And I want the parent to spend wisely on clothing their children will actually wear. I talk to the child in my only Lisa voice and help them to respectfully articulate to their parents their preferences and why. I know we all want an organized child and an organized child is much more likely to be confident. Organization breeds confidence. 

There are about 14 steps between “You know how” and “Do it like this”

There is no system in place of how we “hand down” how to #adult. This applies to baby steps like helping our children to organize their mini apartments, to our emerging adults to their independent living spaces. That is why we offer the Kids Program and Launch Program for ages 16-25. We go out on our own and overnight gain a ton of responsibility. 

Did you know that one out of three children are born with organizational skills? So it isn’t any wonder that 87% of adults don’t feel organized. So if we don’t learn organization in school or college, I mean, where are we to learn these skills? It’s not like we wake up adults one day with the skill of organization! The Launch Binder is a great way to comprehensively hand down the skills and systems we have learned along the way for an organized lifestyle. How do we all learn grocery shopping, a cleaning schedule, managing prescriptions, health insurance, buying a car, routine things like oil changes and getting new tires? As parents we just figured it out with each new stage of life. And oh my gosh, throw a kid in the mix and now it just got a lot more complex! Now you are managing a house instead of an apartment, managing other people’s messes and your emotions about those messes, and you are balancing work and home life - not just school and the other stuff mom and dad take care of. Kids don’t know what they don’t know and I believe we all want to better inform our children to reduce their stress and boost their confidence.

How do we get this into the educational system?

So again I want to ask you, my community…how can we get this into all educational systems? At what age? Senior in high school? At the college level? We NEED to be teaching the skill of organization! Did you know that children who aren’t organized also have increased negative self talk? And as we get older and gain more responsibilities to juggle, do you think the self-talk improves? If we can teach these students how to get organized and maintain it, we’ll have mentally healthier confident children with skills that transfer into the rest of their lives. That will result in them moving through their goals faster and making an impact. Please let me know what you are thinking as I am sharing this information. 

This is the last frontier AI will approach. And I’m not confident it’ll ever be able to manage the administration of life! So we’ve got to figure this out and teach them how to help themselves in whatever phase of life they are in. 

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Kids Program

• Launch Program

• Sign Up for the Organize 365® Newsletter 

On the Wednesday podcast, I get to talk with members of the Organize 365­® community as they share the challenges, progress, missteps and triumphs along their organizing journey. I am grateful that you are reaching out to share with me and with this community. You can see and hear transformation in action. If you are ready to share your story with us, please apply at https://organize365.com/wednesday.

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