Tools To Help Your Teen Get Organized For School

Raising a tween and/or teen comes with many challenges, and especially after the last couple of haphazard school years, one of those challenges is probably looking even more overwhelming than usual – ORGANIZATION.

We often think that our tweens and teens messy, all over the place, can’t remember school due dates or team practice times tendencies are a form of laziness or even rebelliousness, but in reality some of it is purely developmental. Being organized involves executive function skills, which include things like self-restraint, working memory, emotion control, focus, task initiation, planning/prioritization, time management, defining and achieving goals, flexibility, observation and even stress tolerance.

None of us are born with these skills, we just have the potential to develop them over time. But during the last 18 months or so, many of our middle schoolers and high schoolers have missed out on the typical opportunities to make progress in this area. Now, as they begin to return to a more normal school routine, it feels like they are even more unequipped than usual.

However, it’s not all as dire as it may seem. The reality is that this isn’t a tween or teen problem alone, a ton of adults struggle with executive functions as well, but over time they’ve found tools to help them better manage their shortcomings. What exactly are those tools? So, glad you asked.

Tools To Help Your Teen Get Organized For School

Best Planners To Help Teens Get Organized

Yes, there are tons of great digital organization options for teens and they make a lot of sense considering how “phone” centric they tend to be. Obviously there are the tools that come build into their phones like their calendars and reminders. There are also some useful apps, If you want more info here is a super helpful resource: Great Organizational Apps For Teens. However, there is evidence that actually writing things down on paper helps people to better retain information. So, it may be helpful to invest in an actual, old-fashioned planner for your teen.

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Dry Erase Boards And Calendars To Improve Teen Organization

Again, there are times going old school can really make a difference and when it comes to dry erase boards, you might be amazed at the issues they can solve for your teens (and honestly your entire household organizational challenges). I have one teen who keep a white board in her room to keep track of her weekly schedule and “to dos” all in one place. I have another teen who uses one on his door for important morning reminders (i.e. don’t forget to take your soccer gear tomorrow for practice). We have one on the fridge to keep track of grocery items that everyone can just add as they use stuff up and we also put urgent daily reminders up there for each other.

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Tech Tools For Organized Teens

Technology is a double edged sword when it comes to our tweens and teens. Often it feels more like they are source of the disorganization due to the distractions they create. But technology isn’t all bad as it can really help students when applied in the right ways. Also, the reality is that most students are required to use these technologies in school and other aspects of their life today. It can be hard to know what to choose, but here are a few favorites that come with superior reviews and reliability. To go along with these, you might also want to check out our other helpful guide 5 Amazing Organizational Apps for Teens

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Best Back Packs and School Bags To Help Teens With Organization

These days, many schools have done away with lockers, and this creates a whole new challenge for our teens. Not only do their bags become the bottomless pits of their academic experience where school papers go to die, but they also become the cause of future chiropractic bills. Back packs have to serve many roles now including laptop storage, school supply organizer, water bottle holder, and keeper of ALL school books. The need to be strong, durable, large and in some cases having wheels is really in the best interest of our teen’s future back health.

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Other Must Have Organizational Tools For Teens

There are tons of other tools that can help teens with their executive function skills. Some of these may seem a little old school, but sometimes teens don’t need high tech, they needs something to keep it simple and easy. Post-it notes will forever be a great way to jot down a quick reminder or mark an important passage when studying and there pens that do the work of three different tools in one are space and time saving. Oh, and if you have a teen who doesn’t just forget assignments, but loses keys, book bags, etc there’s Tile, a tool for that too.

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