JENNIFER ALLEN: Teaching kids time management

Jennifer Allen and her daughter.

Jennifer Allen is a Mesa mom of four kids between the ages of 2 and 8 and the founder of MyTime Calendars as well as the Phoenix Family and Parenting Examiner. She’s also a violist in the Tempe Symphony Orchestra, a freelance graphic designer with her own company, PoleStar Graphics, and an actively engaged school mom.

What was your inspiration for MyTime Calendars?

I have very small kids with busy schedules and our routines are just crazy, especially during the school year, with all their extracurricular activities. They were getting anxiety ridden with their unpredictable schedules and never knowing what was coming which day. We couldn’t use a traditional calendar because they didn’t know how to read, so I created these calendars that are graphics-based, using images to represent their activities. That way they could start to anticipate what their schedule was. They love marking off their days and keeping track of their lives. Especially my daughter — she knew which days she had dance and what she needed to be ready and she would come down and remind me, “Mom, I have dance at 7, did you remember?” They loved them, so I had a lot of moms and teachers after me to work it into a format that they could use themselves.

It’s so stressful at those toddler ages when they’re asking you every five minutes “When are we going to grandma’s?” Well, two days but they don’t know how long two days is but you can show them how many squares until then. It gives them some measurement.

The magnets and sticker board idea has been around for awhile but you are really limited by the graphics they give you and you can’t get more than a couple on any one day. This way it’s totally customizable. Not just that the babysitter is coming but exactly who. Which grandparents are we going to be spending time with. You upload your own images, so you can have a picture of your dog there or have your kids draw images to upload . It’s completely customizable and you can use up to six images in a day. That’s what really sets us apart.

The same system integrates into the chore chart as well. You can upload a picture of your dog and put it on the on the chore chart. It’s very user friendly. I’m hoping to morph the technology a bit in the next phase to make it more intuitive for kids but I encourage parents to be online with their kids anyway. I like to make the calendar with the kids and walk them through their month before we put it up on their wall so they know what’s coming. We have a “save” feature so you can go back and edit it and print out a new calendar. The save and upload features are really what make us stand apart from anything that’s out there right now.

I have the site set up so that the basic functions are available to anybody but the save and upload features require a membership. That makes it easier for me to monitor what’s being uploaded and keep it kid-friendly.

What do your kids think of your system?

They love it! Like I said, they’ve been using the calendars for years and they really like it. I’ve set up incentive systems for the chore charts so when they check off days on the chore chart they get rewarded. I don’t have to get after them. They take ownership in their schedule and their day.

How much time do you spend on the site?

Right now? A ton. I do a lot of work at night. Some of the social media advertising I do I will do from my iPhone. I’ll launch little blurbs when I’m on the run. I don’t have to be at the computer. I can blog from [the] phone if I’m at a practice or a performance. I can do that in the downtime in between.

What is the next step for your business?

The site was really developed to be a place where parents and teachers can communicate with each other. We have forums and as the school year progresses I’m really hoping that can be a place where that can happen. I’ve talked to teachers here in Mesa and I was interested to see that they were excited about the calendar for use in lesson plans for things like monitoring the life cycle of a butterfly or phases of the moon.

The chore charts might be fun to use in class to show “this day is music,” “this day is art” or “the first thing today is art, second, units, third, science.” Really this site was geared toward the 3- to 8-year-old age group so it’s really a training session to get these calendaring skills now so that when they start school they have those skills in place when they get into increased homework and demands. I have some meetings set up with some Mesa principals so we’ll see how that goes.

What advice would you give to an aspiring mompreneur?

I’ve really had my eyes opened to the social media market. I had no idea there were so many opportunities to advertise and publicize and I didn’t anticipate how much time that would actually take but I’m surprised how many groups there are out there. A lot of groups that are specific to your audience and you can share there.

I’ve gotten involved in a link-share network for advertising and that’s been really helpful. I stumbled into a lot of this and my sister who is very involved in marketing pointed me in a lot of the good directions there.

I would say, learn about how [Internet] searching works and what you need to do to come up in searches. Get involved with moms in your market. I’m really finding that people are not as interested in global marketing but you can really address individual concerns on those online venues.