The idea of the Priority Patrol came to me when we lived in a house that had two stories. My girls would come home from school and go to the playroom which was upstairs and I would find myself yelling up to them such things as “Are you doing your homework?” and “Don’t turn on the TV or computer until your room is clean!”. I know that over time my words were probably sounding like the teacher in the Charlie Brown shows … WAWA, WAWA, WAWA, and I didn’t like feeling like I was nagging all the time. I wondered to myself, “How can I help them create the habit of knowing what to do first? How can I help them know instinctually what needs to be done, and in what order, without having to be the nag?” I knew this was a life skill that doesn’t come naturally or innately to anyone, yet it is also a life skill that they would need in order to be successful in school, college, career and beyond. Then it hit me … they needed a visual reminder, kind of like the old string around the finger trick of days gone by, and that’s when Priority Patrol was born.

In addition to helping folks prioritize, Priority Patrol does have a safety feature. Simply, the less time one spends ON the internet, the less opportunity he/she has to find trouble on the internet. My kids spend about a half an hour a day on the net. They do their homework, check their messages, look up some info they need and that’s about it. I take great comfort in knowing that they are not on the internet long enough to really find trouble. Basically, my child who spends thirty minutes on the internet a day, is eight times less likely to get into trouble on the net than another child who spends four hours on line per day. So the bottom line is … less opportunity for cyber trouble AND learning to prioritize at the same time. It’s a “win-win” all the way around!!

Wow! When I developed Priority Patrol it was in an effort to train my children how to prioritize their time. Now, just a couple of years later I am grateful for Priority Patrol because I believe it has kept them healthy and out of harms way on the internet. While I wanted to eliminate the nagging I had to do to get my kids to do what needed to be done, it turns out that I have also kept them away from viewing such things as violence and pornography, and perhaps even losing money to on line poker. These are all the issue parents may have to deal with due to the amount of screen time their kids get.