How exciting! We just notified the winner of our first Facebook fan contest that they will be receiving an autographed copy of Thinking Organized for Parents and Children. I hope that it will be as helpful to them as it has been for many of my other clients.

After we kicked-off the Facebook contest, I realized that I’ve never really told the story behind the “story.”

When I began working as a speech and language pathologist and organizational specialist, traveling throughout the Washington DC and New York metro areas and starting my own business, Thinking Organized, never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be able to add “author” to my list of accomplishments. When would I have time to sit down and write a book?

Seeing the needs of children, young adults and even adults in the business world, observing their difficulties and watching their struggles made me realize that if there was a way for them to understand the basis of executive functioning, a concept that has been the air I breathe for years, then maybe I could help them see that they didn’t need to struggle so much. There were so many people who I have been able to help by introducing them to the natural process of effective executive functioning; I wanted to share the story of how success can happen for everybody. If these people had a simple way to get the information they need, it could truly change the way they lived their lives – so I decided I needed to write it down.

At first it was a bit difficult to figure out how to make the book user-friendly for all kinds of parents. But as I moved along, I saw that my thoughts weren’t as hard to get out as I had anticipated. I drafted the book so that my readers didn’t have to read from cover to cover. The chapters are designed to act as a guide so you can skip from one to another in search of the information that you really need. A year or so later, I had successfully finished Thinking Organized For Parents and Children, my unimagined masterpiece.

I gathered my years of experience, my philosophies, and my practices and put them into words – chronicling the journeys of my real life students and letting parents know never to give up hope. This type of success takes time, especially as children get older and segue into their teen years, where they don’t even want to chat about their day at the dinner table, let alone talk about problems they’re having in the classroom.

Knowing that my book has actually made a difference in the lives of so many people, who were once struggling to get ahead, is more of an accomplishment than I could ever have imagined. In the end, students who learn these strategies cannot only manage their academic work independently, but also their everyday lives.