2,738 unread emails!

If your child’s email functions as a black hole, it’s important to teach them how to create and maintain order within their email inbox. This requires a lot of executive function skills! Done well, it will reduce stress by helping your child work more efficiently and will ensure they aren’t missing important information from their teachers. Following are six suggestions to help students organize and manage their email inbox.

1. If your child is using their school email address for school and personal correspondence, consider setting up a second email address to keep their school email separate and easier to manage. 
2. Make checking email a daily, if not a twice daily, habit. If they keep on top of their inbox, it will feel less overwhelming and will be far easier to maintain.
3. Prioritize reading emails from school and teachers first. Those are most likely the emails that will need to be acted upon sooner than later. 
4. To maintain organization, create folders and sub folders. At a minimum, coach your child to make a folder for each of their classes so they can file emails appropriately. This will reduce the time they spend frantically searching for a teacher’s email.
5. Identify a way to mark important emails so they stand out as a reminder to return to and act upon them. Ways to do this include starring an email, marking an email as unread, or filing emails in a To Do folder. 
6. Delete emails that are not relevant or that have been acted upon. If your child is not sure whether an email should be deleted,, urge them to file it in the appropriate folder for future reference.  Seeing fewer emails simplifies everything and makes the inbox easier to manage. 

Last important piece: There is not a right way or a wrong way to organize an email inbox. As always, the key is to help your child figure out their best and most intuitive way.