The first thing that you need to do is to take a look at all of the things that are going on in your life and identify what your priorities are.  This way, if something unforeseeable happens, you’ll be able to prioritize to keep on track.  For example, if putting food on the table for your family is your number one priority and an emergency comes up during the semester that makes it impossible for you to both work and attend school, you’ll know that you either need to work on getting loan money or you’ll need to reassess handling college at that time.  This doesn’t mean that you need to make decisions right now about how you’re going to handle every little issue that arises as you try to handle family and manage college, but rather that you need to identify a list of priorities so you can cope as changes come up.

Secondly, you need to look realistically at what you can manage on a daily basis for the duration of time it’ll take you to get through college.  If your spouse has a job that requires you to be the parent taking the kids to school and appointments, you may not realistically be able to manage a full time school schedule or you may need to look into online classes and distance learning as options for your education.  It doesn’t matter how you handle college, as long as your own needs are met while you’re meeting the needs of your family.  Talk through concerns with your spouse – and children that are old enough to handle some responsibilities around the house – and put a plan in place for managing the home while you’re in school.

That leads right into the final thing that you need to do in order to get a good grasp on managing family while you’re in college and that thing is figuring out what kind of help you’ll need to get it all taken care of.  You can’t do everything on your own and you shouldn’t expect yourself to.  Figure out what kind of assistance you need in terms of financial and emotional support.  Perhaps you’ll need your spouse to take over some responsibilities at home in terms of care of the children and domestic chores or maybe you’ll need to hire a nanny or maid to assist around the home.  Be realistic about what you need and what you can afford and figure out a way to make it happen.

And don’t forget to identify who in your life is going to be there for you on the days when it feels like you simply can’t manage college and a family at the same time.  Those days will happen.  A mentor, a great friend or even a counselor can be critical to helping you over those humps.  By setting up your support system before there are problems, you’ll be able to more easily manage the responsibilities that come with being in college while maintaining a family of your own.

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