A couple of years ago, I was riding in my pickup truck with my two youngest children. They were probably 10 and 12 at the time. They weren’t in the best of moods, which then caused my mood to deteriorate.

As I recall, they were arguing about who got to sit in the front seat of the pickup truck. I will spare you the details of how this “conversation” progressed. At some point it dawned on me that my children were not going to be able to resolve this matter without some parental intervention. It was at this moment I forcefully entered the conflict.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like God gave you just what you needed at just the right time, but I’m convinced that this is what happened for me at this moment. You see, as I was talking to them and explaining how I had had enough of the arguing over this issue, a perfect solution came to me. Here is how I resolved the conflict.

My two youngest children’s names begin with an even letter of the alphabet–J is the 10th letter–and an odd letter–G is the 7th. Well, every day of the month is either odd or even. So, in that moment I made a declaration: Jeremy could have the front seat on even days of the month and Grace could have it on the odd days.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “Yeah, but some months have 31 days, and then comes the 1st of the next month. That means Grace gets the front seat two days in a row.” Exactly. I don’t care if she does. It’s minor in the scheme of things. Besides, there are many times when we don’t go anywhere so it’s not that big of a deal.

Plus, I told them when all this happened that I never wanted to hear about how Grace would get the front seat two days in a row if we went somewhere on the 31st of the month and then went somewhere else the next day, too.

I also instructed my children that this rule also applied if they rode with their grandmother in her car or any other occasion where the two of them might ride with someone else by themselves.

I’m happy to say that this has totally solved the problem. Now they always know how to work it out. I just wish I had thought of this sooner!

Well, I’m happy to report that this system has also worked for other situations. I’ve used the odd/even system for the child that gets to clean up the kitchen, who helps with the cooking, and several other specialty jobs I need done or require help with.

If you happen to have a situation where more than one child has an odd or even letter of the alphabet as the first letter of their name, there are some other ways you could organize their activities:

1. Use the date of their birthday. You could use their dates of birth as a way of prioritizing. If the dates are the 15th, 22nd, 3rd, and 10th, then simply put these dates in ascending or descending order and assign the tasks accordingly.
2. Use their birth year. If their year of birth ends in an odd number, then that child gets first choice. If it’s even, the same applies.
3. Oldest to youngest. If you only have two children, have the oldest one get the odd days and the youngest one, the even.
4. Days of the week. Try using the day of the week they were born. The only “trick” here is for you to decide if Sunday or Monday is considered the first day of the week.
5. Time of birth. Even if you have twins or triplets, you can use the time of when they were born to work this system!

Once you get your mind wrapped around this concept, there are many other ways to get creative in this area of child rearing. You can use a system like this in so many ways to help bring order to some areas of daily life, and that’s a very good thing.