Success in School, Success in Life, Part 2- Time Management
The first part of this article talked about talking with your child and her teachers to identify how your child feels about school, what their goals are and ways that you can get involved to help them reach those goals. One of the key skills that students, from Pre-School to High School can learn now in order to be successful throughout their lives is time management. Time management is something that can’t be taught in a class, it can’t be memorized, it involves processes that must be learned over time.
Learning to organize time, to plan a schedule, to make sure that we are able to do everything we want to do is a great skill to have! Most of us will procrastinate from time to time, most of us will stay up too late to watch a movie now and again but being able to make a plan and stick to it makes a big difference in the level of personal success that a person feels throughout their lives. So, how can you help your child learn to make and follow a schedule?
1.The first step is to talk to your child and discuss why it is important to be on time. You can use personal examples, for example “How do you feel when some of your friends are late?” You may talk about why people are late. You can discuss with them ways of organizing themselves to prevent them from being late.
2.One way to help your Elementary or Middle school student is by recording how much time they spend on their homework every night for a week. Once you both have a good idea of how much time is spent on assignments you will be able to help her to divide their week into reasonable time slots, make sure to advantage of study halls, mornings (many students work better first thing in the morning, when their minds are well-rested) or sometimes even weekends.
3.Be sure that projects are planned for in advance, not started at the last minute. Working with your child to plan their schedule for a few months will get them off to a good start to being able to do it themselves.
4.Another part of time management is being ready for the next day. The night before, talk about what your student will need the next day, sneakers, hat, sunblock, gym clothes, etc. then help your child prepare her backpack the night before, this helps to eliminate (or at least reduce) the morning panic, and inevitable forgotten stuff.
5.Arrange a morning schedule the same way you did for the homework, keep track of how long each step takes when your student is getting ready in the morning. Then, plan out how much time is needed, help your child to use the clock (a traditional clock is best) to keep themselves on schedule.
6.Last, but not least, there’s the television, this can be major cause of time wasted for children and adults alike. One way to help your child and yourself (if you’re not willing or able to eliminate television all together) is to sit down once a week and plan what each member of the family will watch. Make a schedule, and stick to it. If you only watch the things you plan to watch, and remind each other when it’s time to turn off the TV you can all recover many hours each week.
While these things may take a little time to put in place, once they become habit it will make day to day life at home run smoother and give your child some of the tools they need later in life.
The next article in the series will be about teaching basic organizational skills to young children.
