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Today, people around the world are sitting still at their homes due to the coronavirus outbreak. Adults, teens, and kids had to stay inside and maintain social distancing to keep themselves immune from the pandemic. It is a very difficult time for all of us, especially for kids and teens. Adults may engage themselves in various activities and spend their time. But for kids, it is so boring to spend their whole time caged in their rooms or basement. You need to understand that they are separated from their friends, schools, teachers, and all the people they used to mingle around daily. Due to this long time isolation, they might experience different issues regarding their mental and physical health.
So, it is the sole responsibility of parents to support their kids during this crisis. Parents need to make them understand what kind of situation is over us and how we can face it with courage. Parents should make them understand the importance of good health. Parents are the ones who can make kids understand the necessity of having good habits. Last but not the least, it is parents who may empower their kids with the gift of time management.
It is important for the kids to learn how to manage their time so that they may help their parents and also themselves. They should learn the techniques to optimize their time and utilize every single minute in the day.
If you are one of those parents who desperately wanted to teach such ways to your kids, then you should follow the below-given tips and help your kids to manage their time successfully.
Handcrafted tips to manage your kids’ time
1. Teach time management with fun
You must teach your kids to manage time in a fun-filled way. You may ask them to create their calendar with colorful crayons, and make them vibrant. You may ask them to use stickers to mark special days.
You may tell your kids to complete easy tasks in the house that usually take a bit of time, and ask them to note how much time they spend on it. These tasks may include brushing their teeth, cleaning their shoes, arranging their books and clothes, or washing their plates after a meal. The funnier you do the time management task, the more engagement you’ll get from your kids. The more they will engage themselves in this, the easier it will become for them to understand. Gradually they’ll be the master of time management and can perform tasks way faster than before.
2. Set specific times for special activities
You may set a regular meal time for the entire family. Yes, you should include every meal starting from the 7 a.m. breakfast to 8 p.m. dinner. This way you can make your kids more sensitive about time, and can also spend quality time as a family.
There are some more options to spend quality time with your family:
- Helping each other to prepare meals
- Play a board game
- Work on a project at home.
- Have a picnic indoors (since there’s a lockdown and you can’t go outside)
- Watch favorite movies together
You may also set up a schedule for your kids’ sleep timing. There’s a saying that “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Kids ages 5–12 require 10–11 hours of solid sleep per day to become healthy. So, you should set a specific bedtime and stick to it. Maintaining a certain time frame for sleep is another good example of time management.
You may need to set rules for electronic gadgets and TVs. Kids learn from following parents’ activities most of the time. So, you must establish the rule for “what, when, and how much” you should watch using gadgets or TV.
If you turn your smartphone screen or TV screen off at a specific time, kids will notice that no one is above the rules, not even parents.
You must also remember that time management means doing a task in the right manner, within the stipulated time, and saving time as much as possible. That doesn’t mean overscheduling your kids. Teach them about time management the right way, but do not just ask them to perform beyond their limits.
Give them time to breathe. Overscheduling may ruin the total concept of time management. Instead of adopting the habit, they may ignore, or even hate it. Try to avoid such situations and motivate them to handle time like a pro.
3. Create a study zone to increase focus
To optimize the study time, you must create a proper study zone for your kids. This way you can help your kids to put more focus on one task at a time.
You need to create a study environment that may increase the focus for your kids to complete their studies with ease. Different kids may respond to different study environments. Some kids may prefer soft music in the background, some may prefer total silence, or some may study better in groups. You need to provide such an environment and motivate them to study hard.
If your kids can’t concentrate on homework within a sufficient amount of time, re-adjust the entire setup and try again. Make your kids as comfortable as possible.
4. Setting up major tasks for teens
Of course, in a parent and teenager relationship you have multiple options to consider while teaching them time management skills. It is preferable that the earlier you start, the better you may teach them every move within a very few days.
Unlike your preschoolers, teenagers may learn through big tasks completed in a short period, such as washing clothes, making them dry, and putting the clothes in the closets. Apart from that, cleaning their room, mowing the lawn, cleaning the car, painting walls, and many more media to big tasks can be performed by your teenage kids. You just need to ask them to complete their work properly and within the appropriate time.
You may also put some major duties on your teenage kids’ shoulders. You may ask them to keep track of major payment dates for household purposes. Power bills, gas, internet/phone bill dates can be easily forgotten. You may ask your kids to make a checklist and remind you about them 5 days before the due date. This way you may make them responsible for on-time monthly payments for all the major expenses.
5. Coach self-discipline
Self-discipline is one of the most important skills that may improve your kids’ abilities to manage time on multiple tasks. You may motivate kids to improve self-discipline and give them few responsibilities of handling assignments or a project on their own.
One of the biggest reasons kids may fail to understand the idea of “time management” is because they initially don’t have the time anchor with them. Kids usually forget how long a specific time should last for completing a task. For example – if you ask them to clean the room within 15 minutes, they might get lost easily as they may take longer to clean a specific part of the room.
So, making them familiar with the time limits with the help of physical timers may do the trick.
You may keep saying to them – “you have 15…10…or 5 minutes more to finish the cleaning” and set a timer in front of them. Do this for 1 or 2 weeks, you’ll see the positive results.
You may guide them to focus on the work rather than concentrating on other distractions. Tell them the benefits of self-discipline so that they can improve themselves and avoid the consequences of mismanaging their time.
Help your kids pick a role model and follow in his/her footsteps. For example, you may tell your kids about the hard work and success of the famous Robert Downey, Jr.
6. Gamifying time management
You may increase the engagement of your kids by gamification. Introduce your kids to rewards, points, gifts, and other lucrative incentives associated with time management tasks. This will make the tasks more attractive and encouraging. It may also bring out your kid’s hidden skills and competitive spirit.
For example – give kids points daily for each successful activity completed. Once they reach the weekend, calculate points and with every 100 points you may give them a dollar.
End note
The earlier you can start teaching the importance of time, the better it is for your kids. You’ll see the results of time management soon, and be sure that it will be extraordinary.
