It’s always fun to think back and remember what it was like to be in high school and middle school. It was filled with good times, bad times, fun times, and boring times. Like many adults, it took a long time after high school to build strong time management and self-accountability skills. For many adolescents, it seems like the only reason they get anything done is that parents make them do it. What kind of relationship does this create, though? It creates a lot of tension, a lack of understanding, and an inability for teens and young adults to hold themselves accountable. Moving forward, it’s time to ditch the ways of creating the habit of nagging your kids into following through on their responsibilities. Instead, it’s time to focus on some positive ways to help them develop amazing habits and routines that will make your life easier, your relationships better, help them keep up good grades and better prepare them for adulthood!
Ways to Help Your Kids Develop Strong Habits & Routines
1. Study Habits
One of the most important things in your teen’s life right now (even if they might not think so) is their schooling. Ensuring that they get through school is going to help them have a better future beyond high school. One of the best ways to succeed academically is to study. Studying, however, isn’t necessarily innate or natural to us. It’s important to learn, practice, and build good study habits and routines. An Understood article discussing study habits recommends two ways to help your teen build better study habits.
“Over ‘C’ Tests and Assignments”
This method involves working with your kids to create a study plan in accordance to homework, tests, and projects. This planning ultimately leads to building a better and easier routine for them (and you) to follow!
- “Create a calendar”: Help your teen(s) utilize a paper or electronic monthly calendar in order to jot down important assignments or activities so they can keep track of what they have coming up. Using a color-coding system for different classes is an additional level of organization!
- “Create a weekly planner”: Referring to their monthly calendar, students can now use this information to create a weekly plan in order to get homework assignments done ahead of time and study for important tests in advance.
- “Create a daily checklist”: Creating a daily checklist can help your teens succeed even more. Seeing everything that needs to be done that day in a way that can be checked off can make the day feel easier to tackle!
“CHECK Into Studying”
This next step is going to help your kids move from learning how to plan to study to learn how to study.
- Consider location – where do they study best?
- Have all necessary materials available.
- Establish a reward system – rewards can be a great way to jumpstart this new habit, but can eventually be something they plan out on their own!
- Create a study checklist.
- Keep a worry journal – taking a second to jot down a thought or idea to look at after studying can help kids stay focused on the task at hand.
On top of building good study habits, teach your kids that it’s okay to ask for help. Sometimes you study your heart out, but still have a hard time understanding the content. Seeking help from a tutor or other educational professional is one more helpful step towards achieving academic goals!
2. Daily Routines
Creating a daily routine is nothing to be afraid of! Once you’ve established a routine, it’s going to become second nature. Plus, on top of making your day easier, your kids will know exactly your expectations, when study time is and when they have some free time! Outward Bound shares a few helpful tips for creating a strong daily routine for teenagers:
- Create a routine that’s impervious to school and work changes.
- Write your routine down somewhere everyone can see it.
- Denote when free time is and when free time is not.
- Schedule meals, free time, study time, and bedtime and do it together.
- Keep your goals in mind and stick with it!
Courtney Harris Coaching reminds readers to take the time to ask their kids about their needs, starting small and allowing them to be a part of the routine creating process. These are just a few important things to keep in mind when beginning to incorporate a daily routine into your family’s lives.
3. Time Management
Very Well Family highlights many of the benefits that come with good time management skills: increased decision-making skills, increased performance at school, and more independence, just to name a few. One reason that many teenagers (and adults) have poor time-management skills is because of how structured teenagers’ lives already are. School, sports, work schedules, family schedules, etc. are mostly decided for them and they rarely get the opportunity to practice the skill for themselves.
Some great ways to teach your teenager time management include:
- Help them write out their schedule so they can schedule in some free time.
- Set rules, boundaries and consequences for things like chores and responsibilities in order to avoid nagging.
- Work with them to develop strong study habits and daily routines.
- Supply them with good time management tools like planners and planning apps.
- Adopt good time management habits in order to set an example.
Conclusion
Working with your teenager in order to build strong study habits, daily routines, and time management skills is going to help them succeed in school and in life beyond high school. Creating a strong plan in order to strengthen each of these is the first step in raising more well-rounded children!
Contact us to discuss your children’s educational needs and goals today!