School is back! And many parents want to pull their hair out when thinking about homework and studying time. Yikes! This is a common problem many parents face. So let’s take a look at common root issues and tips on how to help our children improve their school performance.
Common root cause issues are: lack of studying skills and disorganization. It can be hard to teach our children how to be organized, but we have all seen students who even graduate high school without gaining the proper knowledge and skills needed for the independent world of college. This can be true for students leaving elementary school going into middle school, where now they have multiple teachers, or just any student who may struggle with homework and studying at home. It is easiest to introduce these skills as early as possible, however, these skills are not limited to being introduced to only small children. Older children and adolescents (even adults!) can benefit from these small changes in organization in their daily lives.
First, let’s talk about organization. Your child must see that you, the parent, is organized. Children tend to learn best by modeling their behaviors. This means it is important to tap into your organizational skills. It may be helpful to start by getting a family calendar at first and adding different tasks and tools to help your child cultivate this skill.
Tips for Helping Your Child Learn Organization and Study Skills: Making a family calendar:
You may have to focus on not only modeling, but adding their appointments, due dates, and chores on there. This helps your child get more involved with organizing. If you have smaller children, you may want to give them smaller, easier chores that involve organizing, such as taking out dishwashing, putting away folded laundry, etc. It is important to repeat the structure consistently at the beginning of introducing these new skills. This may require more frequent check-ins and more individualized attention from you, the parent.
Creating To-Do Lists, Introducing Planners:
Branching off from the calendar above, this is where they can start to use the skills they have learned with you. Continue to focus on completing check-ins, but this is where you can start to see if your child can get used to using their own planner. As the child becomes more accustomed to the schedule and routine, they will be able to use these to better organize their schoolwork and chores.
Breaking Tasks, Chores, and Activities into Chunks:
Learning how to chunk bigger tasks, like a project, may need more parental attention, however, as you continue to build this skill you can reduce your involvement. For children, school is their job and there are times when we are given a hefty amount of work or a difficult project. It is easy for a child to become overwhelmed. It is easier to break down, for example, a project, into small parts. Step one: pick a topic, step two: spend at least 1 hour researching the topic, step three: begin taking notes, etc. You get the idea! Chunking is a lot easier on our minds and helps us, not just children, to feel less overwhelmed by a difficult task.
Now, while we are fostering this skill, it is important to also help your child learn study skills. As was stated above, many students leave school flustered when they get to college and realize “I’ve never learned how to study.” It’s much more common than you think. There are a couple of things that help children learn how to study better using the organization skills above.
Establish routine/study time:
Pick a reasonable time that works for you and the child for study or homework time. Establishing this routine first can be most effective in developing these skills. Use this time to coach them and model behaviors as stated above. Eventually, you may see that your child automatically starts to complete their homework or get into study time.
Create an optimal study space:
A child needs to have a decluttered, distraction-free environment to be able to study effectively. Make sure this desk or table has all the tools they will need to finish their homework and projects. Pens/pencils, paper, scissors, calculators, scratch paper. You can even include their calendars here! It is not recommended that this space be in their bedroom as all of their belongings can cause distraction.
Teach specific skills for studying:
This is a more difficult task. This requires more time and coaching from the parent. It may be helpful to find a tutor or therapist to help a child learn these skills a little more clearly. Children can learn with adults ways of studying that may be helpful to them. Some schools and teachers allow recording devices or laptops in the classroom. For some people, it is easiest to take notes this way or perhaps you have to take notes the old-fashioned way, pen and paper. It is important to learn ways that help you. You may need to add color to your notes to make them more interesting. Learn to organize sections and topics using small, but understandable, incomplete sentences. There are countless ways to take notes and study.
Give lots of compliments and rewards
Lastly, the most important thing to focus on when helping your child become more organized is giving them rewards and compliments. This may come easy to you, but they are just learning this new skill. Give them plenty of help and compliments for all that they can do correctly. Children sometimes need a buy-in to learn new skills. Think of it like a video game, as they level up in games and put more time in, they have more access to better tools and are gifted objects that help them on their journey. Learning this skill is exactly like that. For more resources like this, please check out our other tips: https://www.plantationcounseling.com/blog. You can always find us at 954-903-1676 for counseling services.
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