Time management for kids can be just as challenging as it is for adults, particularly because children haven't had much experience with planning and prioritizing. But kids often have many demands on their time, including school, homework, activities, chores, friends, family and other obligations or responsibilities that may arise. Parents can help their children develop time management skills, which are tools that will help them throughout their lives.
Understanding Your Time Demands
A PBS Kids article on time management makes an excellent suggestion for helping kids make decisions about how to spend their time and juggle all their demands. Kids should make two lists--the things they "want" to do and the things they "have" to do. The items on these lists should then be put into lists of short-term goals and long-term goals to help kids understand the variety of demands on their time and how writing down goals can help them focus on how they should spend their time.
Budgeting Time
Another important skill in time management is developing a realistic idea of just how much time certain tasks will take to complete and how much time is available in a given day or week. The PBS Kids article suggests kids note that sleep takes eight hours, for example, and school takes seven hours. So keeping in the mind the 15 hours left in a given 24-hour day, help kids write out how much time the "have-to" tasks will take. This should help them see how much time is left for the "want-to" tasks. Determining how many hours they have for other activities can help sharpen their focus to make the most of that remaining time.
Managing Big Tasks
The old saying, "Yard by yard, life is hard; inch by inch, life's a cinch," applies to helping kids manage big projects. Instead of looking at a research project as one big, intimidating job, kids should break it down into smaller, more manageable components, recommends the Educational Resource Information Center. This applies to school projects, household chores and any task that has many parts and could take a lot of time to complete.
Setting Your Schedule
Certainly school hours and to a great extent sleep hours are on a schedule your kids can't change. But after school and weekends afford children time to learn about getting things done on a schedule that suits them. If they know, for example, that they have chores and homework that should take about four hours to do on the weekend, encourage them to work out for themselves when they will do the work. As they learn to meet their responsibilities on their own timetable, given the deadlines set by school, family and any other involved parties, kids will feel empowered and will learn a vital lesson about balancing obligations with free time.
