Does Your Child Stay Up Too Late to Do Their Homework?

I can’t tell you how often that happened to me over the years. “But, Mom, I’m not done yet!”  And it became worse when a major project is due. You know what it’s like…after my kids stayed up too late finishing the homework, it was near to impossible to ‘drag’ them out of bed in the morning to get ready for school. And, once they got to school they were so tired it was hard for them to concentrate. Talk about a no win situation!

 

The problem is that most kids are not good with time management, and if they are in sports, scouts, 4-H, or other after school activities, homework time is even more challenging. As parents we need to remember that our kids are not pros at managing their time. And, sometimes we don’t manage our own time well, so how can we expect them to manage their time without any help? When we take into account this time management factor it is easier to help our children learn to chunk projects and schedule in time to do them. In fact, learning time/project management is one of the byproducts of homework.

 

One of the best things our family found to help with having my kids get their homework done in a timely fashion so they would get a good night’s sleep was to use a daily and weekly planning calendar with after school and evening hours on it. Then, each week we would write out the extra activities on the calendar and then fit in ‘homework time’ around the activities.

 

Once they saw the way the week was scheduled it was easier to get them to commit to actually working during ‘homework time’. This also gave them a sense of control and the knowledge that if they did their homework during the slated times they would actually have a bit of free time each day. Life became a lot easier. A comprehensive easy to use planner for elementary and middle students is in Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills. 

 

Hope this is helpful.

 

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

 

For FREE homework and teaching tips go to: www.bonnieterry.com/blog