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Developing Kids’ Time Management Skills


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I need some age appropriate ideas on how to help my nearly 10 yr old develop her time management skills. 

I’m trying to scale back on overseeing her small daily goings-on. She’s not too successful in getting some things done. For example, clean clothes will move from bed to chair for several days (despite gentle prodding to fold & put them away). She has a couple small pending projects that have gone undone for 2 weeks & are due quite soon—she will likely rush through them, get stressed, & not produce her best work. She’s currently on summer vacation so is NOT overwhelmed with other activities.

I start off gentle & provide reminders, etc. but this rarely works.  I end up being mean & threatening consequences—not my best self & not the path I want to take. I want to encourage self-direction, etc. so don’t want to ‘hover’. What other tactics can I use and what else can I do to promote more responsible timeliness?

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I started paying for responsibility with my oldest about that age.  We first talked about what he needed to be successful.  We came up with a system of sticks and pockets, color coded for area/specialty and a pocket for each day of the week plus 1 for "done". That meant we made 7 identical sticks for "tidy room", 1 for "dust and vacuum" and so on.  Corresponding cards detailed exactly how to do this/what I was looking for.
Next we set a stricter routine.  Get up, do things.  After dinner do things.  Don't do fun until things are done.  I will quietly turn off the tv, unplug the modem, or steer a child back in the house.  All done without more than "when your things are done, you may go back to it."  And as he found out later, I will drive 3 hours to interrupt a tournament and take kid home because BIG thing was not done.
Then I tied allowance to responsibility.  We drew up a contract leaving certain things blank, like the time.  We filled in the spots together.  By the time we both signed, he knew that each day he was responsible for doing the chores by X time and moving the sticks to the "done" pocket.  At X time I would go, remove the sticks, check the activities, and either move them to a "done" jar in my room or put them back in the day's pocket and tell him "your chores are not done", quietly turning off the tv, steering him back inside, whatever.  I was also free to nag, cajole, yell..that was in the contract, too. 😄 The end of the week we tallied up how many were actually done on his own and what the payment was.  We also tallied up the chores he missed and how much he missed out on.  He still had to do the things, he just didn't get payment because he relied on me to reinforce the standards he had easy access to.

At about age 11, I started asking him at breakfast: "What do you plan to accomplish today?"  It's a simple question but it's one that puts the responsibility on him to think about his day and not letting it slip away from him.  He also got more time from me, sitting down together and working backwards on his planner: Write the due date.  What needs to happen to get there?  Every week we'd sit down together and work through anything that needed to be added. 

The youngest now, it's a whole new ball game.  He's more naturally organized but has basic charts and a stop sign outside his room to remind him if he forgets.  He uses the calendar on the ipod and sets reminders for himself on that and has me set important ones on his fitbit.  He's a little freak of nature. 😄  I would not have even known where to begin at his age.

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My kids are 10 years apart, and I used different approaches with them. With dd, I cleaned her room, did everything I could, made life good, gave her tech, and sort of randomly assumed she'd take over by osmosis. With ds (who admittedly has a much more severe presentation), I do ONE THING at a time. Like right now, I'm helping him see that the world has order and routine and that taking his vitamins (which he does 4X a day for mood stabilizing) is not random, is not mean, is predictable.

So if you were to ask me now, I'd say pick one thing and do it to a habit. Then tackle the next thing. 

Aren't we all like that in a way? I mean, she got the genes from someone. How does that person get themselves to do things they don't want to do? To me, pussyfooting around on it doesn't help. I've gotten a lot more blunt. This is what I need, this is your issue, this is why it's important, you're going to progress from mom prompts to self-prompts, if you're working on it you retain x privilege and if you aren't you lose that privilege. So the dc may collaborate on how to work on that goal, may have access to a menu of options (visual schedules, watch with alarms, whatever), but it's not a choice not to work on it.

As far as getting away with things not done, if you assigned it and didn't inspect for follow through, that's on you. She got to go play, go do this and that, etc. and it wasn't done? Some kids need a lot of follow through as we raise expectations. It's not a hands-off thing but actually MORE work, sorry.

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Does she have any sort of daily checklist?  I found that has worked quite well for DS12, my absent-minded professor who would otherwise lose his head if it wasn't tied on.

Certain items must be done before breakfast: Making bed, changing underwear (yes, that's still on the list), getting dressed, reading...

Other items must be done immediately after breakfast, but before he gets any free time: clearing dishes, putting away clean laundry, various independent school tasks...

And so on through the day. The checklist is on the fridge so I can see at a glance what he's completed and, well, whether he has earned the right to eat or play (mean mom).  But otherwise I don't have to be on top of him, reminding him constantly to complete specific tasks.   Now that he's entering sixth grade, I'm considering putting him in charge of weekly assignments for one subject, but it will have to be a single, easy-for-him subject, and I have to model breaking it down for him into daily bites.  His younger sisters could easily do this, btw; but he's a different beast.  

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Right now, one of the more successful approaches I've had with DD10 was giving an hour window (or more, depending on the number of tasks) to finish things that I know she can get done. So, an hour to clean her room, vaccuum, and take out the recycles.

Then we moved to 2 separate one hour windows, with 6 tasks, that she can divide as she wants. But, whatever tasks she starts has to be completed, so she can't have 4 halfdone tasks at the end of the day. Free time is impacted if the tasks aren't complete. 

We use Accountable Kids (which looks like they've stopped making?!?!) but basically it's just a special spot for me to put up her chores for the day, besides her regular school/activities/duties. She has the 2 hours through the day to finish everything; whatever doesn't get finished in that time eats into her evening free time. 

This has been successful so far; the past month we've started incorporating "home work" for her to do in a similar setup. 

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Weekly meetings to work together to plan the week's work and to assess the past week's work.  We used to meet with my 8-14 year old kids on Sunday night.  We would plan out what needed to be done, which days to work on them, and how much time we thought it would take - all this went on a weekly checklist.  Then when we reviewed the week we would see if we over/under estimated.  The checklist helped with independence and reduced my needing to remind (or remember).  I'd just say "have you finished your checklist?" or "where are you on your checklist?"

Not perfect system, but it helped a lot.  And that was for three kids with ADHD/executive function difficulties.

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On 8/11/2019 at 1:34 PM, PeterPan said:

Some kids need a lot of follow through as we raise expectations. It's not a hands-off thing but actually MORE work, sorry.

That would be what usually fails here. My first one taxed my follow-through-utility, and he's doing really well. My second one needed different a totally different follow-through-utility, and I don't have that one, lol! Constant vigilance is not in my nature, and that is literally what he requires. It's slowly getting better, and as his motivation kicks in, then I can help him more with less effort. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? Lol!

The way you're describing your daughter makes me think you make steady progress and that she's more of a "strike while the iron is hot" kind of girl--doing a task when it feels like she is in the right frame of mind to do it (and/or wants to do things in large chunks of time with some external pressure). But I am reading your note broadly--you weren't super specific. One problem with that way of being is that 1. there will be always some things that are inherently boring that she won't have the "right frame of mind" for, ever, 2. the time available might not always line up with the right frame of mind, and 3. her ability to fine tune this as a productive strategy isn't going to fully develop for a while. Regardless of preferences, there will definitely be things about how she prefers to operate that will be counter-intuitive to you--that's just how these things go.

I would try to elicit how she would ideally do things and see how realistic it is. If she can't articulate a preference, you might have to make some guesses and run them by her. Then go from there, but don't tell her what isn't realistic--maybe demonstrate it with data. I have a family member that is not really aware of time passing (okay, at least two of them), and this person doesn't seem to realize that if there are five literal days between now and when something needs to be done, but on four of those days, getting it done is not remotely possible (say, you're out of town), there are not five days left to get it done. Unfortunately, that is not evident to some people. When it's a kid, sometimes the whole concept of time or a schedule is sort of mushy in addition to that. So, with this family member, I whip out the calendar and point out that five literal days does not mean five days of time left to get stuff done. Some of that time is already committed--gone, decided, not available. 

One of my kids is really bad about all increments of time. When he was little, if he napped, he always thought it was a new day (it didn't help that he gave up daily naps very early, so naps were rare). He also struggled with the idea that fun things go by faster, and boring things seem to take longer. For him to really grasp time, he has to use a timer for lots of things and hone that sense of time passing. 

Some of it is personal preference for how to do things--I would rather do all of the same task at once vs. go room by room. So, if I'm going to pick up clutter, it will be all over--I might even pick a type of clutter and deal with it in every single room first before moving onto another kind of clutter. I don't tidy one room and move onto the next (and if you are thinking that nothing ever looks totally finished--that is definitely a negative of the method when time is in a crunch, but it's how my brain works). Kids have preferences too--they just don't always know what they are or how to make their preferences work for them. If you can approach it like, "Let's figure out how you like to work, how you work best, and try some stuff," (and are accepting of things you don't completely understand), then it might be easier.

 

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On 8/14/2019 at 9:39 PM, Targhee said:

Weekly meetings to work together to plan the week's work and to assess the past week's work.  We used to meet with my 8-14 year old kids on Sunday night.  We would plan out what needed to be done, which days to work on them, and how much time we thought it would take - all this went on a weekly checklist.  Then when we reviewed the week we would see if we over/under estimated.  The checklist helped with independence and reduced my needing to remind (or remember).  I'd just say "have you finished your checklist?" or "where are you on your checklist?"

Not perfect system, but it helped a lot.  And that was for three kids with ADHD/executive function difficulties.

I’m still mulling over my situation & how to best approach it. I like all ideas so far & can see incorporating bits of all of them. I have been ‘hovering’ more lately & asking questions (‘have the birds been fed/watered?’ & ‘have you brushed your teeth?’, etc.), which seems to be helping her get back on track daily. She decided to wait until 9 PM to fold clothes & was tired & therefore absolutely sobbing while doing it. I’m proud I stayed out of it. The next load got put away a whole lot quicker though. I’ll keep up this vigilance for a bit more & then see if scaling back will yield better results in the future.

I really like this idea of making short-term goals & steps to reach them (along with plotting out days) so I shall also try that tomorrow, when we’ve got a block of time to do so. This idea of her grabbing the reins on managing her time (while I facilitate the planning) is appealing to me. She’s also a visual kid so a tangible weekly calendar may prove quite useful.

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