4 Lessons to Prepare your Teen on Time Management

For most of your child's life, their schedule was likely in your control and arranged with their school days and after-school activities all planned out for them. It's because of this structure many teenagers may have not learned yet how to manage their time wisely on their own. If you are looking for some guidance to help prepare your Senior for their next steps, here are four tips you can use to help develop their time management skills:

1. Schedule Everything (Everyday):

Encourage your teen to schedule out their days — everything from homework and activities to even chores and free time. If they repeat this activity enough, it will become an engrained habit that will help them immensely when scheduling their time on their own.

2. Prioritize The Important Stuff:

Get them into the habit of scheduling their time around priorities, usually based on commitment and what is most important to them. For example, if they have a personal goal to run a 10K, they need to prioritize and schedule time each day to go for runs. This commitment could very well overlap with social time, but this is where prioritizing what is most important will guide where to put their time. Impress upon them that of course it would be easier to hang out with friends or have some free time, but those things won’t get them any closer to achieve their goals.


3. Set Expectations:

As a parent, it would be easy to give your Senior reminder after reminder to do their homework, apply for scholarships, get their chores done — the list goes on. But repeated reminders from you can actually reduce their responsibility. What is more effective is to set-up the rules and expectations you have of them, then follow through on consequences. This will teach them accountability and the importance of staying on task once they’re out on their own.

4. Practice What You Preach:

Model the behavior you want to see in your child. If you're always running late or you are missing deadlines, your teen will likely do the same. By practicing what you preach and using your own time wisely this behavior will naturally rub off on your Senior and speak louder than any words you could say on managing their time efficiently.
If you find these tips useful, head over to the Grad Club blog and check out even more information and helpful content to help you steer Senior year.