How can I help my child create a schedule and daily routine?

With the beginning of the new school year, parents are increasingly thinking about how to help their children effectively build a routine. A properly drawn up schedule is the key to successful study, competent rest, excellent health and effective distribution of all your energy resources. How to do it? There are seven ways!

Tip #1: Keep your balance

Moms and dads should remember that a student cannot devote the same time to study, family, circles, and entertainment. The secret of good health (including a stable psycho-emotional state) is the correct distribution of time for different areas of a child’s life.

Try to distinguish together how much time each day a son or daughter will devote to a particular area (for example, 2 hours for mugs, 3 hours for lessons, 1 hour for gadgets, 2 hours for walks and chatting with friends, etc.) .

It is important that any one area does not occupy the entire day of the student. Many parents make the mistake of forcing their children to devote all the time, for example, to studying. Such an approach promises only overstrain, nervous breakdowns and complete disgust for the educational process.

By the way, if you notice that the child has little time (even if he has planned and set goals), then his workload should be reviewed.

Tip #2: Prioritize things

It must be admitted that although study is the leading type of children’s activity, starting from the 1st grade, all children are different, and therefore their priorities are also different.

It is logical that the child-athlete prefers to devote more time to physical activity, and the creative child prefers the process of following his fantasy. And high school students, for example, are already more striving for self-knowledge: they attend courses, try themselves in different areas in order to decide where to go or what to do in the future.

You can help your child with scheduling by identifying priorities, goals, and objectives. What if the son wants to be on the school volleyball team? Then it makes sense to revise the schedule and build it on the basis of children’s interests, desires and preferences.

Tip #3: Schedule Rest Time

A schedule is a schedule, but one should not forget about regular rest — the key to excellent well-being. So that the child really does not forget to rest, hours of rest should also be included in the plan.

Ask when your child is most tired. Perhaps right after coming home from school or after he has done all his homework. Do not neglect rest: if your daughter has an item “to do homework” in her schedule, then it is advisable to “dilute” it with the item “rest 10 minutes” or “warm up in 5 minutes”.

By the way, if possible, you can even add a quiet hour during the daytime to the children’s mode — this is a very useful practice. As for night sleep, everything should be clear here: hanging up every day at the same time not only forms the child’s ability to follow the regime, but also becomes his useful habit.

Make sure your child has at least 10-11 hours of sleep per night (elementary school) and at least 8 hours in middle and high school.

Tip #4: Use green spaces

When helping your child make a schedule, do not forget about the pleasant little things that will simply charge him with a great mood and energy. Use the so-called «green zones» — these are special hours in the schedule when the child can do whatever he wants: walk, communicate on social networks, play games or just lie in bed with the cat.

Together with the child, agree on how many such zones per day he will have: two, three, four (or more) and how many minutes they will last. Let the student himself place the green zones in the schedule where he wants. By the way, we recently wrote about the value and necessity of children’s “idleness”.

Tip #5: Be flexible with your planning

The regime is always an assistant, not a supervisor. Do not scold your child for breaking the schedule.

The schedule is necessary not to drive the student into the framework, but to help him correctly distribute his energy resources during the day. Therefore, small changes that are associated with a change in circumstances will not make any difference.

In life, different force majeure can happen. Give your child leeway and practice putting non-urgent or not-so-important things on hold. Divide the remaining tasks into urgent important and urgent unimportant. So the child will be able to operate with tasks in his schedule: some to do right away, some to postpone until the evening, some to be postponed until the end of the week or month.

As part of a flexible approach, it is advisable to apply the following time management rules:

— All urgent, important things are recommended to be done in the first half of the day;

— The second half of the day should have a flexible schedule that can be changed if necessary (for example, instead of dinner, go to a cafe with friends, instead of a canceled section, go to relax or read a book);

— Green zones should always remain in the schedule. Effectively arrange them immediately after urgent and energy-intensive cases.

Tell your child about the Eisenhower matrix, let him learn to prioritize.

Tip #6: Put your schedule in a prominent place

It’s no secret: in order for a child to follow the schedule, it must always be in front of his eyes!

A creative person can independently draw a graph for himself on a sheet of paper or whatman paper (or maybe make it on a computer and then print it out). You can always download a ready-made plan in an interesting design — in the form of a colorful calendar or a poster with a funny print.

Even an interactive or chalk board will help you set up a schedule: it is not only interesting, but also very convenient. Some points can be immediately erased and new ones entered — this shows the flexibility of the student’s schedule.

Some children like to keep diaries and notebooks the old fashioned way. You can give your child a beautiful diary (an additional opportunity to feel like an adult!) And, of course, useful stationery: stickers, highlighters, multi-colored pens, bright bookmarks.

Tip #7: Plan your day

Do not build a rigid schedule for a month or a year. Help the student first make the best schedule for the day. So he will be able to live the day according to the schedule and determine what are the pros or cons of such a schedule, what is missing in it, what would be good to change, and what should definitely be left.

This is useful for the formation of children’s goal-setting skills: it will be easier to determine their priorities and solve tasks depending on the urgency of their implementation.