Planning is a such a key element in once’s life. We teach our kids to plan everyday once they enter high school, because it helps them to set a guide line to work and gives them the motivation to complete the activities they have written down in their to do-list. It keeps them focused and centered.
When they are in middle school , you do talk about the benefits of planning and as parent we try to maintain their to do list and help them create their list. When they are in high school you want your child to do all of the work of creating and maintaining their list of activities on a daily basis. Don’t expect that once the created, they will do everything on their own, you still need to oversea it, they are still kids trying to learn something new. They need to understand how important time is , when not well planned time is lost and some time not retrievable.
That’s why in my previous post about ( How to keep your high schooler busy during summer vacation). I had mentioned that children should not be ideal during their summer break, when well planned you could see that they would get time to do a mixture of planned and unplanned activities as they like. While planning you should make sure you give them down time to do what ever they want like watch a movie or play with their friends etc. with a time limit specified.
Along with planning time management should also be introduced. I will talk about time management in my next blog. But time management is key in executing their plan’s.
Summer break is the best time were you could introduce life lesson’s to the high schooler’s like teach them how to do their laundry, cooking, money management. Give them a little bit of money and ask them to manage it for you. It teaches them value of money and how hard its to earn them.
