How can we set our teens up for success in life? By teaching them how to set goals, be organised and manage their time better.

These skills will help teens improve their self-confidence and motivation while in school but it will also give them some great skills for college, work and life in general.

Mindset, motivation, knowing the future direction they want to take and executive functions are key to this. Executive functions include study skills, organisation skills and time management.

We know that increasing confidence and motivation in teens will lead to better grades in school. Telling them, watching their every move, checking everything they do, getting upset, preventing any mistakes they make, won’t help them. It certainly doesn’t work in motivating and building their confidence either.

But how can we help our teens manage to study better, set goals and organise themselves if we’re not clear on the basics ourselves?

Start with what is already there,  no matter how small. What matters to them? Gets them curious and ask them, don’t tell them. Always keep it positive especially on what they’re getting right no matter what it is or where it is. Compliment, don’t critique their work, games or fun stuff.

So What Else Can We Do As Parents?

Help your teen set effective goals.

1. Make sure they are positive goals. Talk in a positive way to them, remember if they hear you talk in a negative way about yourself they will copy you.
2. Make sure the chances of success are high. So don’t make the goal too big, small steps to success is key here. Let them know it can be hard but you can achieve this.
3. Celebrate all the success, every single one no matter how small. The world is tough enough to knock off the corners. Home should feel safe and secure for them.
4. Ask what matters most to them. They need sleep, to stress less, free time, time with friends, but they also want to make teachers and parents proud and get into college/job. Put aside your assumptions of what they want to achieve and how they want to spend their time.
5. Helping teens get organised – see below – focused and on track will help motivation. Motivation may get them going but habits will keep them going. Remember self-discipline is a better predictor of success than IQ.
6. Find out if their habits are in line with their dreams for the future?
7. Remember good habits equal organisation (below), time management (below), study strategies and these are learnt skills.
8. Show them how to make small smart and consistent choices and in time this equals a  radical difference in their school work and in life.
9. Remember to remind them when they falter to say ” I’m not good at this yet! ” Yet is a powerful word for mindset and motivation. Remind them progress isn’t instant, ups and downs are normal in everything we do.
10. Most kids are doing the best they can with the skills they have, they aren’t doing it wrong!

Help With Goals, Study Skills And Time Management.

Making goals, having good study skills and time management skills, in general, requires a planner/agenda or homework notebook.

If they are using an online version make sure you can access this and they can access it on all their devices. Plus make sure you have these bookmarked on your device.

You can use a wall planner too and lots of post-it notes, colour coded per subject. Please don’t make out a study timetable for your teen they should do this themselves with your help.

Breaking Down Study Goals.

How to help with study goals.

1.  Pick an overall goal for each subject, usually, this will be exam preparation.
2. Next, break this goal down into different smaller steps, set out over the next few months if your goal is summer exams. Break these down further into bit size daily chunks of study that should take no more than 20 minutes at a time. These can be centred around a particular topic within the subject or an example exam question.
3. You will need the help of a good filing or organisation system (see below) to help keep revision notes and homework together.
4. Decide on what topic you will cover each week per subject. So this could be what has just been completed in the school that week or a piece of revision for a particular exam question etc. You can get past exam questions in Ireland from the examinations section of Department of Education in Ireland – online for free.
5. Break down the study time into 20 minute (maximum) study periods. No longer as your brain won’t take in any more information.
6. Then they need to build in 5/10 minute breaks before starting a new topic or subject. Don’t start watching TV or gaming during this time it’s better to get up and move about too. Positive breaks are needed such as they need to move, refuel, create, connect, organise or relax.
7. Having an accountability buddy is great too and no that’s not you as a parent. But having one as a parent particularly if both your teens are studying for major exams can be a great support.
8. Have a contract about phone use – in general – but include usage during study and homework periods. Remember kids need to have music and contact with their friends so be lenient too. Make sure the teen is involved in making this contract. They can be better than us at coming up with punishments.
9. You need to consider focus triggers such as location, sounds/noise levels, movement, sights, people, urgency and scents. All of these can draw their attention away from the task. So if possible have a designated study area to help reduce these as much as possible.

If you’d like some more time management techniques please check out this blog post

Notes On Homework And Study.

If homework is not accessible online, make sure they have a friend they can check their homework with if they forget it. With a younger teen plan this out together. But again not for them, it will give them more confidence, in fact, you could play dumb and ask them how they would do it.

If homework is consistently missing, set up a homework system similar to below – a filing system for revision and homework. Investigate why homework is missing, often times children with disabilities will lose or forget homework so organisation is key here.

Check homework is done but don’t correct it, that’s the teacher’s job. Create a shared family google calendar, to help them when bigger assignments are due. So you can help them plan the project into smaller steps to complete it. But again don’t do the work or planning for them, help them.

Help them write out what they need to do each day and see if it’s reasonable. By this I mean write down everything they have to do in a day/week and review it together.

We can so easily forget everything we do, but all the little things add up to a lot of our time. So see if they have included: time off, time for friends, homework, study and games, after-school activities. Do they have time for the important things like sleep, food and a shower. Sometimes they have overloaded themselves and not realised this.

Remember they need time off to be with friends and relax also. I do suggest after school study programs for this reason. In after school study you have to study and complete homework but a bonus is they get to spend time off after coming home just relaxing, playing games/sports and time with friends too.

After school study also helps them focus more, they can do nothing else in that supervised time period. And they are also with their friends and classmates  who are in the same boat. So no distractions or friends texting etc., to distract them.

Organisational Skills

Get out of the realm of shame and guilt and be a detective instead, ask yourself ” how can I help my teen?” Choose empathy, be less defensive and they will be too and let them learn from their mistakes.

Don’t jump in and try to fix it. Work with them instead, what systems and strategies are they using already and how can these be tweaked to help them? Keeping things simple is a key component here.

One type of solution.

One solution to help with paper organisation equals having 1 master binder per class/subject ( typical A 4 style binder available from supermarkets etc) and pocket folders for handouts, homework and revision notes.

I’d also use dividers so that they can see topics within each subject at a glance. This keeps topics together for later revision and keeps all paperwork together. Store these folders on shelves above their study desk.

File boxes or file drawers could also be used especially if they don’t like clutter.

Have a weekly or daily filing system routine, or when a topic is finished, to keep on top of paperwork. Use colour coding per topic and/or per subject. It takes a bit to set up at first but it’s well worth it.

Most importantly get them involved and keep it simple. Have a dedicated homework area and storage area for these files is really helpful for the organisation of teens.

You may also like to consider a joint organisation system here if your teen hates the idea of an organisation system. They help you stay on top of household paperwork too, kind of like a buddy system.

If they do all their work online make sure they know how to set-up folders on their desktop. And show them how they can create folders per topic within an overall subject folder too.

Teaching your kids these techniques can be hard, as they may be unresponsive to you, so if possible get some outside help. You can ask the parents association in your school to organise study skills training for parents and kids, time management and organisation skills also. If you don’t have an after-school study program remember you can ask for this to be set up also.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.