Tips to make your child more organized
1. It’s ‘easier’ (and not easy) to change your child’s body clock than to try to get them to stick to a routine, so let’s put the easier things first on our list of goals. The simplest part is regulating your hunger times. While lunchtime at school will do half the trick, regulate your snacks, dinner, and breakfast. Serve each meal at a set time so your hunger times are regulated. Greeting him after school with a tasty power snack can be a great start.
2. The next biggest hurdle is bedtime. There will always be distractions, but don’t allow more than 30 minutes of flexibility on weekdays. Put your foot down if necessary and create a lights-out environment. Rest assured, the resistance will not last a month and your baby will start yawning before she can drag him to bed.
3. Introduce your child to a daily planner or, if he’s not a fan of gadgets, stick to traditional schedules. Put reminders for important dates and paper presentations, keeping the scope for plenty of action time; convince your child to act accordingly. You will be pleased with yourself as you would be appreciated at school for never missing any test or performance date. That is the moment when he will start acting without your efforts.
4. Get him an agenda or ask him to use his school journal to write his homework and not just complaints and vacation notices. Make it mandatory to list all homework assignments, submissions, and tests date-wise, even if he can remember. Check what’s on his plate for the day and help him manage his time. This is an important life lesson: document things before they become a mess.
5. All this ordeal is useless if you had to turn the whole house upside down to find the sketchbook. Therefore, make a special school zone in your home where things are tidy and absolutely no school supplies are to be found anywhere else. Allot has different corner and separate closet. Use labels, sticky notes, and color coding liberally to keep things tidy. Help your child keep it tidy until he learns to do it himself.
6. Help your child remember things to take home for the day when he leaves in a hurry. Ask him to divide his locker or desk drawer into two halves: the left side can have things he wants back, and the right side will have things he doesn’t need.
7. Meet at the school zone before leaving for the day and set things up for the next day. See if he’s been keeping things right and guide him if he hasn’t. It will help him pack the things he needs for the next day, keep things organized for him, and make it easier for him to keep track of his daily activities. Plus, a daily supervised reorganization is much better than cleaning up a week’s worth of mess.
8. Lastly, don’t get hung up on these tips in a tyrannical way. Make them a quiet part of your life, not an ordeal. Remember that there is only one childhood and one lifetime for him to stress and keep busy.