Time Management for Today's Kids

In an age of busy lifestyles and two career families and single-parent families, parents spend a lot of energy trying to manage their time more effectively. However, we rarely consider how important it is to manage our children's time as well.

Busy work and home schedules emphasize the importance of working efficiently on the job, and parenting efficiently at home. It would be silly to parent our children the way a manager supervises employees. However, helping your children structure their day makes it easier for everyone to get things done. It also makes the time we spend with our children more enjoyable.

Just as parents transition from the work to home environment, today's children are frequently shuttled from home to school to day care to activities then back to home again.

It is during these transition times -- the times when kids are between activities -- that they are most likely to misbehave. "Idle hands are the devil's playground," may be a cliche, but it holds some truth. Kids rarely misbehave when they are absorbed in enjoyable or challenging activities. However, as we all know, it's impossible to keep a child involved in these types of activities all day long.

This report provides advice to parents on managing their child's time. It focuses on critical transition times across a child's daily life when parents say they have the most problems.

Most parents find that by using strategies such as checklists, streamlining morning routines and structuring their child’s after-school time, they are able to increase the amount of time spent on positive interactions with their children while greatly reducing the amount of time they spend punishing and scolding their children.

Download a copy of the UF Extension publication “Time Management for Kids” by Garret D. Evans, which includes practical tips for parents at: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/HE/HE79500.pdf