Over ages, parents have always had conflicts with their children about their laziness when it comes to doing their homework, holiday work or even sitting down to read. This has inspired parents to adopt various measures like taking them for coaching, forcing them to sit and do their work, administering hostile punishments to them, grounding, etcetera.
But they’ve got it all wrong. Children should be trained to focus, and the rest will be on autopilot. Sounds unrealistic? I’ll break it down.
1. Setting goals
When was the last time you asked your children what they want to become when they grow up? That sounds like a longshot, but it can be reduced to small, manageable short term goals like;
- What kind of grades they want to get at the end of the term.
- What new things they have to learn
- How many projects/ assignments they have of complete
So many students stay in school without that much off academic goals, and they certainly don’t get so far in performance, but here are the benefits of setting goals;
- It helps students gauge their learning process
- Enables them to take things seriously
- Paints the picture of how much time they actually have
- Self-analysis and assessment becomes a lot easier
2. Directing their focus
In the modern world, there are so many people with genuine goals and the determination to change the world, whose efforts are derailed by the fact that they are focusing in the wrong direction. This is because they are focusing on their goals.
- What should they focus on?
In order to achieve their goals, people need to learn to focus more on what they are supposed to do in order to bring these goals into fruition. This includes daily habits, their attitude and their surroundings.
Yes, this is because their goals like getting good grades, attracting clients and becoming famous are way out of their control, but what they have to do to get there is what they control.
- How can students relate to this?
Parents and teachers don’t have to force students to accomplish their tasks, beat them when they get poor grades or scold them for presenting incomplete homework.
Instead, they have to train students to focus on their behaviors and before they know it, they have accomplished everything on their to-do list.
3. Building habits
As you probably already know, we are the result of what we do on a daily basis, and soon, that’s what our brains know how to do with ease.
When students are trained good habits like waking up early, good hygiene, good spiritual habits and many others, the effect automatically spills over to their academic life.
4. Practicing keystone habits
It’s very hard for anyone to build a good habit, and there’s always the temptation to get lazy and relapse into the old ones. Keystone habits are the small habits that motivate people to carry out with other tasks ahead of them with energy. They include;
- Physical exercise
- Meditation
- Journaling
- Cold showers
The habits in this list might not work for your students, but even if you chose an early morning assembly to wake them up and prepare them for the day, that’s just fine.
5. Small contributions that accrue with time
So many times, people fall into the trap of trying to accomplish a lot in a very short time. Because they are overwhelmed, they fail to accomplish even close to half of it. However, starting small has immense benefits and with time, you don’t know how much you’ve added to your stack.
If taught to students, this will help them;
- Read a little before they sleep
- Understand a hard concept little by little
- Stop fearing tasks because they seem huge and hard to accomplish
- Avoid mistakes made while panicking or rushing
Final Thoughts;
No method is usually perfect as far as the handling of children is concerned, but training them to live life and do things on their own terms, by themselves is one of the best ways that you can effortlessly keep them on track. This way, neither you nor the students will have to stress out on who has done what, and who hasn’t.