Rohan woke up hearing Amma’s muttered scolding — with a jolt! He scrambled out of bed with his uniform half-on and textbooks peeping from his overflowing bag. He remembered that day’s Maths surprise test at school! Thunder over his head! The school was a panic for Rohan. And math? It was something he escaped from, every time! However, the test was no less a disaster, as the formulas refused to stick in his head. Again he felt depressed and ashamed from inside as he was returning home. Amma wasted her potential on lecturing Rohan!
Last week, Rohan came across Confident Personality and we told them, “Rohan, imagine your mind as a garden, and if you don’t water it regularly and don’t comprehend its importance, how will it grow?” Rohan kept staring with unspoken wonders about this ‘watering’ his mind!
Let’s see what are the inner importance that requires taking care of your mind in self-management mode. If you’re a student or parent, familiarize yourself with the facts of self care skills and then take steps to cultivate the ways for yourself or for your kid! Let’s explore what is self management and why it matters for kids and how you can help your child develop this valuable toolkit.
The Building Blocks of Success
When it comes to defining self management skills, it appears actually a set of skills diverse in nature. All these equip children and teenagers to navigate their growing stage more effectively than ever.
- Goal Setting: Let your child know about the importance of goal setting for kids — both in terms of the short-term ones (eg: finishing a project) and the long-term ones (eg: learning a new skill or language).In this respect, the long-term goals have to be broken down into several short-term ones for better attainment.
- Managing Time: Time management effectively and intelligently can empower children with great self-management skills. They learn to simultaneously handle their studies, play, hobbies, and even family time. They learn to allocate their time to tasks for self care time management according to their own comprehension of the task’s importance.
- Orderly Organization: A child aware of self-management can keep track of school tasks on his own by effectively minimizing distractions. Several modern life tools like planners, color-coded folders, or calenders can appear helpful to make them committed.
- Control with Wisdom: The techniques for building self-discipline in children make them more responsible in making the right decision possible at a specific moment. For example, the child learns to manage his frustration in constructive ways and choose whether to finish homework before playing video games.
- Regulating Emotions: Once a child learns self management skills, he understands the ups and downs of his life. Through making mistakes, developing emotional intelligence in children helps them healthily manage their feelings. This ensures building the power of resilience among them to maintain positive relationships with others.
When a child develop these skills in themselves, they step forward in achieving their life goals outside the textbooks, and most importantly, they gradually become suitable to take part self management for kids activities and, hence take charge of their lives.
Rohan learns to handle his academic burdens with Confident Personality’s exclusive tips. He started allocating a daily constant time to solve mathematics. In the next summative test, he covered most of the syllabus. Rohan’s amma started being happy with his son’s effort! Besides she noticed some major positive changes in Rohan’s behavior beyond academics.
Benefits Beyond Academics
When the influence of self management is inevitable, children start obtaining good grades in their classes. Is there no other positive side? Of course, there are several that make them thrive in every aspect of their life:
- Confidence Building: When children complete their assigned tasks by overcoming potential challenges, it nourishes a sense of self-efficacy in them. They start to believe in their ability to improve self confidence and to succeed anywhere beyond the walls of their classroom. This ultimately initiates a strong foundation for their future accomplishments.
- Achieving Immunity: Life throws curveballs to all irrespective of their age. And for the children, it seems severe to handle. That’s why building resilience in kids seems very important as they can wisely manage their time, emotions, and challenges until they reach their goal.
- Nurturing Relationships: Children with strong self-management skills learn to softly supervise their emotions to communicate in more productive ways. They learn to show empathy, a benchmark fruit of self-management skills for students — in other words, they become apt for building social or interpersonal bonds. Even in any case of conflict, children start navigating them constructively.
- Self-directed Learning: When a child sets his personal goals in studies, he actually exceeds the apparent boundaries and grows a sense of ownership over their responsibilities including education and other skills.
All these translate to the promising fact that children leave their immature stage and start growing in a real sense throughout their lives.
Helping Your Child Become a Self-Management Master
The most amazing fact is that these self-management skills can be started learning from the elementary level. Thinking how you can let your kid know about the importance know? Then here’s a list you can guide with:
- Don’t Wait for Appropriate Age: It’s advisable to start early when it comes to teaching your kid about taking responsibility. You can start by assigning them simple self management activities for elementary students like making their bed after dinner and go with comparatively complex responsibilities.
- Set Realistic Expectations: Start discussing their goals with them. Make them understand the essence of creating a clear and realistic routine for self management activities for kids — including homework, chores, playtime, or anything else your child is interested in.
- Empower Decision Making: Mention boundaries while giving your child choices. Start with giving them self management for kids activities; like entitling them with enough liberty to wear whatever outfit they want on any family occasion. Let them pick their hobbies or activities for free time.
- Breaking Down Tasks: Don’t your child feel fearful at the time of accomplishing any big and long-term tasks. Help your child break down chores or school assignments into smaller, more manageable steps and make them understand the essence of self monitoring for kids.
- Be a Role Model for Your Kids: The observation power of children is undeniably high. Hence, organize your own tasks and time effectively and show a positive response so that they dare to step forward themselves.
- Tech to Cheer & Celebrate: Whenever your child achieves something, even if it’s very little, see these with a bottom-up approach and celebrate their success. Pat their back, make a wish, and gift them small gifts of their wish — of course as an encouragement to develop self care skills.
- Normalize Making Mistakes: Make your kid understand that setbacks are inevitable and these are for learning new experiences. These teachings of perseverance and problem-solving would reflect in your child’s behavior in a positive sense of conquering fear.
- Communicate Openly: In this stage of self-management, children generally feel unrest at some point. Hence, it’s imperative to create a safe space for your child to let them share their challenges and frustration and aid them in sorting out the stress management self care checklist. This would help them feel light and restart their self-managing journey.
Rohan became more realistic in making decisions in every aspect of his life. He started communicating openly with his Amma and Abba. His parents, in the meantime, were very tensed to handle some issues and Confident Personality helped them with through guidance.
How You Apply These Practically?
Let’s pick some real-life examples for better implementation of self-management skills.
Suppose, your child’s desk is cluttered,
In this very common case when your child’s desk has become a warzone of books, magazines, papers, combs, or half-eaten snacks, start working together to organize the space. Initiate some self management activities for kids by leveling the shelves and drawers with categories like ‘textbooks’, ‘references’, ‘notebooks’, or anything your kid is involved in.
Suppose, your kid procrastinates in everything,
When it comes to your sincere notice that your child lacks strategies for time management for children and starts his daily homework right before bedtime or starts doing his internal homework assignment before the submission date, help them create a daily schedule for self monitoring for kids, allocating specific time for each task.
Say, your child appears overwhelmed as tests come close,
If your child has severe test anxiety that actually results in poor performance on the tests even when they are fully prepared, it’s your time for kind interference. Encourage them to grow self awareness skills by having a secure study plan with ample revision time and energy. Help them conduct practice quizzes in a supportive environment.
Fun Activities for Developing Self-Management
Don’t make the self-managing skills boring drill for your child, as losing interest and excitement would make all the effort unfruitful. Confident Personality enlists some fun activities to pave teaching problem-solving skills to children:
- Goal Board Drawing: Encourage your kids to create visuals on their dreams, let them write their short-term and long-term goals, and help them decorate the board with their favorite colors.
- “Minuet to Win It” Game: Turn every task into a rewarding game. Set a timer and challenge your kid to do any of their age-appropriate tasks like stacking books neatly stressing self awareness skills. Have some genuine laughs in the entire process.
- Acting ‘Chores Charades’: This would turn the learning elements into handling responsibilities. Add fun elements to understanding each household task by letting them guess the chores. These activities would make them feel their importance in a lighthearted way.
- Organize ‘Family Cleanup Day’: Ask all your family members to join in cleaning your house on the weekends. Play some upbeat music and work as a team — this would in indirect ways, teach your kid to learn about collaborations.
Rohan’s parents are constantly working on building self-confidence and self-management potential. They, all the three members of the family make themselves engaged in creating more realistic ways. They spend time with some family games with the ultimate intention of improving Rohan’s belief in himself.
However, please note that self-management isn’t just about neat desks! It’s about making kids aware of their existence and equal importance in a community. It’s about making them responsible for their own requirements. It’s about sowing the seeds of risk management before any storm comes into their life. So, don’t underestimate the power of self-management. Let your child believe in their inner superhero and start making them leave their comfort zone for unstoppable and sustainable development.
