Why your child needs to know how to get organized.

One of my first clients was a mother who called me after being at one of my workshops.  She called in tears to tell me that she ‘couldn’t do it any more!’, she could no longer spend hours each night helping her daughter with her homework.

She wanted help.

A diagnostic assessment of her daughters learning skills showed that she had a couple of problems, a couple of weak learning skills and that these were holding her back and causing the trouble with her homework.

Her daughter had poor  organizational and planning skills.

Your might be asking how lack of these skills affected her learning? Surely these skills are more about how she did her homework rather than about how she learned?

The problem was that this girl did not have these skills.  It was not just a case of telling her to be more organized so she could get her work done more quickly, this girl did not know how to be organized.  She did not know how to plan her work.  As a result she quickly became confused, distracted, frustrated and upset when she had to work on her own.

Her mother tried to help, she spent hours every night making sure that her daughter finished her homework.  It must have been exhausting for both the mother and child.  Their relationship was suffering because of all the stress of getting the homework into school on time.

Once I knew what was causing the problem I was able to talk to both the mother and  daughter and explain better ways of working, ways that would help the daughter learn and understand skills of organization and planning.

I started with showing the daughter how to plan to write a book report.   I gave her worksheets to fill in after she had read each chapter of the book.  These worksheets were not full of questions but were designed to remind her of the main points of the story and to keep track of the characters and what they were doing. Then she could uses these worksheets as the basis of her book report.  Previously she had been reading the whole book and then trying to write a book report.  She had no organization or plan in place to help her learn.

Once she began to trust the process of organizing and planning we moved onto other areas of her work.

We set up a system for keeping all her homework in separate piles so that she could work on one subject and finish it before she started the next subject.  These piles not only helped keep her desk tidy but it also acted as a visual reminder of the work she had finished and the work she had yet to do.  She could track her progress.

Homework became much less of a hassle.

Once this girl understood the benefits of organization and planning, and gradually learned the skills to do this her ability to learn increased dramatically.

It is OK to tell your teenage son to tidy up his room when you know he knows how to do it but it is not OK to expect him to do a good job if he doesn’t know what to do, if he does not have the skills he needs to get the job done.

Does your child have the skills they need to be successful? Does your child know HOW to learn?