Organized, calm and confident!

8th grade is a critical transitional grade in the school career of any student.  If the 8th grade is completed with a flourish of success and the student has performed at or near her potential that gives them a feeling and expectation of success for the coming transition into high school.  It will be enough of a shock to go from being socially at the top of the heap as the senior most group in the middle school to being lowly freshmen in their new high school.  Students also sometimes are going from a smaller middle school into a very large high school.  That change of environment alone can be a real jolt.

If the student has unresolved issues with organizational skills coming out of middle school, the first year of high school can often be extremely difficult.  Now they are in a larger noisier and more chaotic environment and there is far less individual attention at the high school level.

For the student who struggled with being disorganized in middle school but who adopted a powerful student organizer notebook system like the Pace-It Instant Organizer Notebook System, managing the stepped up demands of 9th grade will be much easier.  If the student knows she has a proven system she can rely on she will approach the new demands of high school academics with poise and confidence. 

This will leave her free to focus on the actual demands of mastering the content of each course rather than always rummaging around to find various papers and materials she needs just to do the work.  She will be happier and more enthusiastic about doing the work if her effort can be directed at the academic challenges themselves rather than wasting time and effort just to pull together the materials needed just to get started on the actual work to be done.

This better feeling and extra sense of confidence will actually cause her to operate at a higher performance level while doing the work.  This means she will turn out a higher quality work product and do it in less time.

It is a great investment of both time and money to get your 8th grade student into an organizing system so that she will have time to get into the habit of using it.  She will also experience a tremendous lift in confidence level if she can master the formerly difficult task of keeping up with all of her homework papers and materials. 

Are Your Critical Things Getting Done?

Time Box Trading is a time management system which gives you some flexibility and freedom while making certain that the most important things actually do get done.  One of the most difficult challenges for students is the leaning toward ease and spontaneous fun moments while still managing to meet their daily responsibilities.

Many will resist tight hour by hour scheduling outside of school but the truth is by the time you add in all the scheduled after school and weekend activities there is often very little time left over.  Unfortunately these conflicts can result in the child or teen having a generally unfocused way of doing things which usually leads to stress or disaster of some kind.

With the Time Box Trading method you put activities and commitments in hour long boxes (usually divided into 1/2 or 1/4 hour segments) and move them if the need arises.  For many students this leads to the usual running out of time to finish the project or study for that big test.

When you are doing the Time Box Trading system you can be flexible but after you have run out of “Flex Boxes” your only choice is to LOCK DOWN the remaining boxes and finish your important task.  This is best done by putting a heavy red outline around the boxes which must be locked.  If you always keep the commitments in the locked red outlined boxes at least the critical things will get done! 

Bright Eyed and Ready

Any time students have a break of a week or more off from school it is important to get them back into regular school mode by starting that process a few days before their first day back.  If you can return to sleeping hours which are not more than two hours different from their regular going to bed and getting up times that will be most effective.

The body has built in waking and sleeping rhythms called Circadian rhythms.  These are often referred to as the “body clock” and upsets in normal sleeping and waking times can have a very negative effect on both physical and mental performance.

If your child or teen has traveled across several time zones during the time off from school it can be particularly tricky to get back onto a normal schedule.  This is most evident when experiencing jet lag. 

If you can get your child back on a normal sleeping schedule from three to five days before the first day of school you will get best results.  It is really helpful if at least two days before the first day back your student can wake up and go to bed within one hour of the usual school day times.  If you can only get back to two hours earlier or later you will fall inside that two hour zone.  The body clock can usually make that work.

You will be sending a better rested and more alert child off to school on the first day back.  

Homework independence simply means your child actually gets the assignments written down correctly, brings home from school the books and materials needed to complete the work, and completes the work on his own.  That means they are not depending on prodding from you to get the work done.  What a concept!  Yes, it can actually be done, and perhaps more easily than you think.

If the student thinks about doing homework and can see a MENTAL PICTURE of where all the necessary items are he is far more likely to be willing to start the work than if he is facing a frustrating and sometimes fruitless task of having to round up all the books and materials he needs to get started.

Consider this.  You need to prepare a dinner for the family.  What would be your level of enthusiam for getting started if you could picture in your miind exactly where every item you need is placed?  Also everything you need is already in your kitchen just waiting to be pulled out and prepared for the dinner.   All your dishes and utensils are clean and ready to use.

Contrast that with your willingness to start to prepare the same meal but you are missing one critical item and have to go to the store for that.  Some of your dishes and utensils are not clean and your key chopping tool you need is GONE!  You look everywhere but it is nowhere to be found.  You search for 20 minutes and finally give up and leave out your favorite ingredient.  Now it won’t taste as good as usual.

If your middle school student can work with a system for making sure she always has all the proper materials at hand to start the homework, there will be a lot less resistance to getting started.  A truly exceptional tool for this purpose is the Pace-It Homework Instant Organizer System.  Once students get the system and learn how to use it they can be organized and confident the very next day!

Motivation for difficult homework session is important for the student to start with the right mindset.  Leading questions can help create that.  Parents can help with this technique and the student can learn to do this for herself.

The role of leading questions in creating mindset is this.  Since hearing a question stimulates the mind to come up with an answer this action alone will start the ball rolling.  Granted it is a small thing but it does cause the student to Read More→

Peak performance is often considered to be that rare level of performing achieved only by elite athletes, gifted musicians, brilliant actors, or someone who is operating at an almost super-human level.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Certainly excellence and superior achievement will be the result of peak performance.  But superior to what?

Moments of greatness come from being completely absorbed in a task or activity and completing it to the absolute best outcome possible for you at that time.  If you have done that and the task is deeply meaningful to you are probably peak performing.

A master key to peak performance is this:  “Did I do the very best I could on that task just a moment ago?” and “Is it better than before?”  If you can answer these two questions with a resounding ”Yes!” you were very possibly peak performing.  Another very strong consideration is the appropriateness of the action you were engaged in.  If you have committed to lose weight you might have done a stellar job of polishing off 4 large slices of pizza but the action itself was not aligned with your goal.

If your child is tackling some difficult math problems the key to their best performance is whether they took the shortest available path to find the right answer.  Even if your child is a B or C math student, the most important question is did they do the best possible work at that time.  Peak performing moments can come while wrestling with a difficult task and coming out with a victory.

It is very important for children to have some peak performing experiences during the school years so that they have a growing awareness of doing some things brilliantly.  And it is important for parents to remember that this exciting level of performance can be hitting a grand slam home run in a baseball game or working diligently to find the answer to that difficult math problem.

Peak performance is not about  being the best it is about doing your best.

Getting organized for successful study sessions can provide your child or teen with that extra burst of energy that can turn homework tasks into a string of victories instead of it feeling like drudgery.  If your student can sit down to a well organized desk or table which has all necessary books and materials they’re feelings lean toward ”I can do this” instead of “Ugh. It’s homework time.”  If part of the challenge of getting homework done is searching for a bunch of missing items, the child’s energy goes down during this frustrating or annoying task.  They know it is a waste of time.

Having a regular place where the homework is done is especially good for many students as it is more predictable than choosing a place each day.  This stable location also allows for supplies to be positioned within easy reach and a great habit for the student to form during the school years is to “reset” and “restore the work area after each study session is complete.

If your student likes to move around and study in different places, they can use a portable supply basket that always has all the key materials needed for homework and study time.  A well stocked supply basket can also offer that good feeling of “ok, I’m ready.”

This time and energy saving habit will be of great help during the school years and in the adult workplace as well.  Your child is now practicing getting more done with less effort.  What’s not to love about that?

Organizational skills are just that.  They are skills!  And like any skill they are learned.  If your child struggles to get organized or has given up altogether, you can help.

The first step is to understand that every child can develop good habits of managing day to day tasks in a fairly organized manner.  It is certainly true  that some children are more naturally inclined in this direction than others.  But it is important if your child seems to lack these skills and abilities, that you make extra effort as early as you can to help them learn the essential organizational skills.

You want to begin this process as early as possible because the longer a child struggles to be organized and fails to accomplish it the less confidence they will have in their ability to learn the skills.  This lack of confidence will make it more difficult and the learning process will take longer.

By far the most helpful thing you can do as a parent is to get the child the very best organizational tools and systems to work with.  During the school years an excellent notebook system such as our Pace-It Instant Organizer Notebook system can do an enormous amount to build confidence in the child for getting all their papers back and forth from school to home.  That is the most challenging area of getting organized for most school aged children.

When your child successfully uses a powerful tool or system they suddenly realize that the system does most of the work for them.  They no longer have to figure out where to put each piece of paper.  The system already has a designated place for everything.  This “figuring out where to put it” is usually the failure point for most students.  If they decide where to put each paper as they go along they often fail to develop a pattern of which things go where at which point the storage destination becomes “somewhere”.  That can create real problems when it is time to retrieve that particular paper.  How would it be for you if documents on your computer were just “somewhere” rather than organized in “my documents” and arranged alphabetically in folders and by file name?

Give your child access to organizational tools and systems during the school years and it will do a great deal to help them acquire good study habits and build confidence.  A powerful tool for helping disorganized students in grades 4-12 organize their homework papers and gain a huge advantage when studying for tests and exams is the Pace-It Homework Instant Organizer Notebook System.  Being able to get homework done and turned in on time is an excellent habit to form to support success in school and later in the adult workplace.

Getting your child organized and developing the habit of doing things in an organized manner can create huge benefits for both you and your child.  For your child the immediate benefit of beginning to operate in an organized manner can bring a substantial boost in their level of self-confidence.  It is the beginning of doing things more efficiently and effectively.

While it may take a bit of time for the child to realize exactly what it is that is making the difference in how well they are doing, they will start to feel better right away.  Just doing daily tasks in a shorter amount of time will pay off in more free time for the child.

For you, the very busy parent, there will be  a great benefit as your child turns these new skills into habits.  As your child requires less prompting and supervision you will have more time available for other activities.

There is some investment of time for you to get these valuable skills in place for your child but the long term benefits will pay dividends for years to come.  Won’t that extra time be nice for both of you!

The surprising truth is that while most parents hate it when their kids make excuses they are quite by accident creating the need for the child to do just that.  When you turn to the child and demand in an angry tone, “WHY did you DO that?”  or  “Why on Earth DIDN’T you do that?” you are often forcing the child to make up an excuse.

How can this be?  Easy.  You may be forgetting to look at the child’s point of view.  Most often when the furious parent demands a reason for the unwanted action by the child, the child has no idea why it happened.  If they do they are afraid or ashamed to admit the real reason for that action.

If you demand a reason for the action (or lack of action) the child has these choices:

1.  Make up a “reason”

2.  Admit a fear

3.  Admit something they are ashamed of

Do any of these choices sound appealing to you?