Your children cannot deny their summer assignments any longer. August is upon us. School starts in a matter of weeks.
The lack of a regular schedule during the summer months often leads to fatigue, and unfortunately that fatigue has never been worse than during the “dog days of summer,” in the month of August. Fall sports’ practices ramp up - some coaches scheduling practice twice a day. With players “expected” to participate in grueling summer practices, your teens may be weary on the first day of school.
Summer assignment deadlines loom, with many classes’ assigning summer reading, along with annotations and projects, and summer math packets
To add to this stress, the College Board has introduced a summer testing date at the end of the month, but this “convenience” also creates anxiety and additional prep deadlines during the month of August.
Parents have rarely faced a more daunting challenge than trying to get their teens to complete work now, in August. Moreover, the temptation for your children to procrastinate has never been higher.
Does this sound like your house?
“Don’t worry, Mom, I have five days to finish my summer reading book. I will read 75 pages a day – No problem!”
Fast forward two days . . .
“Stop nagging, Mom, I have plenty of time. I just need to read 125 pages each day. Totally doable.”
Nip this problem in the bud. While sink-or-swim parenting is usually my guidepost, you may want to exert a little initiative now to avert a crisis the night(s) before the first day of school.
1. Set goals. Goals will facilitate the realistic completion of assigned tasks and prep work. A reasonable deadline for the completion of all assigned summer work would be the Friday before the first day of class.
2. Keep a daily reminder list. Using that reminder list conveniently available on their IPhones will make your children more productive.
3. Chunk large assignments. There is nothing wrong with calculating a daily or weekly page goal for summer reading, but those mini-goals ideally need to be set weeks before the first day of school and heeded. The same is true for summer math packets. By chunking those scary-big assignments into bite-size pieces, they become much more manageable.
4. Prioritize challenges. If math is your child’s weakness, then have your child get math done first.
5. Set aside dedicated work time. No electronics and no distractions should be allowed during that daily hour or so of invested time to summer assignments. A strict observance of the no-distraction rule, while difficult to enforce at first, will lead to higher productivity, faster assignment completion, and ultimate happiness (and relief) for your children (and for you).
Admittedly, my suggestions are not rocket science, but ignoring the parental involvement required here is probably also a form of procrastination. As parents, we need to teach our children the values of goal-setting and of to-do lists. Perhaps we need to pick up the mirror and take a hard look at our own habits, too.