Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Poor time management

Dd12 has never been the most organized person but it really has never caught up with her b/c she has a fantastic memory and can do A work in really short time if she procrastinates. We had big issues with procrastination in 4th grade. I recall her writing an essay in the car on the way to school and getting an A+ on it. I believe that they had had a week or maybe even a few weeks to do it and she didn't mention anything about it until the morning it was due (and the morning she wrote the entire thing).

That issue got quite a bit better in 6th grade (after skipping 5th) b/c she had to work harder in some subjects and the quantity of work increased significantly. At the start of this year (8th) she had some issues due to teacher disorganization and other teaching issues, but those seem to have worked out. Her math teacher is apparently teaching more or dd is just getting the material fine w/out my help and her lit class hasn't been as big of an issue with the nebulous deadlines.

However, dd is really not managing her time well IMHO. I really don't help her with her work and usually don't know what she has due unless she mentions a big project like one she had for science recently. She kept putting it off and putting it off and I spent much more time that I would like to repeat asking her "have you done ____ yet?" She did get it done without totally leaving it to the end but mostly b/c I hounded her about it.

The problem seems to be that, even if I drop it and don't remind her at all on things like this (or "let her fail!" as dh screams at the kids), she still gets As. The procrastination isn't catching up with her yet again. I want her to have reasonable study skills. I've never worked with her on note taking and studying techniques as I am right now w/ dd10 b/c she hasn't seemed to need it (she gets As and A+s on all tests with whatever she is or isn't doing to study for them).

I'm just not sure what it will take to get her to stay on top of creating a reasonable game plan for completing assignments over the course of a week, a few days, something other than the day before... I'm sure that, if she had to pay the piper in terms of her grades suffering, she'd spread the work out more, but like I said it isn't coming to her grades suffering.

I don't think there is much you can do, until she feels the pain.

I am sort of laughing because that sounds like me. It took me failing a paper in COLLEGE to learn time management. Then I cried for about a day, and figured out time management and study skills. Of course, I didn't have academic-minded parents on top of me, so as long as my grades were good, they didn't care.

I think the best you can do is set aside time for homework/studying.

I agree with Drea. I was like this and mostly got away with it through undergrad. I did not fully feel the pain until my first year of law school. At that point, I did improve my time management skills. When I was an attorney, my ability to produce under extreme pressure and time constraints (usually brought on by my supervising partner's lack of time management) was a huge plus.

I second that, I also got away with not needing those skills until I went back to college as a working mom and had to manage my schedule as well as my 2 dd's busy schedules. I figured it out when it became necessary.

My youngest has very poor organizational and time management skills and it has driven me nuts trying to help her "get them". I am finally coming to understand that until she sees a legitimate real-life reason/need for the skills (i.e "feels the pain"), my attempts to push those skills on her are futile.

I also understand now that these skills can be/are related to Executive Function and a part of the brain which does not finish fully developing until around age 26 so (about the age I was when I first came to need them).

Perhaps more challenging classes would help? I think that would have helped my DD realize a need to develop those skills. I guess as long as you can get by without them, why would you want to practice them?

I agree with everyone else, and will particularly agree that I don't know how much can be expected from a twelve-year-old in regards time management skills.

Val

Thanks for the commiseration even if there isn't a solution ! More challenging classes aren't an option right now in that she's in the last grade offered at her middle school and is in the most advanced classes they offer in that grade. Further grade skipping isn't likely to be the best option as I'm not sure she needs it as she'll be a high school freshman next fall and I don't think that skipping part of high school is the answer right now.

I'm hoping that the classes in high school give her the opportunity to be challenged by the content more than the quantity. Middle school seemed challenging for a while but, in hindsight, I think that it was that they load them up with tons of homework (expected 2 hrs+/night) and speed is her weaknesses. Math is probably the only area where I can say that the content has been fairly sufficiently challenging.

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