Balancing extracurricular activities with school work

As parents it's important to help our children and give them the best tools to succeed in life. One of these tools is knowing how to balance things that need to be done. This especially important as our children get older and want to participate in school activities. We want them to be able to do these activities but at the same time school work is important to their future and we don't want them to neglect it. It's possible for them to learn to balance both and be able to handle being active.

One thing that helps is to make sure that your child is only signing up for things that they can handle. Nothing is accomplished by taking on activities that they have no way to complete. This can have a serious negative affect on their self esteem when they aren't able to complete things. It's better to avoid problems by planning ahead and helping them to only sign up for the things that they can handle. It may seem harsh and counter productive but it's not a bad thing to teach our children to be realistic about their abilities as they reach for the stars.

The next thing we can do is teach them how to manage their time effectively. The time to complete activities and homework has to come from somewhere and there still has to be time for things like eating and sleeping. We can facilitate time management by posting a calendar that has spots for time during the day and letting our children schedule in their activities so they know exactly where they have to be and when. We should help them but as they get older it's important to let them do most of the scheduling themselves so that they learn responsibility that will help them later in life. Sometimes they'll make mistakes and that's okay also because we learn through making mistakes. It's how we handle those mistakes and move on from them that helps us grow as people and move on in our lives.

One of the most important things that we can do to help them is to teach them how important the schoolwork is to them. It's easy to get caught up in our activities and want to focus just on them so sometimes it's necessary for the parent to step in and redirect focus just a little bit. As much as we would like to believe that our child is the next big sports star or chess champion it's so rare that it actually happens that we need them to have the education as a back up. A good education is important because it give them something to use when they get older. It's not that we should neglect activities outside of school as not being important but we have to teach them the importance of balancing both aspects of their time in school.

All of these things work together to help our children find time for both school work and activities. We're our children biggest supporters and their first role models so it's up to us to set these examples. This means that sometimes we have to take the initiative to talk to them about things and to step in when we see problems developing that are too big for them to handle on
their own.