What Do You Mean by Procrastination?
Posting any task or an action voluntarily and without a valid reason is commonly termed procrastination. A person is said to have procrastinating traits when they willingly tend to delay their work until they reach the time right before the deadline to complete it, instead of working on it earlier. This is a very serious feature and is widely seen in children of almost all ages, thus hampering the flow of their studies. Dealing with children who are procrastinators has been a nightmare for parents and even their teachers.
Children, especially teenagers, are very sensitive, so they should be dealt with cautiously. Parents must keep calm while making their kids understand the harm they are causing themselves by procrastinating their daily tasks and activities. This blog will give you some ideas that might be useful for helping school-age children overcome procrastination and how to stop procrastinating homework.
Procrastination in Children
What are the Causes & Effects of Procrastination among Children?
Like adults, children prefer putting off a big project or even homework until they reach the last minute. Parents might think their kids are lazy or don’t have the mood to complete their tasks on time. Well, this might not be the real reason for your child to be a procrastinator.
Children often procrastinate because they do not consider their projects to be important or may be confused with the idea of how to get started with them. Sometimes they do not even like the concept of doing schoolwork at home. It can be utterly frustrating as a parent to struggle with their kids not finishing their assignments and homework each time.
Procrastination, in most cases, has very little to do with a lack of caring or laziness in your child. There can be much deeper problems that could lead your kids to develop this trait in them. In other words, procrastination is an assortment of confidence, motivation and understanding issues your child might face with their daily activities and studies.
Causes of Procrastination
Here are some of the causes of procrastination that are observed among students of all ages:-
Lack of attention and concentration
Lack of comprehension
Lack of motivation
Inadequate organisation skills
Afraid of getting failed
Lower self-confidence level
Lower energy levels
Fear of being imperfect
Effects of Procrastination
All these causes leading to a child’s procrastinating behaviour can negatively affect not only their school assignments and grades but also overall health. It has been observed that students who tend to procrastinate undergo huge levels of frustration, stress, anxiety and even guilt, which often leads to some serious problems like depression and poor self-confidence.
It can even have a much bigger impact on teenagers or high school students. In high school, kids get more homework, assignments, and sometimes bigger projects. Those who tend to procrastinate will have higher chances of receiving lower grades compared to their classmates.
All these bad grades could lead to lower self-esteem, which can be challenging for these students to overcome. Also, these bad grades can impact their future prospects, resulting in extra tension and stress. Parents must not avoid such situations and learn the proper techniques of how to deal with a procrastinator.
How to Help Procrastination Not Damage Your Kid’s Career?
By now, you must be well aware of how negatively procrastination can affect your child’s life, starting from poor marks, dreadful work ethics, and lack of self-control leading to all sorts of punishments and dissatisfactions. Thus as a parent or a teacher, you must help these procrastinators overcome the damaging actions of this serious issue. Below are some tips that might help your child fight against this habit:
Steps to Manage Procrastination
Build Up Your Kid’s Self-Confidence
The horrifying thought of not living up to expectations or the fear of failure often makes students procrastinate their tasks and assignments. As a parent or guide, you must always point out your child’s efforts and achievements that he or she earned earlier. This will help boost up their self-belief and confidence and also develop a more positive mindset toward studies, thus making it comfortable to get started.
Not as Challenging as It Seems
One of the main reasons that let children put off their assignments or any home activities is that their brain tells them these tasks are extremely challenging and that they would require forever to complete. To make them stop believing this, you need to illustrate some examples of such activities before them and prove that they’re not as challenging as they might appear. For example, filling up a bottle of water in just 8 seconds.
Make the Assignment Meaningful to Your Child
Before getting started with a project, it’s important to make it significant and appropriate to the students. This will help them relate it to their interests and motivate them to get started. Connect the project to a real-life scenario or anything that could interest your child. This tip will help your child learn how to not procrastinate on homework or projects, making them less work-like and more fascinating.
Help Your Child See their Future Get Impacted
Children tend to procrastinate because they do not have the foresight of how this harmful habit could hugely impact their future. As a parent, you must make them see the unwanted effects of putting off their tasks until the last moment arrives and how this could lead them to an unstable situation.
Help Your Child Develop Good Study Skills
While achieving good grades is the goal, it is the proper learning skills that will help students reach it. You must always help your kids improve their dexterities in studies by concentrating on the learning process. Encourage them to think actively and solve critical problems by conversing through any challenges they might be facing with their homework or projects, thus finding out a solution together.
Reward & Compliment Your Child
Every child eagerly waits for any sort of reward and compliment from their parents and teachers. While you punish your child for doing something wrong or failing to complete a task, you should also remember to reward him or her immediately when they put the effort into taking up challenges and completing them skillfully. This will encourage and increase self-confidence in your child.
Practical Activities to Teach about Procrastination
Taking up practical and definite activities might help your child avoid procrastination. Following is a list of such things your child could perform to overcome this perilous issue:
Create a timetable or routine
Set up a deadline for each task
Use a stopwatch or timer to keep a track
Reward after each successful completion
Make time for breaks and recess.
Conclusion
Procrastination is a consequential problem for every child and even adults. It can hugely affect a person’s life, thus destroying their future. As a parent or teacher, you must teach students how to stop procrastinating homework or assignments or any tasks. You must help them permanently eliminate this threatening issue from a young age.
