Summary: Giving Your Child Control Over Their Time In the parenting we need to practice the ICE plan, instruct, consequence, and exercise. When we are training our kids to use their time wisely it is no different. The past few days we have been discussing the different ways to instruct your children by helping them to manage their time. Next we need to set up the consequences both positive and negative for time management, meaning rewards for consistently sticking with the plan and what will be done if the child strays from the plan. As the child grows we can give them more and more control over their own time management, which is the exercise in the ICE plan. Again as with money management, we can look at our goals for training our children in time management and work backwards. Ultimately as our children leave our home we want them to be prepared to have control over their time, especially when facing all the time wasting temptations on a college campus. We need to give them room to practice managing their time while they are still under our roof in high school. An easy place to do this is a teen’s bedtime. Keep in mind that a bedtime is different from a curfew. You can slowly back a bedtime up until ultimately there is no bedtime. As long as a teen is keeping up with their school work and morning family responsibilities then they can continue without a bedtime.  If they are having a hard time getting up with their alarm in the morning then the bedtime can be reinstated. The important thing is to allow your children to practice time management while you are still there to help them with it.  Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on training your children in time management.
