Executive Functioning Tips: Developing Time Awareness and Management Skills
Your kid is sitting at the table complaining about practicing their spelling words. “You just need to work on them for 10 minutes,” you say. In your mind, it’s a great argument. Ten minutes is totally doable. But he doesn’t seem consoled.
You told her to clean her room before her friend comes over. You peek in at the last minute to find her frantically shoving toys under her bed. You remember a conversation you had this morning in which she told you that she had nothing to do and ask why she didn’t start earlier. She replies that she thought she had enough time.
Do these scenarios sound familiar? If so, your child may be struggling with the executive functioning skills of time awareness and time management. Difficulties in this area may affect their ability to understand and adapt to demands on their time and result in poor task planning, initiation, and completion. So how can you help your kid develop these skills?
Stick to a Routine When Possible
Families are busy and schedules have to be flexible. Consistent times for specific activities (bed time, wake up, dinner, etc.) can help develop time awareness when possible. Setting time limits for activities (20 minutes for cleaning room, 30 minutes of play time) can help as well. These strategies work best when combined with the suggestions below.
Use Visual Supports
Example of a customizable analog clock face showing 5-minute increments
Time is an abstract concept! Creating and frequently referring to visual supports can help your child understand it better!
Use an analog clock: Analog clocks allow you to visualize the passage of time and understand how time periods relate to each other in a way that digital clocks do not.
Consider a customizable analog clock and color-code blocks of time (5, 10, or 15-minute segments could be different colors). This helps kids understand portions of an hour, and it’s a fun art project too! See the example above.
Use visual timers: You can download fun, free visual timers on your phone or tablet. You set the amount of time, and a cute picture appears incrementally until the time limit is reached. This can be useful if your child needs to work on a task for a set amount of time.
Create visual schedules: You and your child can create picture schedules for daily routines (Getting Ready for School, Getting Ready for Bed, Weekly Chores, etc.). Next to each item on the schedule, you can draw a picture of what the clock will look like when it’s time to start.
Talk About Time During Regular, Low-Stress Activities
Nobody learns well when they’re stressed or upset, so attempting to teach time management skills in the middle of a situation like the ones described above may be counterproductive. Instead, incorporate time awareness principles into everyday activities. Here’s what this could look like:
“I’m not sure how long it usually takes us to make these cookies. I’m going to time us this time so next time we know.” Or, “We need to go rake leaves. I’m going to work on this for 30 minutes and it’s 12:00 now, so I’ll stop when the long hand gets to the 6.”
Relating time awareness to familiar tasks can help develop better time managers!
Let Your Child Help Schedule Activities
The goal of developing time awareness is to learn how to plan and use time effectively. We use time management skills every day to schedule our time and accomplish the things we need to do, from work tasks to after-school activities. Once your child has developed basic time awareness skills, bring them in on the planning! They may need a lot of help at first, but with consistent practice they will become independent time managers!
If you think executive functioning skills may be impacting your child’s academic performance, communication, or social skills visit our Evaluation Hub or contact us at tpeadmin@truepotentialed.com or (515)218-8445 to schedule an evaluation. For more information about executive functioning skills, read our post here.
