10 Ways to Help Your Children Conquer Procrastination in Homeschool

What do you do when your children start procrastinating in homeschool? It seems that no matter how good your planner is, it cannot control the behavior of your child. It’s time to get creative! However, before we look at the possible ways of how to help your children battle this giant, let us first look at some procrastination basics.

What Is Procrastination?

Procrastination is the act of putting off something until a later time. It can be as simple as delaying doing the dishes because your child prefers to play with legos or it could mean not studying during school time because they would rather read a book.

Why Do Kids Procrastinate?

Most of the time procrastination is linked to laziness. Simply put, if you don’t like what you are doing, it can be easy to procrastinate on it. However, there are other reasons children struggle with procrastination during school time. For example:

Being tired: If your child is tired, their attention and focus is going to be very low. Make sure they have a regular sleeping schedule so that they are fresh for school every morning.
Too much noise/distractions in the house: When there are a lot of distractions and noises around your children, perhaps due to siblings or other family members being loud during school time, this could lead kids down a path where procrastination becomes easier than getting work done!
ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc.: Children who battle these issues will always be more prone to procrastinate because their focus is very limited and simple tasks require more of their energy.
Boredom: If children don’t like the subject, then it can be easy for them to put off studying until later. Sometimes it is as simple as a lack of variety in one specific subject; for example, too many math problems of the same kind.
Not understanding the material: A child who struggles with reading comprehension may find themselves putting off studying or writing essays because they simply don’t understand what their teacher expects from them.
Fear of failure: Children may fear not doing as well as someone else or not being able to complete their assignment successfully.
Perfectionism: They don’t want anything less than an “A” so they put off completing any assignments. This often goes hand in hand with fear of failure.
Being disorganized: Rather than procrastinating out of laziness or fear of failure, a child may only be disorganized and needs help to put things and/or thoughts in order.

Do You Know Why YOUR Child Is Procrastinating?

Before you start implementing possible ways to help your children deal with their procrastination habits, try to understand WHY they are procrastinating. Let me share with you a personal experience:

When my son was in the elementary school, he was Mr. Procrastinator. We tried every method on earth to help him overcome, yet to no avail. I would threat, I would reward, I would sit by him, I would leave him alone. You name it, we did it. It was not until his fifth grade that we learned he battled dysgraphia and therefore a simple task as writing a short paragraph would take ALL of his daily school energy. Why did I not known it earlier? That is a subject for another article but simply put he was smart enough to cover it and I was not smart enough to figure it out. Once we were able to eliminate his dysgraphia to a significant level, our school days became much more efficient.

10 Ways to Help Your Child Conquer Procrastination

The reason behind your child’s procrastination is as important as the procrastination itself. However, once you are able to pinpoint the WHY, you can successfully implement the HOW. Here are a few tips for you to try:

Understand how your child is motivated: Is your child motivated by praise, by incentives, or by threat? Some children work hard for their parents’ approval, some when offered incentives for finishing tasks on time, others are motivated with consequences instead (e.g., “If you don’t finish your homework, then no show tonight.”)
Teach your child how to focus: Do school work with your child and help them bring their mind back every time it runs away. They have to understand that their “focus” learning is as important as what they are studying in the book.
Know your child’s learning style: It may take some time for you to discover how your child learns best, but it will become much clearer with time. Make an effort to adapt their study to their learning style. [You can read more on learning styles in How to Identify Your Child’s Learning Style.]
Create a simple list your child can follow: Helping your child make a plan they can follow is the first step in conquering procrastination. Whether it is with schoolwork or chores, creating clear expectations and guidelines will help decrease anxiety when they are expected to complete something on time.
Break large tasks into smaller ones: Are twenty math problems overwhelming? Divide them into four groups of five. Does reading take too long? Let’s do a half after breakfast and a half after lunch.
Keep a routine: Children do better when a routine is established in their days. They know what to expect and can prepare themselves mentally for what they need to accomplish. This routine should include both you and your children so they know the plan is set in stone.
Start with easy (or hard) things first: This may seem like conflicting information, but it all comes down to how your child’s brain works. Are they more inclined to tick things off their list as quickly as possible? Then allow them to complete the simple chores first. This will lead them directly to the moment when “only one thing remains” to accomplish. If they, on the other hand, find difficult things so unpleasant that simply thinking about them makes them tired, get them done as quickly as possible so that only easy tasks remain.
Identify and eliminate any distractions that might interfere with getting your child’s schoolwork done on time, such as TV, internet access, video games, etc.
Help your child find ways to make tasks more enjoyable: Even though school should be fun because that is how brain learns best, the children should understand that not all things in life are fun. However, we can always find ways how to make unpleasant tasks more enjoyable, e.g. play guessing game while doing dishes, listen to music while doing copy work.
Give more breaks during school time: When I first arrived in the United States from Europe, I was surprised to learn that children are only allowed to take limited breaks while at school. We were entitled to ten minutes’ rest after every 45 minutes of instruction; 20 minutes after two lessons; and one hour for lunch. One may think that it was a lot of wasted time, but in reality it was time well spent; it helped us to concentrate better and improve our learning.

I hope that these 10 tips will help you to get your child motivated and productive. Let us know if there is another tip that has helped your child beat their tendency towards procrastinating during school time!