Can Sports Help Your Child Manage ADHD Symptoms?
October 27, 2025
Many smart kids with learning challenges struggle in school due to poor time-management skills. Arriving late, turning in assignments after they’re due, and pulling all-nighters before tests are both unproductive and stressful. Improving time-management skills now will help your child do better in school and succeed in life.
An important executive functioning skill is time management—the ability to accurately estimate time required, how much time one has, and allocate time effectively to meet deadlines. It also includes an awareness that time matters. Students who struggle with time management find that even their best-laid plans do not come to fruition. They are often running behind and can’t figure out how to fit everything in. If your child has problems in this area, use these guidelines to help strengthen this skill. Like most skills, time management can be improved with intentional, concrete instruction and practice.
TIMERS, TIMERS EVERYWHERE
The first step in developing time management skills is developing a general awareness of time. A child needs to be able to accurately estimate how long an assignment will take so they can allocate the time needed. Use timers to help them learn how much time activities actually take. Some great ones include the Time Timer and sand timers. Also, be sure there’s a clock in every room where your child spends time—even the bathroom.
Have your child practice by estimating how long they need to complete an activity—a particular homework assignment or a shower, for instance—and then have them set a timer to record the actual time they spend. As they practice with more and different activities, their time awareness will improve.
Pro-Tip: For kids that don’t know where to start when estimating their time, have them keep track of their activities over a 24-hour period or a week. Use different colors for different types of activities so they can really see their time.
This is an excerpt from EF Skills: Time Management, by Jenna Prada, M.Ed. Read the full article at SmartKidsWithLD.org.
