RIYADH, 7 August 2007 — During summer, many Saudi families complain of children sleeping late, waking up late and wasting time watching TV and on the Internet. So how can we adhere to the concept of “Time Management” and prepare our children to be more organized during the school holidays?
Time management is crucial for a happy life. For adults, there are many organizations that run programs to encourage them to learn the techniques of being organized to get the most out of their lives. Many of these organizations highlight the difficulties that adults face in their pursuit of an organized life.
In relation to this, organizations stress the importance of teaching children basic management techniques as early as possible. Day, week and month charts are used to help children organize themselves for a certain event or to simply make use of their time in a positive way.
Adela is a young workingwoman and mother of a nine-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy. “My working hours are long and when I’m out of the house, my kids spend their time sleeping or watching TV. Therefore, I look for summer camps to make sure they spend their time doing something useful,” she said.
Although many summer camps are expensive, Adela continues to send her children to them.
Hania is a 40-year-old housewife and mother of four children, including an 11-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. She was faced with a dilemma when her older children went abroad earlier this summer and her two younger children were left bored at home.
“It becomes hectic and expensive to take them to arcades everyday. Therefore, I put them in a summer camp for four weeks. But, unfortunately, I had to pull them out, as the camp did not meet my expectations and my kids were wasting time there,” she said.
Some summer camps, like the one used by Hania, take advantage of the fact that most mothers opt to put their kids somewhere to keep them busy, rather than keeping them home where there is nothing to do except watching TV and playing video games.
Salwa, another Saudi mother, believes that summer camps are just another way of wasting time, as many only contain activities such as games. Because of this Salwa decided to send her 14-year-old boy and 10-year-old son to a new mathematics camp.
“This will teach them the concept of making the best out of their vacation by learning something useful,” she said, adding that time management is a concept that is not stressed in schools and that children are therefore unable to manage their time properly.
According to Michael Grose — a popular parenting expert, parent coach and the author of seven books for parents, including the best-selling “Why First Borns Rule the World and Last Borns Want to Change it” — children can be helped to become organized in the early years of school by encouraging them to develop a time chart that helps them plan ahead.
In the West, many primary school teachers include time management in their programs as they know that children with good organizational skills are more likely to be able to cope with secondary school where they have multiple teachers who all set homework.
As children progress to the upper end of primary school, more complex management and planning skills are needed. This is particularly the case when dealing with homework.
