When kids move from elementary school into middle school, workload increases, academic requirements get more strict and extracurricular activities can become more demanding. At the same time, classes typically shift from one main teacher and classroom to a schedule rotating through many teachers, leaving it to students to manage a much more complicated schedule.
“Teachers and parents tend to do all the heavy lifting for elementary-aged children, but there is a shift in expectations once a student moves into middle school,” says Jeannine Jannot, author of “The Disintegrating Student: Struggling But Smart, Falling Apart & How to Turn It Around” and a Roswell, Georgia-based parent and student coach who holds her doctorate in child and developmental psychology. “Not only are they dealing with awkwardly growing bodies, changing friendships and social pressure, but also feeling more responsibility for their academic and extracurricular success. Complicating matters more, they often waver between wanting to be treated like a kid that has adults taking care of everything and wanting to be treated like a grown-up who can handle everything without help.”
Put it all together, and time management for kids in middle school can quickly feel overwhelming. But with a better understanding of adolescent development and age-appropriate organizational skills strategies, parents and caregivers can lessen the stress for everyone.
Signs a middle school student is struggling with time management
It can be tricky to determine if your child is struggling with organization in particular as they navigate middle school. “You might see it as a general challenge with what’s called ‘executive function,’ or the ability to manage time and attention,” says Chris Balme, an educator based in San Francisco and the author of “Finding the Magic in Middle School.” “The most classic signal of struggles is a middle school backpack that looks like the aftermath of a natural disaster. Or you might see it in signs of stress in your child, which may come out verbally or in more subtle ways, like complaining of stomach aches.”
If you’re unsure if it’s time to step in and help your child with time management and organization, here are a few more red flags to consider:
- Missed assignments
- Homework your child seems to have no idea how to complete
- Finding no record of assignments anywhere written down
- Dropping grades
- Staying up late to finish schoolwork
- Being unorganized and unprepared
- Avoiding school or certain classes
- Forgetting schoolwork and obligations
How middle school brain development is linked to time management
“As young people enter middle school, they’re entering the second biggest period of rapid brain growth in their lives, topped only by early childhood,” says Balme.
The most significant development that occurs in the brains of children ages 10-15, which affects time management, is the progression from concrete to abstract thinking, explains Phyllis L. Fagell, licensed clinical professional counselor, a nationally board certified school counselor based in Bethesda, Maryland, and the author of “Middle School Superpowers: Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times.”
“This is the ability to predict how your effort today will impact the product tomorrow,” says Fagell. “In other words, the notion that the work you put in today can have a positive outcome in the future.”
While this notion may seem simple, it isn’t for a middle schooler. In fact, it’s not until around the seventh grade that adolescents begin to be able to think abstractly and hypothetically, which is a significant requirement when planning, explains Jannot. The lack of abstract thinking skills during the majority of the middle school years is critical for caregivers to take into account when supporting students.
“Every parent is anxious for their kids’ time management skills to kick in,” Jannot says. “But it’s so important to have reasonable expectations here because much of it has to do with what stage of brain development their child is in.”
“Teachers and parents tend to do all the heavy lifting for elementary-aged children, but there is a shift in expectations once a student moves into middle school.”
— Jeannine Jannot, author of “The Disintegrating Student: Struggling But Smart, Falling Apart & How to Turn It Around”
Tips for effective time management for middle schoolers
Finding the right strategies to help kids manage their time has less to do with them navigating middle school specifically and more to do with their developmental phase and particular needs, explains Fagell who also wrote “Middle School Matters: The 10 Key Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond – and How Parents Can Help.”
“It’s about teaching the systems that they will need to be successful in the future,” she says. “By the time they leave middle school, you want students to know how they learn best, how to ask for help, and what system works best for them when it comes to organizing and managing their time.”
Here, experts’ time management strategies for middle school kids.
1. Write down everything – yes, everything!
“When middle school students feel stressed and overwhelmed, often the cause is an organizational skill deficiency,” Fagell explains. “They would become less stressed if they start by learning how to develop those skills.”
One of Fagell’s favorite starting points for students to get organized requires nothing but a pen and paper. “You take all the junk, the to-dos, the assignments and you get them out of their head and onto paper,” she says. This process is referred to as cognitive offloading, or the act of reducing the need for mental processing through physical actions like writing down information or storing it on a device, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“This helps them clear out space in their brains to make room for figuring out how to get things done,” Fagell says.
And there’s a bonus: “As they tackle that list, they will actually get a dopamine hit just from accomplishing things they’ve written down. Anything that will give kids that kind of empowerment will give them more confidence in other areas as well.”
2. Keep reminders visible
Some kids may do well with electronic reminders, but some may be better keeping their organizational systems offline to minimize distractions. To take reminders offline, buy them a monthly planner and walk them through how to use it , advises Fagell.
But if a monthly planner is still visually too much for them, she suggests breaking it down by week to create clearer visual reminders of tasks. Her favorite tactic? Invest in Monday through Friday stickers that your student can write on. Put them on the top of a binder they look at every day, and every Sunday night, have them transfer everything from their monthly planner to those smaller daily lists so they are only looking at things a week at a time.
If time management is still proving to be a challenge, Jannot suggests having kids break it down even further. One trick she recommends in her book “The Disintegrating Student” is to take a piece of paper and fold it in half. Then, have your child write everything they need to do today on the left and everything for tomorrow on the right. At the end of the day, move any to-dos that they didn’t finish today over to tomorrow, and start fresh again the next morning.
3. Create a peer support group
Middle schoolers tend to overestimate how well they will remember material from class, so some may resist writing things down. If that’s the case with your student, Fagell recommends getting the names and numbers of at least two classmates for every class who they can call in case they are absent or simply have a question.
“Another kid may need a weekly five-minute meeting with the teacher just to make sure they understand assignments,” Fagell says. “It’s really about helping your kid develop those skills, and never shaming them for needing that support.”
“By the time they leave middle school, you want students to know how they learn best, how to ask for help, and what system works best for them when it comes to organizing and managing their time.”
— Phyllis L. Fagell, licensed clinical professional counselor
4. Identify big vs. small priorities
Students also tend to underestimate how much time their assignments will take so they often run out of time or stay up too late to get things done, says Jannot. Helping them learn to prioritize can ensure they get to the most important things first.
To help students identify top priorities, Fagell uses the analogy of trying to fit rocks, pebbles, and sand into an empty jar. “A rock is a must-do, like sleep and school,” Fagell says. “The pebbles are the should-dos and those might be things like an afters-chool job or commitments to your sports team. Then the want-to-dos are the sand, like Instagram, hanging out with friends.”
She teaches students that if you’re going to make things fit, big rocks must go in first. If you prioritize the sand, you can’t put in the rocks after and they won’t get done. “That is executive reasoning, and kids do not have an intuitive understanding of it in middle school, so it needs to be explained before they can put it to use.”
5. Schedule regular check-ins
When students stop asking for help, it can be hard for parents to know when to step in to help them manage their time, especially as middle schoolers are seeking independence.
“The need for time management changes as a child gets older, as they get more independent, and as they have more responsibilities,” says Mia Smith, an elementary school teacher and parent to a rising sixth grader and rising eighth grader based in Charleston, South Carolina. “As my child got older, she stopped asking for help, and I stopped checking over her homework for example. It was hard for me at first, but I realized it was her responsibility to get her work done.”
Parents always asking about schoolwork tends to backfire and make kids more stressed and less productive, says Jannot. She suggests making check-ins more subtle and planned. “I’m not an advocate for parents checking school portals every day to monitor their child’s schoolwork, but I do think it’s helpful for parents to set aside a time once or twice a week where they sit down with their student and check in,” Jannot says. “Perhaps they check the school portal together and use the opportunity to get on the same page and troubleshoot any actual or potential issues.”
6. Mark important dates on a family calendar
Smith has found success in organizing important upcoming events as a family. “I guess you can say I am old-school, because I like to have a physical calendar that I write things on, like project due dates, events, special theme days,” Smith says. “I personally like the visual. I do add things to my phone calendar too. However, to actually see how long we have until something comes up works well at our house.”
7. Put devices away
Research shows that kids who have their phone visible while they are trying to complete a task have a lot harder time getting it done, points out Fagell. “Even when they are not engaging, the phone can get in the way of the efficiency.” For that reason, she recommends putting devices away while schoolwork is being done. And make sure children don’t have devices in the bedroom that can keep them up.
Balme also recommends considering placing rules on technology use in general, as middle schoolers are particularly prone to addictive use of social media and games because of their strong social drive. “Not all online technology is bad,” he says. “But without guidelines and support, they may not manage their time well if they have unlimited access to devices.”
8. Breakdown long-term goals into small steps
An abstract deadline, like a paper due in two weeks, doesn’t mean much to a middle schooler, explains Balme. “Since they probably don’t yet have the skills to break it down into steps and spread those out across several dates, one of the best ways we can help them is to translate abstract tasks, like long-term deadlines, or preparations for a try-out or play, into a sequence of more concrete steps.”
Fagell recommends visualizing a long-term goal as a ladder. “Have them break down and draw their goal as a ladder that has a series of different rungs,” she says. They can then designate each rung as a different step that needs to get done to reach the final goal. “Then I tell them to break it down even further and add more rungs. There are always more steps than they think!”
9. Ask for help from other adults
Because of their developmental stage, parents should feel empowered to enlist the help from other adults to support their middle schooler, according to both Fagell and Balme. “It’s developmentally normal for middle schoolers to want to share less with their parents and connect more with peers and other adults, so you may want to ask one of these people if they’re picking up signals that students are struggling,” Balme says.
Fagell recommends gathering clues like an anthropologist. Speak with teachers, coaches, advisors and any other adults working with your child to put together a narrative of what they could be needing help with.
“When it comes to helping middle schoolers, you can’t leave it to one person,” Fagell says. “If you are teaching a middle schooler, whatever subject it is, you are also teaching executive functioning and organization. These are things that can come up in the context of any situation, advisory group, social emotional interactions, study groups.”
“Success begets success with this age group. Highlighting what they do well, and working with their strengths can make all the difference.”
— Phyllis L. Fagell
10. Work with your student’s personal strengths
If you suspect your student is having trouble staying organized, start by speaking with them. “Help them label their feelings by checking in,” she says. “They may say they are overwhelmed or stressed, but if you dive deeper, it could be one class that is the issue and taking up all their time.”
From there, help them formulate a plan that works best with their individual traits and needs.
“Success begets success with this age group,” Fagell says. “Highlighting what they do well, and working with their strengths can make all the difference.” For example, if your child is really social, then it may be great to have them ask friends for help, she explains. “If you have a kid who has a hard time socially, however, then maybe start with asking a teacher to pull them aside to make sure they understand an assignment and they have a plan.”
A final word on helping middle schoolers with time management
No matter which strategy works best for your child, it’s important never to have an adversarial response. “Rather than approaching issues from a point of frustration and conflict, what you really want to be doing is to augment their skills and to support them in a way that they need,” Fagell says.
Ultimately, middle school should be viewed as an opportunity to both learn and practice time management in a way that is more low stakes than high school, says Jannot.
“Ideally, parents shift from doing all the heavy lifting to coaching and supporting their kids as they take on more and more responsibilities around planning, managing and executing how they spend their time,” she explains. “Parents and teachers should not expect a smooth transition here; this skill takes time and lots of opportunities to learn from mistakes and missteps to master.”
