Time Management can be Taught to Gifted Children at an Early Age

Teach time management concepts, skills, and strategies to pre-schoolers when it can be taught as a game, and they will absorb it like a sponge.

In my opinion, time management is one of the greatest skills a gifted child or gifted adolescent, or any child or adolescent for that matter, can possess. For gifted kids who tend to get stressed out, experience bouts of anxiety, and lose self-confidence, juggling school, extracurricular activities, and home life can become a chore that involves all of the members of the family who are, no doubt, juggling the stresses of their own lives as well. I like the fact that parents don't have to wait for their kids to reach high school, or even middle school or junior high before teaching them the physical, emotional, and mental benefits of staying organized, because time Management is an organizational tool made up of small strategies that can be individually taught beginning at an early age. A great bi-product of early time management lessons is an early introduction to the concept of time, and a chance for a child to experiment with what time means to him or her as an individual. Repetition of the game "let's see how many toys you can pick up in a minute; now let's see how many toys I can pick up in a minute," allows children to function within the constant of time and learn that it's their actions, not time itself that is flexible. The game may not seem like it does a whole lot of anything other than getting the playroom tidies up, but young kids are sponges, they absorb what they experience. And even if they don't apply the knowledge right away, know that it's being stored to later be wrung out when all of the information needed to make the connections is in place.