It can be hard work getting your kids up and ready for the day each morning, making sure they do all their chores, clean their teeth, pack their school bags, and everything else. Some kids may be good at it, but for most parents it is a daily challenge.
Here are some tips to help make your mornings easier, as well as some useful apps that your kids can use to become more self-reliant.
Give Them Responsibilities
Create a schedule of chores for your children. Set simple tasks for them to do, like cleaning their teeth and packing their bags. Then provide them with a visual way to see what they have accomplished, like a chart for them to check off.
Reward Them for Hard Work
When your kids have chores to do, make sure these are prioritized, and then reward them for their hard work. For example, you could let them watch TV for half an hour once they have done them all, and this way they’ll learn that hard work is rewarded.
Get Some Help from Useful Apps
These days, there are lots of apps available that can help your kids to become more self-reliant. If your kids have smartphones, download some useful apps for them and encourage them to use them.
One to try out is Remember the Milk. This is one of the most popular reminder apps, and it is ideal for older children. It’s a great way to organize tasks and mark them off, and you can help them to fill out their tasks to tick off.
A weather app can be useful as well. If they are going out to school or play and deciding what to wear, they will need to know what the weather will be like. Download this weather app by Apalon Apps for a free and accurate weather forecast, and encourage them to check the weather themselves rather than asking you.
For older kids, Evernote is the perfect organization app. Create a shared folder and use it to update tasks. Create a checklist in a note for each of your children, and then you can see when they mark off their tasks.
Or you could use the Google Drive app. Create a shared spreadsheet in Sheets, and write down tasks for all of your kids. You can all access the spreadsheet at the same time, and they can then mark them off or add their own notes.
Time Timer is a good timer app that you may want to try out. Time management is a useful skill for kids to learn, and this app can help them develop their skills.
Help Your Kids to Become More Self-Reliant
These are some useful tips and apps to help your kids become more self-reliant. Helping your kids to help themselves can be a long process, but it can also be an enjoyable and rewarding one. So follow these tips, and try out some of the above apps to improve your kids’ morning routine.
This guest post was written by Kyle Thomas, a dad of two sons ages 5 and 7. He writes about parenting from a Father’s perspective, and shares some tips and stories in his articles.