Did you know that organizational skills can have a profound impact on a child’s life including their happiness? Simple activities such as organizing can help reduce stress in kids. By emphasizing the importance of organization early in life, we can help children grow up to be highly successful adults.
If you want to invest your time and energy into making your family live a happy, healthy, and stress-free life, consider the following tips about helping your kids stay organized.
Declutter Your Home
Decluttering can help to drastically reduce stress levels. Children are overwhelmed when their environment is overtaken by lots of stuff. The brain cannot focus when there is too much stimulation. All the books, electronic devices, toys, and stuffed animals in the same space can get confusing. Your child does not know where to start or go next. Suddenly your child’s mind is overstimulated and the brain is racing with thoughts and choices that the mess presents. Overstimulation causes a child to be overtaken by experiences, choices, confusion, and activities. The child may have trouble coping with all the chaos.
Prevent unpleasant emotional overload and help your little ones get tidy. Cleaning up does not have to be a daunting task. Simply break organization down into steps. Provide practical storage containers to help your children organize belongings through color association. They can help put away items into certain colored bins when they are done playing with them. For instance, all dolls go in the pink container and all legos go in the yellow container.
This system for cleaning up shows kids that everything has a home and belongs in its color-coded place. Organizing by color helps your kids reinforce preexisting knowledge that they have to tidy up. It also helps them recognize patterns and sequencing. Children will feel empowered and their problem solving skills will improve. These reasoning skills will help them in all aspects of life, from friendship to school.
Donate Unnecessary Items
Donating items is a marvelous way to show your kids how to do declutter while also doing good. Children will discover how their actions can help make another boy or girl feel happy by giving away a toy they have lost interest in. In fact, donating items fosters gratitude and happiness. It allows them to see how they can be kind, share, and give back by letting go of some of the things they no longer need. Explain to them that instead of throwing used toys away, they can give them to families that are less fortunate. This also instills an awareness of sustainability. Instead of a toy going in the trash, it is sent to a donation center and can have a new home and be loved by another little boy or girl. Gratitude is powerful and is learned by taking actions like giving donations to those in need. An impactful way for your child to discover this virtue is through the art of organizing.
Establish Routines
Routines are a big part of organization. Routines help us provide structure to our daily activities. Children thrive with consistent parenting techniques and set schedules. To help alleviate anxiety, develop routines for the morning and bedtime. Involve your kids in the process by creating a checklist. Review with your children what they normally do when they first wake up and before they go to bed. Seeing their thoughts and logic helps them to process their habits and behaviors. You can modify the list together until it makes sense. It might look something like this:
Morning Checklist
1. Wake Up
2. Make The Bed
3. Eat Breakfast
4. Brush Teeth
5. Get Dressed For School
6. Get Your Backpack
7. Get On The Bus
Afternoon Checklist
1. Put Away Backpack
2. Eat Snack
3. Organize School Work
4. Complete School Work
5. Dinner
6. Free Time
7. Get Backpack Ready For The Morning
8. Brush Teeth
9. Go To Bed
Read and review the checklist with your child. Make a conscious effort to have your son or daughter check each item off the list when it is complete. Do not allow them to go to the next step unless they have completed the previous one. This holds them responsible and keeps them on track. That way they can’t skip homework and go directly to free time. Getting things like schoolwork done first allows children to complete the harder tasks and unwind later. Your kids will become more independent and rely less on the checklist over time. This independence boosts self-confidence and leaves children feeling fulfilled and accomplished.
Organize For Optimal Learning
The pressures and responsibilities that come from learning can make a child feel nervous and suffer from school-related anxiety. You can assist your children by helping them organize their school materials. Start with their backpack. Homework assignments and school flyers are often lost in messy backpacks. Make sure your child has a properly labeled folders to stay organized. Label one pocket “take home,” and the other “bring to school.” This will help them keep the papers from getting jumbled together.
Go through the backpack and folder together as soon as they get off the school bus or out of the car. Have your children review the school planner and homework assignments daily. You can break down the tasks into smaller chunks and make learning less monotonous. Hopefully, these techniques will help alleviate anxiety in your household.
How do you stay organized to reduce stress?
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