A habit to help the hard things
A new academic year, a new schedule, new demands and for many the same old homework/instrument practice struggle.
As you plan the schedule and allow time for football and a play date and music lessons and swimming and the balance of child care, child’s interests, social life and work and the million other demands parents need to balance for an academic year, schedule the thing that is a struggle. Schedule the time you will do homework and/or schedule the time you will prioritise the piano practice.
When you are choosing this time think of two things can you do it in that time consistently every week and can you tag it on to something that already happens every single week. If one child is at ballet and the other child is stuck sitting in the waiting room or in the cafe across the road every week anyway this could be an optimum homework time. Dinner is over, homework is done, teeth are brushed and you have 15 minutes before bed tag in the piano practice every day.
The child wakes early in the morning and you build the routine - up, dressed, breakfast, spellings, teeth and out the door. It is looking to what could build a habit. It almost becomes instinctual to have breakfast and then practice my spelling. Lots of parents and children do this already. They read just before bed. It started as part of a calm, consistent bed time routine and transitioned over time from the parent reading to the child to the child reading to the parent.
In the behavioural science world this is called building an environmental operant we make the routine the instigator of the activity. I am in this place, at this time and i should be doing x. As an adult you may notice that you work best in a specific place at a specific time. There may be a cafe or library that you focus really well. A spot in the house of only in the office you can really focus and do some deep learning. This was built over time as an environmental operant. For people who remember or did the transition between schools or from schools to university they may have noticed that they initially found it hard to study or focus on a new environment. This also happened in the pandemic. It was so hard to work from home and then tricky to transition back. There are even people who will now only complete certain work tasks in certain locations.
For approximately 6 years I travelled every second Wednesday to the South of France for work and come back every Friday evening. I consistently worked on every flight, saving reports, invoices, email correspondence for the flight - never wanting to waste that time and bring work home. To this day when I get on a flight anywhere I feel like I should be working and feel guilty - it is a natural initiator of deep work.
There are so many things to schedule, so many things to do, what if putting a little extra effort in now, doing it consistently for a few weeks that it then almost initiates itself. It builds the routine, the habit, the intrinsic motivation to do homework, or practice spellings and get the practice for instruments complete daily.
When I give ‘homework’ or a task that needs to be completed to aid generalisation I will almost always set a time, place and frequency with the child. You need to do this every morning on the way to school. Every time you brush your teeth you must do… I am mostly integrating the learning, the target, the homework into the regular day, ‘stacking’ it to another habit or another demand.
In the schedule, as you plan, schedule the things that need to get done every week, the activities that you know are potentially a struggle and let behavioural science help to build the habit
