How to Encourage Good Study Habits in a Teen

Even strong students can flounder in the face of added challenges and greater expectations in the upper grades. Here's how you can reinforce basic study habits with your teen.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Desk Lamps
• Hot Chocolates
• Bulletin Boards
• Calendars
• Colored Ink Pens
• Highlighter Pens
• Personal Organizers
• Spiral Notebooks
• Computers

1. Make sure your child enters his or her upper-grade studies with strong reading skills. If your teen hasn't learned to read, he or she can't read to learn.

2. Help your teen organize the three S's: stuff, space and schedule. Middle school and high school assignments often need to be managed over weeks or months, so it's crucial to get organized.

3. Review your child's assignments periodically. Ask him or her to describe what each requires, where the project stands, and what's needed for completion, as well as the plans for wrapping it up.

4. Be sure your teen builds regular study time into his or her schedule. Most tests are scheduled well in advance, and 20 minutes of review each night will produce much better results on Thursday's biology exam than pulling an all-nighter on Wednesday.

5. Take a hard look at your teen's overall time commitments. Do the hours devoted to a part-time job, extracurricular activities, socializing or household chores crowd out prime study time? You may need to help your teen refocus on priorities.

6. Be supportive. You may not be able to offer much practical help with calculus homework, but you can provide encouragement, empathy and maybe a mug of hot cocoa to break up a long study session.

Tips & Warnings

• If you think your teen is overdoing it, step in. School success is important, but not more so than your teen's health and well-being. Too many nights of studying into the wee hours may signal an overly ambitious academic schedule, a perfectionist attitude or both.