Source: Carl Pickhardt
Time is very artificial and absolutely real. We create and depend upon it to measure, organize, celebrate, and manage our daily experience of life. It’s a very large topic for a very small blog, but here goes.
Particularly during their child’s adolescence, parents need to weigh in to support the constant reckoning of time. They do so to encourage the young person to routinely ask her or himself three basic time-assessment questions about daily experience, each of which has safety value.
- From the past: what occurred worth keeping constantly in mind? Lessons from good times and bad are worth remembering. “I won’t be repeating what didn’t work before.” So recall history and remember.
- From the present: What’s going on that needs constant attention? Basic responsibilities at home and school must be regularly accomplished. “Some things I need to do every day.” So pay attention and concentrate.
- From the future: What might happen that’s worth anticipating?” The risks of new challenges and adventures are worth considering. “I must consider outcomes that might possibly occur.” So think ahead and anticipate.
With increasing developmental change going on, it can be easy for adolescents to lose momentary track of all in life that matters. So parents should try to encourage them to maintain full-time awareness.
Time and demand
Filling life with demand and stimulation, adolescence is both exhausting and exciting. There is a growing demand for doing or action. Too much demand can create one kind of human problem: stress from too much to do. Too little demand can create another kind of human problem: boredom from too little to do. Sometimes adolescents vacillate between these two extremes, and it’s hard to maintain a comfortable mix of in-between.
A modification of that old equation for calculating physical speed—Rate = Distance/Time—can help with learning to manage time challenges. Only here we are talking about regulating one’s speed of life = how much demand/to be accomplished how soon. The more demand, the shorter the response time, the more pressing life becomes.
To help keep oneself from paying the anxious price of having too much to do in too little time one must either limit demand or moderate time. “I’ve learned to prep for tests in advance, not cram an all-nighter, and take the exam feeling exhausted.”
Teaching about time
From an early age, children receive a host of formative messages that shape youthful sensitivity to the importance of honoring time—for looking back at, living within, and anticipating what to expect.
Used to following schedules at home and school, children learn to become time-sensitive and to give timely compliance to what needs to happen when. More self-determined adolescents, however, can bridle at this tyranny of time and be more protective of their personal freedom, becoming more forgetful, impatient, and resistant to its demands for the sake of independence.
Attending to time
Managing one’s time has to do with managing one’s life time. As one grows older in a world that becomes more complex, managing time becomes harder to do, as adolescent complaints can testify: “I lost track of time,” “I ran out of time, “There’s never enough time,” “I need more time!” “It’s my life time!”
In adolescence, one personal protector from possible harm is paying attention to all three facets of time, all the time. This requires:
- Remembering what one has learned,
- Concentrating on current experience,
- Anticipating likely possibilities.
As life becomes increasingly complicated, for safety’s sake, past, present, and future personal time must be constantly kept in mind. When they are not, common time lapses and regrettable decisions can occur.
- “I just forgot.” Past memory is lost or ignored.
- “I wasn’t concentrating.” Present attention is distracted.
- “I didn’t think ahead.” Future possibilities are not considered.
Time management questions
So what are some key time questions young people should constantly ask of themselves? Consider these:
- “What have I learned from past experience?” Remembering matters: so reflect back before deciding.
- “Where should I pay current attention?” Focusing matters: so concentrate on here and now before deciding.
- “How might present choices create future problems?” Predicting matters: so anticipate possibilities before deciding.
Adolescence Essential Reads
Reflecting, concentrating, and anticipating are time management skills that consult past, present, and future history before deciding. In the rush and urgency of adolescent change, it can feel hard to take the time to always do this. It can feel easier to let social pressure, temptation of the moment, or emotional impulse rule.
Time and substance use
Of course, substance use doesn’t help. Impairing judgment and sense of time, intensifying the power of now, substances can cause a young person not only to become more impulsively driven, but also to more easily fail to recall, concentrate, and foresee.
Loss of sobriety can impair the sense of time, sometimes endangering safety in the bargain. “I didn’t remember.” “I wasn’t paying attention.” “I didn’t think ahead.” Thus, a sober passage through adolescence is the safest of all—learning from past time, focusing on present time, thinking about future time, and keeping a clear mind all the time.
Time and adolescence
Adolescence can be a fun time, a lonely time, an exciting time, an impulsive time, an impatient time, a fast time, a boring time, a hard time, a sad time, a nervous time, an embarrassing time, a painful time, a scary time, a friend time, and all in the same day!
On these and many other counts, the sense of time affects experience. So, by example, insistence, and instruction, what time management advice do parents want to give their teenager? Perhaps they can simply suggest this. All the time:
Remember the past: What have you learned from experience?
Attend to the present: What do you notice that is happening now?
Consider the future: What can you anticipate that may possibly occur?
At an age where they’re encountering more worldly complexity, growing curiosity, situational risk, faster pace, increasing substance use, and social pressure, teenagers can become more forgetful, more impatient, and less forethoughtful, and this can have significant costs.
So, with the onset of their child’s adolescence, it’s important that parents talk with their daughter or son about the protective value of taking time to think before actions are taken, being ever mindful of the past, staying focused on the present, and being forethoughtful of future possibilities because their life is going to keep changing all the time.