We can forget how much of an impact we have on our children. When it comes to getting ready for college, we may think that our job is very simple: to ensure that our children study. But if we provide the wrong environment or we don’t enforce it the right way, this will have a more devastating impact on their academics than we realized. To make sure our children are studying effectively, we’ve got to make sure the environment is effective so their frame of mind is ready for study. How can you make the environment and the mindset work together?

Minimizing External Stresses

We all have an inherent need to procrastinate on occasion. If you have spent a long time trying to get your children to study and were met with resistance every step of the way, it’s hardly a surprise that when they need to knuckle down and study, they will look for any reason to avoid it. Even something that is not their responsibility can be the perfect excuse. It’s about making sure that they have a conducive study area, but this means that you need to realize the impact of a perfect study area.

By creating an environment that is not too hot, not too cold, not too bright, and not too noisy is crucial. This means making sure everything is working as it should. For example, something as noisy as the air conditioning can be a distraction and if it’s not working properly, the environment will be completely uncomfortable, and there are plenty of 24 hour AC service providers that can help people. It’s about getting all those little things correct. 

When Do They Focus Best? 

The fact is that when we are trying to get our children to study, it may be after a long day of school and extracurricular activities. If we want our children to focus, it depends on the time of day they focus best. Typically, studying is all about the long cram sessions, but this is not conducive to absorbing any form of information. Make sure that information is broken down into manageable chunks and find the time they work and understand concepts best, but also make sure that each approach is easily digestible. One of the chronic mistakes children make is that they are not able to study properly because they are doing it with the wrong attitude. Some people are studying purely to remember enough facts and figures for exams, but the real benefit of studying properly is about applying what you have learned. A specialist called Jim Kwik has created a very interesting acronym called FAST which can help people to learn better, and you can find the link here. 

Studying is one of those things that we all hate doing, but to do it effectively, we’ve got to fix our frame of mind as well. In order to make studying a rewarding experience, we’ve got to take the stress out of it. If you can help your child study in the right ways, it will set them up far beyond college.