Looking for some ways to instil self-discipline into your high school student? Maybe you’re searching for some fresh ways to create an effective study routine.
If this is the case, you’ve come to the right place. Below, we’ve outlined the best ways to promote self-discipline and the study skills needed to get the most out of high school.
Check it out!
What is self-discipline?
How to Cultivate Self-Discipline in Your Child
Creating an Effective Study Plan
What kinds of skills will this develop?
Resources
What is self-discipline?
Having the ability to sustain motivation and engagement in academic endeavours is a fundamental skill for all children to develop. It’s a skill that’ll support them as they enter adulthood and will prove to be invaluable as they start uni and begin full time work.
The combination of engagement and motivation means students are able to meaningfully listen and participate in the classroom while retaining important information.
When motivation — the actions driven by passion and goals, usually without a huge amount of effort — feels unattainable, self-discipline takes the stage. Since it’s pretty common to feel demotivated, the ability to monitor and control one’s behaviours is essential when it comes to academic success.
Your child isn’t always going to love the maths topic they’re focussing on that week or will always feel hugely interested in the business assignment due in a couple weeks, so that’s where self-discipline comes in. It means they can continue pushing themselves through a particular circumstance despite feeling a lack of interest or motivation.
Self-discipline is all about internal work. It involves behaviour that goes beyond outer motivation, potential rewards, benefits or consequences. By inspiring self-discipline in your child, they’ll continue to study and work hard academically no matter the circumstance. And we all know practice makes perfect, so consistent work is always going to help.
How to Cultivate Self-Discipline in Your Child
Self-discipline is paramount to important life skills like independence, resilience, commitment, determination, accountability, and the list goes on.
Without self-discipline, your child may feel unprepared and uncertain of their abilities in uni and beyond. That’s why fostering these key discipline and organisational skills before Year 11 and 12 may be crucial — but it’s never too late!
The final years of high school are like the tests for life. If your child can organise themselves, be self-motivated and self-disciplined, they’re going to feel far more confident once they graduate.
In fact, our research showed that students unanimously agreed a key role their parents can play in helping them reach their full potential is to support them in becoming self-disciplined and organised!
As Aidan (94.75 ATAR) identified,
“My parents supported me by encouraging me to develop good study habits and personally taught me how to do this or taking me to seminars that would teach me these skills.”
This is something that Sidney (99.65 ATAR) and Julia (98.1 ATAR) respectively also reiterated,
“My parents provided me with lots of helpful and practical advice about how to organise my priorities, and were supportive of my goals, especially in stressful times.”
“My parents allowed me the responsibility to study within my own schedule after going through time and stress management skills with me.”
Since these skills are going to become more and more valuable for your child as they progress through high school, fostering them in Years 7 to 10 would do wonders for your child’s study, time management, overall organisation and responsibility.
This is perhaps best summed up by Kaayla (99.8 ATAR) and Felix (99.7 ATAR) respectively:
“I would recommend teaching their children methods to becoming self-motivated (such as writing prioritised lists as described above), so that these good habits will continue to be implemented throughout their lives.”
“My parents from a young age imbued a sense of self-worth and the need to achieve results be it in school or otherwise, for oneself rather than for someone else. They taught me the importance of being accountable for my own actions which kept me more honest than if they had leered over my shoulder constantly.”
Since it can be quite a harsh change for your child to suddenly be under the pump when it comes to self-discipline, make sure you communicate your goals with them. That way, you can co-create some realistic expectations so that they’re feeling involved and listened to. Still, expect some resistance since it may not always be well-received.
How to Create an Effective Study Plan
A major way to develop and monitor your child’s self-discipline is to create some kind of study routine.
If you’re stuck, you can start by checking out some of our previous articles on:
When it comes to study plans, you’ve got a range of options — from daily schedules, to weekly, to creating goals per-term. You could log every hour of every day or commit to a couple weekly expectations.
Wherever you and your child are at, study plans are great ways to monitor progress and ensure the best amount of study can take place, while making room for recreational and social activities.
Once you’ve both sat down and worked out the best way to hack the school year, it could be good practice to display the schedule in a public place, like the kitchen or smack bang in the middle of the fridge. This way, your child can feel like they’re responsible for their own success and can take accountability since everyone in the house is aware of their goals.
What kinds of skills will this develop?
Supporting your child as they learn essential self-discipline skills will have a knock-on effect on the development of a range of other lifelong skills, which will prove invaluable as they enter adulthood. A couple of these include:
#1: Time management
As your child begins to control and monitor their own discipline and work ethic, developing crucial time management skills will become easier and easier. Time management is a lifelong skill that will begin being important in high school and will become even more important as they learn to balance work, study and a social life.
To figure out the best time management strategies, it will be best to instil this skill in your child as soon as they enter high school. Then when they get to the HSC, it’ll feel like second nature. It’s going to require a lot of practice, so start small!
As a parent, you can begin helping your child track the best ways to make time for some reading, chores and then an episode of their favourite TV program. As they progress, you can start helping them block out these tasks over the day, delegating a couple hours for each.
It’s always good to separate these tasks with some fun activities. These can be either smaller and more frequent recreational activities or a totally free evening, so they have something to look forward to.
Often, having an end goal and something to work towards will motivate your child to work harder to get there. Eventually, the reward system won’t be necessary and they’ll be able to implement these strategies for themselves.
#2: Effective study habits and exam performance
As your child begins fostering this essential self-discipline and time management, they’re going to naturally figure out the ways to study that best works for them. They’re going to work out the best and most effective approaches to take to finish their homework and study as efficiently as possible.
With practice, your child is going to improve in note taking, problem solving and develop an efficient work ethic which will help them during their exams and beyond.
#3: Stress management
Since 1 in 3 students are stressed in high school, maintaining a healthy balance between work and play is going to play a fundamental role in stress management. At Art of Smart, we have an abundance of Wellbeing Resources for parents and students to access because we all know that high school is a stressful time!
Once your child begins practising self-discipline, they’re going to work out the best ways to balance school while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It’s important to make sure that your child is well aware of the importance of their mental health and not to let school get in the way of it.
#4: Goal setting and accountability
If the importance of self-discipline hasn’t been made extensively clear throughout this article, we’ve got one more reason for you!
It’s going to dramatically help your child gain critical goal setting and accountability skills. They’ll get used to creating their own goals to work towards while taking responsibility for their own success!
Where can you look for resources to help this?
Now that you’ve got the knowledge of why teaching your child self-discipline is vital to their academic and professional performance, we’ve got some resources that will transfer some of the pressure off your shoulders!
Some of these great online sites and books include:
#1: Secrets of HSC Success Revealed
In this book by Rowan Kunz, you and your child will have access to fundamental resources based on 8 years of research with the Top 2% of students from across Australia. Secrets of HSC Success Revealed provides a clear blueprint to academic success in school, from topics like memory retention to study note creation to time management and exam prep techniques. Plus it makes a great summer read!
#2: Art of Smart TV
Art of Smart TV is another great option for any avid television series watcher, you can break up your weekly Friends viewing with an Art of Smart TV video! Who would’ve thought studying could be that fun.
Art of Smart TV is an online video library that features interviews with Australia’s top high school students who share their best study strategies and exam tips.
#3: And, of course, yours truly, Art of Smart
What could be better than taking a scroll down the endless academic, wellbeing and social online articles that we offer at Art of Smart. It’s a rabbit hole of studious entertainment with articles all about University, Careers, Wellbeing, and the best ways to Study.
Your child can also access our FREE HSC video resource for more academic content here!
What could be better!?
To wrap it up, teaching your child self-discipline and time management skills is overwhelmingly tied into trusting your child. As long as you start cultivating these skills as early as possible (though it’s never too late), get ready to watch your child shine!
Are you looking for some extra help for your child during the HSC?
We have an incredible team of HSC tutors and mentors!
We can help your child master their HSC subjects and ace their upcoming HSC assessments with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or at one of our state of the art campuses in Hornsby or the Hills!
We’ve supported over 8,000 students over the last 11 years, and on average our students score mark improvements of over 20%!
To find out more and get started with an inspirational HSC tutor and mentor, get in touch today or give us a ring on 1300 267 888!
Gemma Billington is a Content Writer at Art of Smart and an undergraduate student at the University of Technology Sydney. While studying Journalism and Social and Political Sciences, Gemma enjoys spending her time at the gym or reading about Britain’s medieval monarchy – ideally not at the same time. She currently creates and administers social media posts for Central News and writes for the student publication, The Comma. After completing her undergraduate degree, she hopes to study a Masters of Medieval History and is very excited about the prospect!
