Strategy over speed: Helping your child manage their time

We often praise speed - quick finishers, fast readers, rapid problem solvers - but what if we started focusing on strategy instead? The best thinking isn’t about going faster, but going ‘better’. This starts with helping children develop time management as a skill, rather than a race. Time can feel abstract for many children. Without the right tools, they may rush through tasks, peak halfway or feel overwhelmed before they even begin.

We need to give children the confidence to take control of their time. It’s not about squeezing more into every minute, it’s about making every minute count. With a few creative approaches, we can help children see time more clearly, plan more purposefully and learn more calmly.

Here are some practical, strategy-based tips to support time management in a way that’s calm, structured and designed to stick.

Accuracy Before Fluency

Before we think about speed, we need to think about confidence. Children need time to get things right - whether that’s writing a sentence, solving a sum or planning a story. Rushing too soon can lead to mistakes, frustration and a loss of motivation. Instead, focus on building understanding and independence first. Let them practise until they feel sure. The speed will come.

Build Awareness of Time

Children often have their lives timetabled for them: they’re woken up, taken to school and moved from lesson to lesson by bells and adults. When it comes to managing their own time, they may have little sense of how long things actually take.

Try this:

• Choose a task (eg planning a story or writing a paragraph)

• Let your child work at a calm, natural pace, with no time pressure

• Record how long it takes

• Repeat this over several sessions

Now that you know how long tasks take, you’ve got really useful data. Use it to build a bespoke time strategy for your child. You can think of it as Save Time Vs Spend Time. If your child plans quickly but takes longer to write, they’ve ‘saved’ time in one area they can ‘spend’ in another. Each child’s pattern will be different – use the data to guide your expectations and planning.

Focus on Progress, Not Perfection

Time management is a skill. Like all skills, it needs practice. Mistakes and misjudged timings are part of the process. What matters is the reflection:

• What went well?

• What might we do differently next time?

• What helped us stay calm and focused?

Keep the tone encouraging. Small changes build big habits.

Exam Time Strategies

When it comes to formal assessments and tests, children can often panic or lose focus if they don’t have a time management structure in their head. A whole exam paper can feel overwhelming if tackled all at once. A good strategy is to divide a test up into parts.

For example, for a reading comprehension assessment, it can be broken down into reading the text, reading the questions, annotation, written answers and then checking. It is useful to allocate ideal time stamps for each part, based on the needs of your child. For this, there is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

If your child tends to get stuck on one question type for too long, practice moving on and coming back to it at the end. It’s about control, not panic.

Using Extra Time Effectively

For students with additional time, especially those with dyslexia or processing difficulties, using that time effectively and to their advantage can be a challenge. We regularly see children either rushing to get through and missing key elements or overthinking and start second-guessing themselves, quite often changing what were actually correct responses.

Here’s how to help them use their extra time with purpose:

• Plan the extra time into their approach. Don’t think of it as a bonus at the end; think of it as time to slow down throughout the whole paper

• Use it to re-read. Encourage reading the questions twice before answering.

• Check, don’t change. Teach them to look for errors or missed parts, but not to change answers unless they are sure. Many children panic-change correct answers into wrong ones. Practise trusting first instincts unless something obvious stands out.

• Breaks in thinking. Some children need  ‘stop and breathe’ points throughout to prevent fatigue or feeling overwhelmed. Taking regular short pauses can improve focus.

Using the extra time isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing better.

Final Thought

Time management isn’t about working more quickly, it’s about making time work for you. When children understand how to use time effectively, they can approach their work with much greater confidence and calm. If you’d like to discuss how we can advise you or support your child, please email us at info@linkythinks.com.