There Needs to Be Consequences for Procrastination & Tardiness

September 28, 2023

As a school principal, I saw a lot of late-arriving students to school, and 99% of the time these tardy kids were repeat offenders. Their tardiness greatly concerned me since studies show that a child who has multiple tardy mornings in the early school years will end up with troubles in high school, be it because of this bad habit they’ve developed that connects stalling to get out of the house to stalling to get homework completed or be it because they consistently missed critical morning instructions and over time this accumulated to learning-loss.

The reasons parents gave me for their kids arriving late were typically due to one of three causes. Sometimes the child was to blame as he or she was being difficult for the parent to get out of bed and/or the parents and child would be frantically running around the house after breakfast trying to find the child’s homework, backpack, or jacket. Sometimes another sibling was to blame for the tardiness, if it was a family with multiple kids and one child in the pack delayed everyone leaving the house due to that one sibling’s procrastination or laziness. And there were many times the parents were the cause of the child repeatedly arriving late to school. Not so coincidentally, these parents were also the ones who most likely were arriving late to their own jobs, were late in paying school tuition, and didn’t often follow through with other school-related tasks such as turning in forms or showing up for school events.

Just as an adult with a job would need to make sure he or she gets up on time on a workday morning, dresses properly for the job, and arrives on time to start the workday, so too does the elementary and high school-aged youngster need to be the one responsible for getting prepared in the morning and arriving at school on time. Of course, a primary grade child will need much more hand-holding with this, but a fourth through twelfth grader should be able to take care of most to all of these morning tasks.

If the culprit for the tardy school arrivals is the parent, setting mom’s or dad’s alarm clock 10-minutes earlier is such an obvious action to take. When the culprit is a child in the family, the corrective action to take depends on what is slowing down the student from making it to the car or bus on time each morning. If the problem is the child is running around the house most mornings like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find his or her homework, backpack, or jacket, having your child place his or her homework-inserted backpack right by the house’s exit-door each evening is a smart move, as is having the clothes for the next day laid out each night. These should be requirements for all the kids in the family before going to bed.

If the problem is your child refuses to get out of bed or purposely stalls in finishing breakfast, showering, or brushing teeth, it may take a dramatic incident to shake the child into stopping this sluggish bad habit. Try this technique, which worked for several parents I counseled. After giving a countdown of warnings (“Ten minutes until we leave…”, “Five minutes until we leave…”, etc.), if your child is still not ready to leave when the timer hits zero, you will have to show your child that you mean business. Just drive out of the driveway with your child still in the house, and head to school so the siblings won’t be late or if you have just the one kid, head to your work so you won’t be late. Keep looking at your rearview mirror as you drive away down your street, as your child may eventually come running out of the house, screaming or crying, and if you haven’t made it down the street yet, you should stop to let in your child – without putting the car in reverse but making him/her walk down the block to the car. If this happens, when he or she opens the car door and is doing a combination of yelling and crying, you should matter-of-factly state that there is an announced, exact time to leave and hopefully next time your child will choose to make it to the car without having a frantic concern of being left behind.

Now, if you don’t see your child in the rearview mirror running to catch the car, and your child is old enough, you should not turn around and start honking in the driveway. This is bad for both of you, as it will cause you to scream at your child when he or she eventually comes out of the house, and it will bolster in your child the realization that there really isn’t a consequence for procrastination.

Make sure if this older child misses school because of sluggishness, that you let the teacher know and ask his or her help in also doling out natural consequences. Hopefully it will involve some suffering like having your child missing all recesses the next day in order to make up the missed work. And definitely make sure you haven’t left fun things in your house for your hooky-playing child, so that might mean when you were counting down with a “Five minutes until we leave…” warning, you also were removing the power cords to the video game console and verifying that your home’s Wi-Fi is shut off but a “dumb” phone is available for phone calls.

If your child isn’t old enough to be left alone, you won’t be able to literally drive totally away if he or she doesn’t come running out of the house after you drive down your street, but you can still start the car and drive off the driveway and then slowly moving down the street, hoping that the threat of departure is enough to shake your child into learning the outcome of unpunctuality. Perhaps you have an already established consequence you told your youngster, such as for every minute you have to wait in the idling car your child needs to put in a minute that evening in extra family chores.

The key lesson for parents in how to improve your child’s punctuality is to be matter-of-fact with a countdown and don’t add on extra time after your “ten minute warning buzzer” hits zero or let your child off the hook for his/her responsibility. When your favorite football or basketball team is behind on the scoreboard, the last seconds of the clock run out, and the end-of-game horn sounds, the referees don’t give them a second chance by adding another minute on the clock. No. Your team loses.

You want your procrastinating child to understand the consequences of not getting the job done by the time the clock runs out. Better to have some arguments and tears in the early school years when your child is 7 or 10 years old than to never help your child build in this important trait and then in later years the late-arriving-child will be severely impacted in serious milestones such as college acceptance and keeping a job.

There is often one basic reason your kid puts off chores and homework and doesn’t seem to care about being on time for school. Your child knows he or she can get away with it. Children learn to read mom and dad and know when parents are bluffing. If a parent threatens to do something – such as leave for school with the other siblings but leave the stalling-child at home – but doesn’t follow through, the child will never change.

Effective parents make sure their youngsters know what their responsibilities are, what the approaching deadline is – whether it’s the 10-minute warning before leaving for school or the need to finish all homework before turning on the TV or technology-device – and what the consequences are should they fail to complete the task on time. These parents end up helping their children take their duties more seriously and motivate them to follow through when asked.