Kids aren't the best with time management. A call on the phone or a spat on social media can cause a teen to lose all track of time. Before he or she knows it, they have to go to bed, losing time better spent studying, failing to do homework and forgetting all about their house chores.

Time management is an essential part of adult life, and it should be taught to your children at a young age.

Kids need to know how to manage their time effectively.

How can you help your kids properly manage their time to get through school, college and adult life with less stress along the way?

1. Help Your Kids Map Out Their Weeks

Mapping out your week is a very smart choice. When kids map their weeks out, it does a few things to teach them time management:

1. Helps kids visualize and see what they did the week before.

2. Helps kids see what they need to get done the coming week.

It's just as important for a child to have a schedule as it is for a parent. Your child's week should be mapped out with:

• Must-do items

• Want to do items

If your child keeps track of their day, with times listed and the activity undertaken, it will help them better prepare for their weeks ahead.

2. Break Tasks Into Smaller Tasks

Tackling a big task is very difficult to do. When a task becomes too daunting, it often leads to procrastination and abandoning the task. One of the fundamental techniques taught in time management and skills courses is to break large tasks into smaller tasks.

For example, telling your son to clean the yard is a big task.

But breaking down this task, you can tell him to:

• Rake the leaves in the front yard

• Pick up his bike and toys in the back yard

• Remove the debris from the driveway

• Mow the lawn

Of course, you will add to this list as needed. The goal is to outline what the larger task consists of when breaking them down into smaller tasks.

A little work goes a long way in ensuring that everything you want your child to do is completed properly.

3. Prepare Ahead of Time

When you prepare the night before, everything falls into place. A lot of parents forgot that there's a lot that kids actually do need to do. You can help your child prepare for their day ahead by ensuring:

• Clothes. Teach your kid at a young age to leave their clothes out the night before. You'll want to go an extra step and make sure to check the weather the night before.

• Lunch. School lunch should be prepared the night before. Go a step further and have your child make their own lunch. This is a great time to teach your child the importance of brain-healthy food.

• Backpack and homework. The night before, your child needs to make sure that their backpack is filled with all of the essentials they need for the next day. This means calculators, notebooks, pens, paper and textbooks should be packed in the backpack.

Planners work very well because they teach your children that they need to jot down the tasks they need to complete and cross them off when they're done.