Both of my teenage girls have left traditional brick and mortar high school in favor of earning their high school diplomas online through the Penn Foster High School. On the one hand, that situation has certainly lent us a lot of flexibility as a family, and mornings are MUCH easier these days since we don't have to struggle to beat the clock in order to get them off to school on time. Neither of them, especially my oldest daughter, are really what you'd consider "morning people," so prior to enrolling them in Penn Foster it was tough at times to get them started in the early morning hours. To be perfectly honest, I still find it a bit ridiculous that school starts so early that students have to wake up at 5:30 AM in order to get ready and make to school before the bell.

If you have teenagers, you probably already know that keeping them focused on anything serious can be difficult. Right now, that's our biggest challenge with them: keeping them focused on their school work. When it comes to school work, they both run sort of hot or cold. Either they're really into it and plow through their assignments one right after the other, or they tend to leave their work lay around a while so they quickly find themselves falling behind.

I've tried to explain to them that doing a little bit at a time is a lot easier than getting behind and finding themselves facing a big pile of work. That big pile can be daunting on the surface, which makes it even more difficult for them to motivate themselves to kick it into gear. I mean, that sort of reaction to a large amount of work is really just human nature, isn't it?

Now that's great advice I'm giving to my teenagers of course, but to be honest I'm as big a procrastinator as they are. So while I'm handing them that advice, I also have to remind myself of the same thing. I hope that I learn that lesson for myself, but I really hope they learn that lesson so that they don't fall into that trap later in life.