Welcome to the new school year! In millions of households across the country, there is no greater drama than the nightly struggle to get kids to do their homework. How many parents would love to have a magic wand that could abolish the homework wars forever? There actually is such a wand, figuratively speaking, yet it derives its power not from magic, but from the hand that holds it.
We've all seen "homework guidelines," be they in self-help books, online, or in school handbooks. There are so many of them it can be confusing and overwhelming to the parent who is already confused and overwhelmed. In truth there are a few simple goals and principles that are intuitive and enable informed decisions about homework supervision down the road.
Most homework guides are quite lengthy and cover everything from helping your child create a distraction-free study zone to rounding up all the needed materials to establishing a reward system for homework completion. Many have expansive subsections about the additional measures to be taken by parents of children with learning or attention difficulties.
Here's how parents can help the "typical" child develop day-to-day self-reliance and, ultimately, strong lifelong study habits. While the stress of simply getting through each day of homework headaches is understandably the primary concern of many parents, the overarching goal of facilitating independent work skills in children is to prevent these aggravating battles in the first place.
The following four tips will help parents establish greater daily tranquility at the kitchen table, while propelling them towards one of the Holy Grails of parenting -- the eventual removal of themselves from extreme homework supervision, a not-so-fun sport.
1. Understand and make peace with the fact that your children may hate doing homework. It's just a reality that there are many more interesting things kids prefer to do, especially in the electronic age, and it is not always possible to make homework inherently appealing to them.
Accepting how your children feel about their homework is not the same thing as agreeing with them; it's about adopting a mindset that allows you to modulate how you approach your child's homework behaviors with basic empathy, while still setting rules, boundaries and reasonable expectations.
2. Try to facilitate rather than intimidate. I've been there. You can beg, plead, bribe, cajole and threaten, but these tactics only achieve temporary acquiescence, and in the long run lose effectiveness entirely, forcing you to continually find ways to up the ante. It's best to stay positive even when you don't feel that way. Use praise, focus on what kids are doing well, downplay poor performance, and in any way you can, defuse the tension.
Humor is always good. A little levity goes a long way towards cooling things down. Not feeling funny? Go online -- there are tons of websites with funny homework jokes and interesting celebrity quotes about homework. Let your children feel that you are on their team. You expect them to do their homework, but you will not engage in power struggles that exhaust everyone and serve as a passive-aggressive method kids use to continue avoiding the work.
3. Shift the responsibility from you to your child. This can be hugely challenging, but it is crucial that children learn as early as possible that if they do not do their homework, the consequences fall on them, not you. The only way they can learn this is if you are willing to let them fail. If this feels too difficult, I recommend reading Wendy Mogel's The Blessing of a B Minus. As long as you are providing appropriate support and a structured environment, it is OK to let your child assume the bulk of the responsibility.
Young children who are just learning to do homework obviously need hand-holding, but older kids, especially those nearing and in middle school, can be expected to be increasingly independent. They can come to you with questions, but it is not your job to "get them through" their homework every day by standing over them and interacting with them
the whole time. Unless you really enjoy that role, step out of it and let your upper elementary or middle school child try to fly solo, especially on routine homework. If he or she does not do it, let the zero or the "incomplete" be his or her teacher.
It is easier to let this happen to a younger child than an older one whose grades increasingly matter, so as soon as you feel your child is ready, give both of you the gift of letting natural consequences take their course. There are no guarantees that your child will stop procrastinating/not doing the work, but the odds of your child internalizing that this is not parent-homework, but kid-homework, do improve if you disengage from being sucked into being too hands-on.
4. Allow your child to experience the authentic pride in a job well done. If parents help too much with homework, kids are robbed of a primary benefit of homework, which is the satisfaction of learning and accomplishing something on their own. They don't really know this and might not be able to understand it, but you do. Kids who receive too much academic support sometimes learn to feel helpless, and remain overly reliant on adult support well into high school and often beyond. Kids grow into more capable and confident adults when they are allowed to succeed and fail on their own terms.
So this is not to say that you should never help your child with homework, just that you should pay attention and notice if your child has a knee-jerk dependence on you when the work becomes the slightest bit challenging. In those moments, "I know you can do it" goes a lot further than, "Here, let me see it," and the sooner you deliver this message, the easier on everyone. If you are already trapped in this cycle, breaking it will take time and patience, but can be done through careful planning and perseverance. If your child really needs significant extra help, or does not receive guidance well from parents, obtain a professional tutor or seek advice from the school. This allows you to stay only lightly involved, while remaining supportive.
All of the above suggestions assume that parents are taking into account the age of their children. Very young children should not be abandoned at homework time. It is all about the process of helping kids gain independence and self-reliance gradually over time. If the homework wars can be circumvented before they start, children are more likely to develop the independent study skills needed for the later grades by experiencing increased levels of personal responsibility across the earlier grades.
Parents will also experience increased levels of sanity -- a win-win!
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Ken Rabow: Four Steps to a Successful New Year in School
And reinforcing these natural "talents", if you will, will help them not only learn to play to their strengths in future homework assignments WITHOUT parental assistance, but learn how to use those strengths in life, as well.
At Kidzmet, we focus on Myers-Briggs personality type, multiple intelligences and VAK cognitive style analysis...but there are a myriad of other different theories out there, as well. As parents, it's our responsibility to root out the educational theories that most "speak" to us in relation to our unique families and help our kids learn how to apply them for greater school success.
Jen Lilienstein
Founder
http://www.kidzmet.com
My son had a teacher who would tell them stories about her school days all day and then give them all of the work to complete at home. I let her know that her poor planning would not take time away from my kids. It was stunning how little teaching was accomplished in this woman`s class.
I understand a parent and student`s responsibilities... we had 1 tv (in the living room), 1 computer (also in the living room) and video games could only be played in the living room so each night, we`d turn everything off until homework was finished. My guys are 19 and 24 and have a great work ethic... but, a teacher also has a responsibility to get their work done during the day and to have tight lesson plans. Parents should look at the homework coming from each class and not accept it when it`s something that should have been taught or allowed class time.
Now if you want to write an article about warring with a pre-teen every morning to stop being a drama queen because her hair is 1 millimeter off from where she expects it, that would be useful.
For people who have either a formal or self-acquired education, this shouldn't be too hard. Kids are pretty curious, and hopefully by the time they start school, you've helped them cultivate some interests beyond Bieber-fever (animals, music, stories, etc.). You can tie most unpalatable subjects to their own interests and use both your own knowledge and the vast amount of educational material on the web to pull them in - anecdotes, pictures, animations, simulations, etc. If they understand how math or physics factor into understanding those amazing space pictures, or how that dry Biology stuff relates to keeping Fluffy healthy and happy, they'll be less inclined to regard homework as torture. I would imagine it's easier with older children because you don't have to dilute the information as much.
For parents who might not know much about what the child is learning, I think it's a great opportunity to try and learn along with them. I think most kids like to show off, and if you put them in a position where they have to teach you, it will probably make them feel important.
I`ve found that when my kids were consistently given excessive homework, it means a teacher is a poor planner. My kids had some amazing teachers who were tough but who didn`t have to dump a days work on them every night and they had some poor teachers who would talk about personal things, leave the class for extended periods, play on the computer, cry and talk about their divorce (she was a real winner) and then panic at the end of the day and send home everything that should have been covered in class. Keeping track of homework patterns makes it easy to determine which homework is balanced and needed and which is covering for a teacher`s poor planning or work ethic.
Parents these days.....
If you want a child to succeed, it's necessary to set boundaries and rules and stick to them.
The one area he does well in is math. I somehow think this correlates to the fact that I've told him "I'm terrible with math, I can't help you with this one. What is it?" He likes showing me up, so he does it quickly and well! I guess I'll need to become inept at reading and essay writing too!
Still working on this.
No computer or video time until homework is done, and done well. Similarly, reasonable progress must be made on longer term assignments. Other activities that the kids like are also gated on their homework and chores.
Mean dad.
it works reasonably well.