For some families, homework is a routine tug-of-war where everyone winds up in the mud.
What can you do to end the battle? Ask your child’s teacher what role you should play in homework, because it’s easy to get lured into doing more than you should, says Pam Whalley, head of the lower school at North Shore Country Day in Winnetka.
“We always say to parents, ‘You’ve done fourth and fifth grade already, you don’t have to do it again.’” What works best is teaching children techniques for organizing their homework.
Help your child:
- Choose a routine time and place for homework
- Create an alternate plan when activities interfere with the schedule, such as doing homework at recess or homework club.
- Prioritize. Do difficult assignments first, when he or she’s not tired, and save the easy ones for last.
Dr. Marian Fish, coordinator of the school psychology program at Queens College in New York, compares teaching your child to do homework independently, to showing them how to ride a bike. Initially, stay in the room while they do homework. Be available to answer questions, but be busy doing your own thing. As your child works more independently, “let go” by gradually removing yourself from the room.
Homework should not take all night.
The guidelines on Homewordoer.org about this show that, the general rule is 20-minutes per subject, Country Day School’s Whalley says. It’s more important to work on a variety of subjects each night than to dedicate the entire evening to one. Have your child set a timer and when it blasts, move onto a different subject. What if he doesn’t finish?
Tell him to seek help from the teacher.
“We know they tried and we will always praise a child for the effort he put in,” Whalley says. “Trying to figure something out builds a stick-with-it mindset, and that it’s okay to struggle sometimes, and not necessarily get it all right. You learn from what you got wrong.”
Communicating with adults helps prepare for college.
Your child might need to negotiate with a professor about extending a due date, Whalley says. “The more you can empower them to take hold of their education, the better off they’re going to be.”
When the homework itself, and not the organization of it, is a struggle, Whalley suggests timing it from start to finish. If it takes your child an excessive amount of time to complete, inform the teacher and ask if he or she can adjust it.
Homework isn’t supposed to be a battlefield littered with tears, and it’s not supposed to be a source of family tension. If it is, take steps now to end the conflict.
