4

Homework

There’s a reason why the word homework is usually uttered with a groan. Unless you’re a kindergartner who’s excited to be “old enough” to have homework, it’s usually not much fun and akin to a chore. Think about it; when you get home from work, what’s the very last thing you want to be doing? More work. Children feel the same way. It’s unsurprising, then, when homework becomes a source of conflict and confrontation between you and your child.

From your perspective, doing well on homework leads to good grades, good grades lead to a good college, a good college leads to a good job, and a good job leads to good money and success in life. You are able to understand the future, abstract benefit that you do this for, but your child has no way to imagine the importance of choosing a college or future earning potential.

It can be easy to get too aggressive about making sure homework gets done and, in the process, lose sight of the need for your child to develop and practice the skill of doing homework, which is no different from any other complex skill he is learning in school. As with most aspects of parenting, helping your child improve at doing homework takes time, persistence, and consistency. There will be assignments that don’t get done or turned in, and other little failures along the way. This is all part of the learning process and can lead to better homework habits when the stakes are higher.

As your child gets older (and homework gets harder), this source of behavior problems can become entrenched in your relationship with your child, so it needs to be dealt with at the earliest opportunity. Poor study habits, or allowing yourself to essentially do your children’s homework for them because it’s easier and faster, can become a difficult cycle to break unless it is caught early.

An irony we’re sure is not lost on you when you are facing these issues is that most schools don’t teach students how to do homework. They teach the subject matter, but often leave the study habits to you. From the first kindergarten worksheets on the alphabet to the square root of –4, homework is a skill that is acquired and developed over time—kids don’t start school knowing how to do it. Complicating this situation is the fact that you might not even recognize the concepts your children bring home. Between nationally based curriculum and online high-stakes standardized testing, kids today are learning more at earlier ages and in more ways than ever before.

In this chapter, we help you understand your child’s learning style, instill motivation for learning, and kickstart the process for helping your child work independently. We offer strategies for making homework less painful for your kids and less stressful for you, with a special section for working with gifted children. It is crucial that your child not only develop good study habits, but also a good attitude about school and learning in general in order to be a successful student. Learning subject matter is great, but loving to learn is exponentially more powerful.

Learning subject matter is great, but loving to learn is exponentially more powerful.

Understand Learning Styles

It will be helpful for you to understand your child’s preferred learning style. Any time we are faced with the task of learning something new, the brain’s learning and memory systems are activated. Each of us is wired to learn a little differently, and as a result we each have our own styles, some of which are more efficient than others. It’s the efficiency of learning, the ability to learn the material well in the easiest way possible, that psychologists look at when they’re working with a patient. A person doesn’t learn exclusively one way, but by looking at how we feel most comfortable learning something new or acquiring a new skill we can deduce some of our learning preferences. By recognizing your children’s preferences, you can play to their strengths when helping them learn.

While there are many models of how we process new information, there are three learning styles that are most frequently identified: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

Visual Learning

Visual learners need to see the teacher’s body language and facial expression to fully understand the content of a lesson. They tend to prefer sitting at the front of the classroom to get the best view. They may think in pictures and learn best from visual displays, including diagrams, illustrated text books, videos, and handouts. During a test, they may remember their notes by actually visualizing them (for instance, where on the page a specific fact was written).

Auditory Learning

Auditory learners tend to learn best from verbal lectures, discussions, talking things through, and listening to what others have to say. They interpret the underlying meaning of information by understanding the words and concepts as described by language. Written information may have more impact if it is also heard. Auditory learners often benefit from reading text aloud, recording it, and then listening to the recording later.

Kinesthetic Learning

Kinesthetic learners tend to learn best through a hands-on approach, actively exploring the physical world around them. They want to handle something, touching or manipulating it in order to understand it. They often find it hard to sit still for long periods and may become distracted by their need for activity and exploration. However, when allowed to learn by doing, these individuals can be very efficient learners.

Instill a Motivation for Learning

Academic work in general is often not inherently interesting or motivating to many kids. Playing to their strengths and utilizing their learning styles helps a great deal with motivation, but you cannot simply expect that your child is naturally ambitious and driven in his schoolwork. Many kids aren’t, and that is not abnormal. This does not mean that they won’t be ambitious or driven as an adult; when they are stimulated, you’ll see the motivation kick in. Because kids see homework as taking time away from other activities that are way more fun and interesting, getting your children to do their homework involves teaching them a little self-sacrifice. Learning to put off something more enjoyable to do something that’s necessary in order to reap the rewards later is a mindset that is crucial to their success as an adult with a job.

Getting your children to do their homework involves teaching them a little self-sacrifice.

One of the most important things you can do, regardless of your child’s learning style or intrinsic motivation, is to instill a sense of curiosity and a value of learning during the preschool and elementary school years. This leads to a child who is motivated to learn new things. Without motivation, a learning preference won’t make the difference.

Easy things you can do to foster curiosity and motivation are those same kinds of things involved in the strategy of cultivating a positive relationship with your children: Read to them, talk to them, spend time in new activities together, allow exploration without interference, and let them figure out themselves what to do with their time when they’re bored. You can also help your child develop a motivation to do well in school by emphasizing its importance as well as working to develop your child’s level of confidence and empowerment. You have to nurture your children’s interests and talents even when they aren’t aligned with your own.

When your children are old enough to read books on their own, continuing to read to them at night can be a fantastic way to nurture learning, cultivate that positive relationship, and cement a nighttime ritual. It can also expand their vocabulary and even get them interested in books of your choosing that they might not otherwise pick out on their own. Cooking with your child can be a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) lesson unto itself. Even Friday night pizza can be a way to sneak in some extra math, “Okay, Layla, the pizza’s here, so why don’t you put two-eighths of the pie on your plate, but give Daddy three-eighths!”

One of the best ways to instill motivation for learning is to specifically praise your child for sharing things she’s learned. This helps her feel valued for what she knows and the process by which she knows it. For example, if your child shares a fact about dinosaurs, you can respond with specific praise that affirms the child’s knowledge. You can also extend the conversation, which lets your child know that knowledge is important and valued, and this indirectly reinforces curiosity.

So, consider a different reply to that dinosaur fact than, “You’re so smart!” A response that reinforces motivation for learning could be something like, “Wow! You know a lot about dinosaurs! Where did you learn that?”

You can continue showing interest and extending the conversation with, “Was that dinosaur a meat eater or a plant eater?” Keep in mind, however, that extending the conversation should never feel like a “test” to your child. He should go away feeling valued for his knowledge and curiosity, and even willing to go look for more information about the topic.

Similarly, if the child’s interest continues, some extra steps that reinforce the same interest in learning might be checking out the dinosaur books at the library or a trip to the science museum on the weekend. Interests can come and go in children quite quickly, so if he doesn’t want to take it as far as the museum, don’t push it.

Establish a Process for Working Independently

The main goal of homework in general is to have children independently practice a skill they’ve already learned. The key phrase here is independent practice. Sometimes parents will tell kids when to do homework, where to do it, and how to do it. If, at every step of the way, you are there to prompt and prod (nag) until the next step is done, or if you fall into the common trap of doing the homework for your child, then he won’t learn to work independently.

Homework is a habit, a routine.

Homework is a habit, a routine. Habits take time and practice to develop, and early on unfamiliarity can lead to resistance. As your young child begins to get homework for the first time, you should look at study skills as a developmental process that can take months to teach and years to refine. The investment of time pays off when your kids are older and the consequences of grades are much higher. In the big picture, an occasional incomplete or failed assignment in second or third grade will be far less meaningful than the missed or failed assignment in high school or college.

It may help to think about homework and independent practice as a three-step process: organization, application, and completion.

Organization

Being organized when it comes to homework is a way to manage many of the problems that can derail the process. Keep in mind that your young child is still learning the process of doing homework and may need guidance with organization. Being organized and learning to approach tasks in a systematic manner are invaluable. Let him have some input into organization whenever possible, though it is perfectly appropriate for parents to provide guidance. His sense of pride and ownership will be greater if he has a say in things like the selection of the desk organizers and colored folders he uses.

Establishing a routine is indispensable. Even something as simple as designating a place for the backpack to be left every day is part of establishing a homework routine. Your child comes in the door, and the backpack is left in the same place every day. There’s no magic place; let her choose! If she puts it there, then follow with specific praise. If not, correct her by having her retrieve her backpack and move it to the agreed-on location. This begins the after-school routine and helps avoid the searching that sometimes delays and adds frustration to homework time. After homework is complete and assignments and materials are returned to the backpack, it is again placed in the same location so that it’s easy to find the next morning.

Identifying a place where homework will be done every day is another starting point. Having the necessary supplies available is also essential. Again, these are both areas where you can let your child have a say, as long as her choice in location is relatively quiet and free from distractions. As always, you get the final say.

The time that homework is completed should also be part of the routine. This can be really hard for busy kids and busy families who are working around practice, game, and performance schedules. By prioritizing time for homework, you are sending the message that homework (in other words, school) is more important than any of those other activities.

Beyond that, you can provide guidance and allow your child some choices in terms of how to break their work down incrementally and put it in order. For example, if your child has several spelling words to copy and practice, a math worksheet to complete, a coloring activity, and 15 minutes of reading, you can help him identify each of these tasks. So instead of having to do “a lot” or “a little” homework, he knows he has four things to do.

Your child might make a sticky-note for each task, or a short checklist. Kids won’t come up with these ideas themselves, so your guidance in establishing these kinds of organizational habits is helpful. Once the list is clear to your child, he may choose what he’d like to do first, and then next, and so on, and he can mark off each task in whatever way is quick and feels satisfying to him. Some elementary schools provide their own checklist in an agenda that needs to be signed each night or each week by a parent, so if that’s the case, then simply make sure you and your child keep up with that.

You can also help your child identify natural break times in between tasks. This can stave off frustration and disinterest. Taken together, you’re building the habit of an organized and systematic approach to homework that will help your child learn the benefits of self-management when doing any long or difficult task in the future. Your diligence and consistency now will enable you to back out of homework involvement later on.

Speaking of backing out, try not to be watching TV or doing some other fun activity that will take your child’s attention away from what she needs to be doing or make her feel like she is missing out on something fun. You might take the opportunity to pay bills, do some paperwork, or read during homework time.

Application

Application is actually doing the homework itself and where much of the frustration kicks in. Many a child struggling with homework has gone to his mom or dad and said things like, “I can’t do this,” or “It’s too hard.” He then implicitly sits back and expects Mom or Dad to jump in and help him find the right answer. Frustration kicks in, and parents grumble but all too often are willing to offer the answer to the math problem or compose a sentence with the child’s spelling word.

However, part of the point of homework is for your child to put what he’s learned at school into practice on his own. The consistent message needs to be that you are available to help, but that help is specific and is not offered spontaneously.

In response to your child’s blanket statement that she can’t do the work, try to get her to ask a specific question. You can gently question your child back and in doing so help her narrow down the focus of what she’s trying to figure out while still letting her figure it out on her own. Here are some questions you can ask in response:

• Which question are you on?
• Why don’t you read the question out loud first?
• Which part don’t you understand?
• What do you think you’re supposed to do?
• The previous question can be followed with: Let me know when you have an idea. (Even a guess is okay if your child claims to have no clue.)

The idea with all these leading questions is to get your child to put forth some independent effort before you step in. Over time, if you’re consistent, your child will learn that he needs to attempt the assignment or come up with specific questions when asking for help. He’ll understand that the I don’t knows and the I can’ts won’t lead anywhere.

The I don’t knows and the I can’ts won’t lead anywhere.

With this approach, you’re teaching problem-solving, which is a huge skill. Praise your child for any effort at figuring something out and then getting specific with her request for help. But don’t go for the bland, “Good job!” Be specific with something like, “I can see you really thought about that and tried to figure it out—way to go! I can see how that part is hard, so let’s see if I can help you understand it.”

For some parents, the frustration in the application of homework is that we don’t know how to help our children. Math has changed a great deal over the years since we were in school, as have many other subject matters. Even the youngest parents might not remember that long ago!

Online resources are a tremendous source of assistance here. Ask your child’s teacher in the beginning of the year for a list of trusted websites where your child (you don’t have to own up to this being for you!) can go to find additional information about the classwork. The online versions of textbooks often have video tutorials that break down each lesson. There are also plenty of teachers posting their own lessons online for anyone to view.

Completion

Once you’ve given some assistance and pointed your child in the right direction with the content, step away and let him complete the assignment on his own. For some kids, checking in with the parent after each completed task helps them keep focus—a high-five and some short, but specific praise here can go a long way in maintaining motivation for the next task.

Use of a when/then statement, as outlined in the giving good directions strategy in Chapter 2, is incredibly useful in helping kids muster the effort to complete homework. For example, offering a fun activity after homework is done can give a child something to look forward to: “When you finish your homework, do you want to play a game with me? Come and get me when you’re done. I can’t wait to play!”

Completion is first, correctness is second, and optimal performance is third.

If he completes his homework independently but it is not quite perfect, offer to review it for him but try not to impose. It is important to look at homework as a developmental process: Completion is first, correctness is second, and optimal performance is third. Jumping ahead in that process too quickly tends to create resistance and frustration on the child’s part. The idea is to praise and build the independent skill of doing his homework, not to overfocus on whether the homework is perfect. In fact, excessive review and correction can create such a negative tone for kids that they start to resist doing homework in the first place, which defeats the whole purpose. Many teachers rely on feedback from their students’ homework to determine if they’ve mastered the concept, so forced perfection from home can make a teacher falsely think your child is ready to move on.

If your child is rushing through and technically completing the homework but putting forth little effort, then you might need to get more involved. A good place to begin is to contact the teacher about your concerns. It is, after all, the teacher’s job to ensure that your child is learning the material, whether through homework or in class. A more extreme approach is to insist that your child do his own work and, if he suffers the natural consequences of a bad grade on the assignment, this should send a message. If the rushing through with no effort continues, you can start checking over the answers and offering some direction on which questions need additional work. Pushing children too hard for perfect homework scores can backfire and turn them off more than spur them forward, so you need to tread lightly.

Use Positive Reinforcement

Using positive reinforcement is fundamental to your success in stressing the importance of homework. Recalling our ABCs from Chapter 1, the consequence is what happens after the behavior that makes it more or less likely that the behavior will occur again. Positive reinforcement will nudge that probability further along.

The praise strategy is a really basic but extremely critical.

What you want to reinforce is that your child needs to work independently on her homework to its successful completion. The praise strategy is a really basic but extremely critical part of making it more likely that your child will successfully complete her homework.

Praise and rewards, both forms of positive reinforcement, will help you achieve this goal. Make sure that your praise is immediate, specific, and sincere and that your suggested reward is based on your child’s completion of the specific task. Choose whether you want to reinforce your child’s organizational skills, content comprehension, or assignment completion, and then build it right into your reaction: “I like how you sat right down and finished your homework tonight, without my even having to remind you! That means we have extra free time this evening. How would you like to play a board game, or go out for your favorite ice cream?”

The strategies of third-party praise and surprise both work well with homework and schoolwork issues. Let your child overhear you telling Grandma how hard she worked when she’s selected to be in the school’s spelling bee. Or, on a Friday morning after a long week with a heavy homework load, surprise your son with a trip to the donut shop before school for a special breakfast treat, letting him know how proud you are of his efforts and acknowledging that you know there are other things he’d rather be doing than homework.

Rewards also offer positive reinforcement of good consequences. As every teacher knows, a gold star or a happy-face stamp on an assignment is very motivating to many children. At its heart, this is purely acknowledgment that your child has worked hard on the task.

A homework chart, with rewards for good assignment completion either on a daily or a weekly basis, can be done both at school and at home. Your child can then see what he needs to do in order to earn up to the next goal. This is one of the best real-life applications of the regular interval rewards system discussed on page 49.

Just remember to be thoughtful in using rewards, making sure the good behavior happens first and then the reward comes into play: “After you finish that worksheet, we can play a game of checkers together.” You can also stretch this out to use a larger incentive, such as getting a trip to her favorite restaurant after a whole week of doing homework on her own. There should always be something good that happens after homework is done, even if it’s a high-five and a pat on the back most days.

Effect of Negative Consequences

Some students need to learn the importance of homework the hard way. Negative consequences reinforce against undesirable behaviors happening again. These can be strong deterrents. Try to resist the urge to bail your child out if he is unable or unwilling to complete his homework on time. The negative consequences that will occur in this case are also natural consequences, potentially a late grade or a bad grade, which can be a powerful lesson. It’s much better for students to learn this lesson in elementary school than in later years when it can show on their permanent transcript. Remember, the goal is to develop homework skills over the long run, not necessarily to have every assignment complete and every answer correct.

Natural consequences, potentially a late grade or a bad grade, can be a powerful lesson.

Negative consequences can shape behavior when there’s the need for a sharp turn. Here are two examples of applying negative consequences with homework:

1. “A big project due tomorrow, you say? It’s too bad you didn’t let me know sooner. The store closes early Sunday night, so we can’t go get you a tri-fold board now. I guess you’ll need to try to figure something out. Why don’t you look around to see what you do have that you can use? Unfortunately, the directions say you need to present it on a tri-fold board, so I guess you’ll lose some points right there.”
2. “You don’t want to do your homework tonight? Well, homework and school are important, so they have to come first. I guess since you don’t want to do your homework, we can’t go to your soccer practice. And you know, your coach says if you miss practice, you can’t play in the game.”

As stated in Chapter 2, negative consequences used in conjunction with praise can be very effective and powerful. Here’s a tandem praise strategy for each of the above examples showing a follow-up. Each of these praises would be delivered by you a little while after the negative consequences took effect:

1. “You know, you waited too long before starting your project, and it’s too bad we didn’t have time to get a tri-fold board. But your teacher obviously thought your ideas were great, and so did I! I could tell you had thought about the project a lot. Next time, let us know you have a project to be working on, and we can make sure you have all the supplies you need to showcase those great ideas the right way.”
2. “It’s awesome your team won their game, and I hope next time you can be part of it. I know it was hard to miss a game, but you did a good job catching up with your homework and if you continue to work hard, you shouldn’t miss another practice or game. Nice job, and I can’t wait to see you play this weekend!”

Avoid Unintended Consequences

There are times when the best intentions for helping your child learn the subject matter and be able to do his homework have unintended consequences. Sometimes you are unaware of contributing factors that change the way your techniques work; other times the school gives parameters that rub your child the wrong way.

For instance, when it comes to a prescribed amount of reading for homework (some schools give guidelines such as 15 minutes of reading per night for first and second graders, and 30 minutes a night for third, fourth, and fifth graders), there can be some unintended negative consequences that sap motivation. As we know, reading is one of those crucial skills upon which all other learning is based. From kindergarten to second grade, children are learning to read, and from then on they are reading to learn. It is critical that you take care to keep reading a positive experience for your child. While many schools feel they have to give a specific amount of reading, parents can and should be careful that it doesn’t backfire. Mitigate what might become a negative experience by trying the following:

Unintended negative consequences sap motivation.

• Don’t nickel-and-dime your child for every minute of their reading homework. For some children, setting a timer is very useful for engaging with reading, but with others it sets up reading as a chore and draws attention away from the book.
• Have plenty of high-interest reading material around and available. If your child is really into soccer or you’re traveling somewhere this summer and he’s excited about going, or if he just became fascinated with Komodo dragons, use that to motivate him.
• Count any kind of reading, including comic books, magazines, and even the sports page in a newspaper or website if your child is so inclined.
• Be a role model for reading by making sure your child sees you reading books, magazines, newspapers, and so forth.

Sports, clubs, and other outside activities are great for children and can enhance learning in many important ways. They also can be very motivating. But these activities may also be highly prized by your children, which makes them valuable targets for negative consequences. By keeping the focus on assignment completion more than on grades, you can make participation in outside activities contingent on finishing their homework.

For kids who are not strong students, outside activities can boost their self-esteem.

While this certainly will make your child sit up and take notice, if you are using this tactic you need to watch out for the unintended consequences. Take into account whether the exercise your child gets on the field will enhance his learning at home. Many times, children, especially those with high energy who have a hard time sitting still to do their homework, just need to get that energy out before they can concentrate on schoolwork. Playing a sport can be that release valve for them, and being part of a team will benefit their homework and grades in the long run. For kids who are not particularly strong students, outside activities can provide an important boost to their self-esteem and can be a safe haven from the beat down feeling they associate with academic studies. Consider your consequences carefully and always start with positive reinforcement. If you do need to use a negative consequence, try not to take away more of an outside activity than is necessary and watch for unintended effects.

If your child needs constant supervision or guidance with his homework, that is a sign of a problem. He may have got used to lots of help from you, to the point where he cannot work independently. Here are some tips for dealing with this:

• See if there are after-care programs, tutorials, or study halls at school where your child can do his homework instead of bringing so much of it home to do evenings and on the weekend. This has the added benefit of taking the homework responsibility off your shoulders and avoiding battles over your child getting it done.
• Outsource homework oversight to someone else; often kids work a lot better for anyone other than a parent. Consider hiring a high school student or asking a trusted neighbor or relative, or even creating a homework study group with your child’s best friend’s family. Parents are often surprised at how efficiently their child works for someone other than themselves.
• Talk with your child’s teachers and let them know what your child is doing at homework time, how long it is taking, and how much support you are providing. Especially for kids with special learning needs, there may need to be some adjustments in the amount of homework assigned and in the level of that homework. Talking to the teacher is the first step in getting the appropriate support.
• Check to make sure that fatigue is not a factor. Some children are able to do homework immediately when they get home from school while others may prefer to rest and begin homework after dinner. Yet others work best early in the morning before school. Experiment with different homework times and let your child have some input.
• Remember that your children may need to struggle a little in order to develop characteristics such as perseverance, independence, and self-confidence.

Work with Your Gifted Child

If you have a gifted child, you may not worry so much about homework, but you still need to be diligent. Your child may not have difficulty getting his or her homework done correctly and on time, and that’s terrific, but when you consider the ABCs of behavior, there is a danger in reinforcing the wrong behavior of an exceptionally bright child. If your child doesn’t have to work hard to get good grades, he or she may not develop a good work ethic.

Throughout this chapter, we’ve stressed the importance of effort rather than simply a good grade. This is true for students of all intellectual capabilities. Good grades can’t be the be-all and end-all. It’s easy to take your gifted children for granted early on, but simply telling them how smart they are and praising the good grades they earned with little effort is not going to meet all their needs.

Gifted kids won’t go far without a strong work ethic.

It’s crucial that you consistently impart the message that learning to work hard is what is valued. Gifted kids won’t go far without a strong work ethic, so it should be specifically and deliberately emphasized as often as possible. Sooner or later, your gifted child will be challenged to succeed, and you need to teach her how to rise to that challenge. Teaching that now pays dividends in the long run, as her achievements will match her potential if she learns to work hard. An added benefit of helping your children rise to any challenge is that it will make their middle and high school years that much smoother.

Work out ways to challenge your gifted child. If she isn’t getting enough in her classroom, make an appointment to speak with the guidance counselor and/or principal and share your concerns. Many schools now have online classes that can augment what’s taught during the traditional school day, or offer classes in subjects (such as a foreign language) that may not be offered at your child’s school. If your town has a local college, there are likely some resources there for gifted younger children.

• • •

Now you have the strategies to use to help your children be successful with their homework. Remember, this is practice in the skill of doing homework, from organization to application to completion, which is no different from any other complex skill they are learning in school. Improvement comes from persistence and consistency over the long term. You understand learning styles and how to instill a motivation for learning, as well as a work ethic, which especially applies to gifted students who may not necessarily have a hard time with the content area on homework.

Throughout all homework issues and within the context of otherwise busy family schedules, all kids will need some downtime after school to relax and rejuvenate. When you’re engaging in homework battles with your kids, the experience is not pleasant for anyone. If consistently negative, this can lead to school burnout, disinterest, and lack of motivation. Getting one night’s worth of homework done is not worth diminishing interest in school in the long run or missing much of the next day due to exhaustion.

While homework offers teachers a way to measure whether their students have learned the concepts enough to practice them on their own, every child needs to have the opportunity to love learning something new. Elementary school is supposed to be exciting and fun, with new avenues opening up for your child in a variety of subject matters. Homework might not capture his imagination on a nightly basis, but it should not interfere with your child’s academic performance in the future by adding to his negative perception of schoolwork. When your child is learning something that does get him excited, help him latch onto that excitement and follow it to its fruition.