How to help with homework—without going overboard
It’s important to make sure our children grow up loving to learn rather than being anxious about performance or hooked on doing everything perfectly. Studies show that extrinsic motivation (rewards such as grades or money) has the capacity to destroy intrinsic motivation—or enjoying a task because it’s interesting.
Making learning a duty, and attaching rewards and punishments to it, takes away a child’s natural excitement about accomplishment. Love of learning is lifelong; love of grades sometimes gets in the way.
For many kids, school learning is a source of anxiety and obligation rather than fun and rewarding. To help counter these feelings, let your children know you have confidence in their ability to learn and to do the work, and that you believe it’s important that they have a personal and social life outside of schoolwork. Let them know that you believe their grades aren’t as important as enjoying their work and feeling they are accomplishing something. Don’t offer rewards for “A”s or “B”s, as this only encourages kids to focus on the grades rather than on the learning.
What to do:
1. Help your children organize their study habits to cope with new challenges. Discuss a regular time and place to do their work and teach them (if the school hasn’t done so) to make a list of assignments and their due dates. Help them figure out how long each assignment will take, and which tasks they need to do first. It’s best to avoid monitoring your kids constantly, lecturing them or, of course, doing their work for them.
2. Let your children organize their schoolwork so that they feel comfortable with it. Different children study in different ways. Some need silence; some need music. Some need regular short breaks, others work for a long time and don’t like interruptions. Allow your children to study in the way which works best for them. Discourage kids from staying up past their bedtime to do schoolwork. Best to start homework early enough to get it done and have some relaxation time. If there’s too much work for the time available, you may need to intervene with the teachers as they may not be aware of the problem unless an adult lets them know. When children are teens, leave it up to them.
3. Stay positive. Children are already aware of what they can’t do. Give specific, encouraging feedback. Be careful not to take their accomplishments away from them by saying how proud you are. This is their responsibility; they can be proud for themselves.
4. Observe and support without smothering. Children can interpret too much attention as a lack of confidence in their abilities. Standing over them reinforces a belief that they aren’t capable. Remind them of what they do well.
5. Avoid letting yourself get impatient or angry. Step away and take a breath. Many parents find tutoring their own children to be extremely difficult because they are too close.
6. Watch your expectations. Do you perform your daily tasks consistently from day to day? Children are as susceptible to exhaustion from the daily grind as we are. Watch for signs of being tired, over-excited, recovering from illness, allergies, etc. and make allowances. The pressure of working for someone who expects optimum performance at all times would be unbearable!
7. Determine how long your child can sit and do homework. Allow for regular breaks.
As children mature, step back and let them learn, sometimes through failure. Best they learn these lessons while the lessons are cheap. Don’t underestimate the value of natural consequences. If your kids don’t study, they may fail a test. If they forget to do their homework, they might feel embarrassed or upset. Avoid saying, “I told you so” or trying to teach a lesson. Natural consequences work best when you step back and simply offer understanding. While taking over the problem might come easy to you, it does nothing to support your child.
Like the rest of our children’s responsibilities, we teach, we support and then we pull back. This doesn’t mean we don’t care, just that we know what effective support really looks like.
