As a parent, I think one of the biggest challenges with school, in general, is to keep our focus on the long game. Why is it important that they do their homework in the grand scheme of their lives? We know in the short term they need to do it because they need to keep their grades up. But the biggest thing that helped me keep my patience when faced with homework resistance was to realize that their homework isn’t about me.
My daughter was screaming mad about homework earlier this year, so I sat down with her and told her that her homework didn’t affect me. I’d already completed 3rd grade, so I was finished. Then I told her she didn’t have to do it at all. No one could make her do her homework. She seemed happy about that answer, so we went over to the couch — away from the worksheet — and I asked her how it would affect her if she didn’t complete it. She said she would probably get a zero. I acted completely unfazed at that idea, and I asked her if that zero would affect anything else. She said if she got enough zeroes she probably wouldn’t pass third grade. Again I asked how and if that would impact her life. She thought about it and said she’d have to stay in third grade while her friends went on to fourth grade. I asked if that was okay with her. She said she wanted to move on with her friends and go to college one day.
So I asked why she didn’t want to do her homework, and she finally fessed up and said she wasn’t really sure what they were asking her to do. I explained that her homework was just a gauge to help her teacher understand how much she’s retaining. And that it wasn’t a test. If she attempted the work and got it wrong, it just meant that her teacher and I would work with her on those areas until they weren’t a challenge anymore.
After I put the ball in her court and helped her realize that not doing her homework was really only affecting her, she was ready to really think about why she was resisting in the first place.
We sat down and read through the problems together, and I told her I’d only help if she asked. I didn’t want to hover or correct her because the important thing was that she was trying. She’d stop and ask for help, and when she got a problem wrong I worked through it with her.
I’m not saying that this method is foolproof, but it worked for my daughter because it put the responsibility on her. And we haven’t had a war about homework since then. She still doesn’t love to do it. But she does it, and she does it on her own. I honestly couldn’t come up with a valid reason for her to do her homework. And “because I said so” isn’t a valid reason. “Because your teacher said so” isn’t a valid reason either because, in reality, neither of us is actually in charge of my daughter’s life. We are merely guides.
My short-game view of homework is that it’s a good measure of what information she currently knows and what concepts are still a challenge. It’s also good practice for the concepts she’s learning. My long-game view is that homework is designed to teach accountability and responsibility. So forcing her to do it without helping her understand why isn’t going to accomplish either of those goals.
Crystal Henry, an author of Naked Salsa and A Turtle’s Tale, is a freelance writer glad to be back in her native Texas land. She is a University of Florida alumna who stays true to her Florida writing roots through her work with Our Town Magazine and her award-winning column, Naked Salsa. She is a boobs out breastfeeding advocate and semi-crunchy mom whose work has been featured on sites such as Romper, The List, eHow, LIVESTRONG, BabyCenter, and ModernMom. Her world-domination-smart husband and two hilariously inappropriate little girls constantly provide fodder for her #preschoolproblems blog(link is external). But having two newborns of her own broke the baby fever that once burned deep within her. Instead, she is renting out her oven to another woman’s bun and documenting her surrogacy journey with humor and honesty through her blog, Her Eggs My Basket(link is external).