Parents around the world would love the magic formula to encourage kids to do their homework! Alas, it’s not as simple as waving a wand, but there are some methods for encouraging your kids to develop and stick to a regular homework routine. For some parents, effective encouragement to get your kids to do their homework will also be about changing your own approaches to homework enforcement but it’s not hard, it’s just about taking a moment to work it through. Try these steps to help your kids complete their homework and do great in school.
Understand the benefits of homework. If you’re not convinced that homework matters, it will be even harder to convince your kids. There are some good reasons behind a moderate amount of homework:
- Homework reinforces learning taught during the day. Some learning won’t stick as well unless kids give it more practice and the classroom environment isn’t necessarily going to provide adequate time for more practice. This is of special importance formath and critical thinking skills.[1]
- Sometimes homework teaches additional skills not taught at school due to lack of time or resources. This is a “broadening” learning effect of homework.[2]
- Homework instills self-discipline, teaching time management, organizational skills, concentration skills, and self-responsibility.[3] Self-discipline is a key life skill that can only be learned in the doing.
Make peace with the reality that most kids don’t like doing homework. When there are many other infinitely more interesting things happening, especially in our electronic gadget age, it’s hard to make homework appealing, so stop trying. As a parent, guardian, or other person responsible for getting kids to do homework, acceptance isn’t about agreement with them. It’s about understanding and infusing the rest of your approach with that understanding, while remaining prepared to set the boundaries and stand by your expectations that they will do it.
of each term or semester, sit down and talk about how your kid intends to handle homework in the coming months. In this way, you set mutually shared ground rules for getting homework done, ground rules that you can call on to remind them when they’re slipping, or to praise them for when they’re meeting them.
- Empower your kids. Rather than setting the time for homework, have a family meeting to discuss possible times. Let the kids feel they’re somewhat in charge by giving them the choice of when to do their homework—before dinner, after dinner, or half before and half after. The only rider on this is to refuse to allow homework to be left until just before bedtime – set an agreed cut-off point by which time homework must be completed; this can be sweetened by making allowance for fun reading time, or other enjoyable wind-down activity prior to bedtime. And you can help by keeping the evening mealtime as regular as possible.
- Find out if there are specific areas of homework they’re having difficulties with. Ask them if they would like to consider having more hands-on help with those issues (you, a sibling, or a tutor, for example). Sometimes homework isn’t working because they’re struggling with it in class, as well as, out of class.
- Help your child figure out what is hard homework and what is easy homework. Having your child do the hard work first will mean he is most alert when facing the biggest challenges. The easier material will seem to go faster once fatigue begins to set in.
- Agree on homework free times, such as parts of the weekend, or Friday nights, etc., and allow them to plan how they use this free time.