“Homework shouldn’t be synonym of struggle and stress; but of learning and fun” – Haifa Dada
The beginning of the academic year brings with it lots of stress for both parents and students. Who says back to school, says back to homework; and here comes the endless hassle till summer kicks off! Homework has been part of students’ life since the beginning of schooling. However, the practice has sometimes been accepted and other times rejected by educators and parents, because of both positive and negative effects on children’s learning and attitude towards school.
You might now be asking yourself if homework assignments do really help children learn, and how you can manage to make it a positive and successful experience. Homework can have many benefits for young children. It can improve remembering and understanding of schoolwork, and help students develop skills that will be of value, even after they leave school. According to John Rosemond, (author on parenting) here are the 7 values that homework develops: responsibility; autonomy; perseverance; time management; initiative; self-reliance and resourcefulness. Taking it from here, I will let you discover the 6 keys to a successful homework management:
- Setting goals at the beginning of the academic year. When students set their own goals, they take responsibility and ownership of their learning goals. It can be especially important for students with low achievement motivation, thus the goals set are their motivator.
- Allowing participation in choosing the time-frame for homework is very important as you make them responsible for their choice and avoid making them resisting of responding to your orders (make sure the time-frame chosen doesn’t interfere with family time such as dinner).
- Encouraging tools which helps with the child’s learning style (auditory, visual, kinesthetic)
Visual learners can best learn through bright colors, diagrams and other visual aids. Kinesthetic learners need to touch, feel and move around. Auditory learners like to read out loud or listen to a recording. This reminds me of a friend of mine whose daughter once recorded her spelling words on her iPod and replayed the recording to practice writing them.
- Creating an environment that seduces the child to the learning process. Just yesterday, while my son was struggling to memorize some French expressions and their meaning, I induced the fun by suggesting I memorize them too, then we assess who was faster and who didn’t make a mistake. It really took shorter than I imagined…and we both had so much fun!
- Praising effort instead of results and take away all emphasis on tests! You can surely discuss the results to understand what went wrong and say: “show me what you’ve tried and where you did well, and let’s see what went wrong and figure out what you can try next”. Make learning the key element, not the grades!
- Be a « consulting parent » instead of a « parent participant »
Many studies show negative effects when parents are asked to help students with homework. Children don’t feel the issue of homework is their concern. Parents are compensating not correcting the problem, and children are not being held accountable.
Consulting parents are available, they assign responsibilities. They send positive messages to their children (“you can do it by yourself”), they encourage independence. Whereas, parent participants or the “over-involved” parent hovers, they assume responsibilities. They send negative messages to their children (“you need me to do your homework”), they produce dependent children.
Winning the “homework battle” is all about drawing a renewed picture of homework time. But before that, you need to realize that homework is not the issue. The real problem lies in our fears and anxiety, as parents, of our children not performing well in a world full of competition, a world that values performance and overachievement above all!
Haifa Dada
Parent, Youth and Family Coach – Addiction Recovery Coach – CBT Coach
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