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- My son doesn't like to do homework after a long day of school.
- I also get worried about helping him because I learned to do the work a different way years ago.
- Education experts told me to give him freedom; we found colorful pens helped.
We're more than three months into the school year, and even though we have our school-year routines established, there's still one contentious spot in my household: homework. My son is in fourth grade; he's been doing homework since he was in kindergarten and we still argue about it.
I guarantee that at least one or two nights a week, he'll give me a hard time about doing homework. He needs a break when he gets home from school, so he doesn't immediately get to work — but without fail, he will grumble about it at 7 p.m. even though he does his homework at the same time every school night.
To make homework time easier for both of us, I sought expert advice.
I've always had a complicated relationship with homework
When I was a kid, homework felt like such a chore, especially in subjects where I didn't feel as academically confident — such as math or science. I'd get home from a full day of learning, and then my parents expected me to sit at the kitchen table and work for two or more hours on the same work I'd been doing all day. If it was a subject I'd mastered, homework felt like a waste of time. But if it was a subject I struggled with, homework felt like torture.
Now that I'm a parent, I sometimes wonder why kids even need homework in the first place. After a long day of school and after-school activities, I think my kid needs a break.
But Janine Bempechat, a clinical professor at Boston University's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, said homework is useful for a child's education.
"Homework can be a powerful tool to reinforce learning and to provide children with all-important opportunities to practice newly acquired or acquiring skills," Bempechat told Business Insider.
Still, I struggle with how to help my son during homework time
We recently had parent-teacher conferences, and my partner and I admitted to my son's teacher that we often feel out of our depth because sometimes we teach him the way we learned math as kids, but fear that's somehow messing his education up.
As much as I fundamentally understand my child's math worskheets, all that logic goes out the window the minute he calls me over to help. I must steel my nerves, mentally putting on armor before I walk over to the kitchen table to help.
Jennifer Alfaro, a mother and the assistant principal of instruction at Camino Nuevo Charter Academy in Los Angeles, said she understands that parents get stressed and confused when trying to help.
"With Common Core, math strategies are different and so parents feel like they cannot help students because they do not want to confuse the student," Alfaro told BI.
Her words felt validating as a parent. Standards have changed since we were in school, and it's easy for even the most present parent to feel left behind by the way schools now teach the same concepts.
But I learned homework doesn't have to be stressful — for me or my kid
Bempechat stressed the importance of creating healthy habits from the beginning to give kids a routine and listening to them about where and when they feel most comfortable doing their homework.
Giving my son the freedom to choose where he does his homework has greatly improved his desire to do it. He likes to sit at a table to write, but when he's reading, sitting on the couch or in his room helps him feel more comfortable.
His school doesn't have strict rules about writing utensils for homework, so he likes to use colored pens to make it more exciting. He has a pen with multiple color inks, and he'll rotate through them during the week. It's a small win, but I'll take it!
Snacks while doing homework also make it more appealing for him. Young minds need fuel, so letting him eat a bowl of pretzels or some Doritos makes homework time go more smoothly — if he doesn't get orange dust on his worksheets.
Alfaro also gave some direct feedback for parents who may feel stressed and overwhelmed with helping our kids with homework: "Just be present for students so that they feel supported."
For those of us who struggle to keep up with the changing landscape of homework, she shared that "telling students that they might not know exactly how the teacher taught something but that they can help them" is a way to alleviate some of that stress.
Unfortunately, homework isn't going anywhere, as much as some of us wish it would. We need to look at homework as more than a necessary evil and as a way for parents to be an active part of our kid's education.