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Health & Fitness

Homework Hassles

Get to work by not getting over involved in your kids homework.

It is safe to say that there is an epidemic of family conflict around the issue of homework. Time after time we are approached by parents who indicate that their children are not doing their homework. Parents angrily insist that there must be something that can be done to make their children understand how important homework is, and get them to do their homework.

According to Dr. John Rosemond (Ending the Homework Hassle), there are 3 primary reason that so many kids do not do their homework these days:

1).  Parents, teachers, and professionals have inadvertently gotten into the habit of assuming responsibility for completion of the homework rather than placing the responsibility on the child (e.g. spending untold time trying to get children to do their homework and having negative emotional reactions about uncompleted homework, as though it was their responsibility instead of the child's).

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2.)  Parents, teachers, and professionals have inadvertently gotten into the habit of trying to help kids compensate for problems with responsibility rather than correcting such problems. Dr. Rosemond notes that compensation and correction are not the same thing. He describes the plight of a golfer trying to correct a slice by aiming to the side so as to ultimately get the ball to land in the middle of the fairway; this compensates for a problem but does not correct it. Over the course of time, compensation usually makes problems worse rather than better (e.g. you end up having to aim further and further to the side instead of learning to hit down the middle).

3.)  Parents, teachers, and professionals have inadvertently gotten into the habit of being unable to let kids learn "the hard way" (e.g. experience normal unhappiness, frustration and consequences associated with reality).

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I agree with Dr. Rosemond wholeheartedly. If you want to help your child become more responsible and complete their work, make sure that you stand aside and let them do it on their own. I often ask kids that are in 3rd grade and beyond who are not doing homework on there own if their parents still help them go to the bathroom:  – “They don’t -- You’ve done it by yourself since you were three or four – don’t you feel embarrassed about not being able to do homework on your own? The way most people would see it -- not being able to do it by yourself at this age is almost like still needing your parents to go to the bathroom.”  

Parents and teachers - you can fulfill your responsibility by simply keeping track of whether work has been done and enforcing consistent consequences – not by getting into a power struggle you can never win.

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