Bonjour raoulpetite,

I’m back with a bit more practical advice/ideas that might help in the short term. It’s just ideas of things that have helped with my daughter. She is highly imaginative also and comes home from school high-strung so I respect that she needs time to unwind, however there is only so much time with homework, dinner, other activities.

For getting through homework, these have been successful:

Before starting homework, she works her hands in putty or clay (something not too soft as playdough). We put little pegs in our putty, the kind from the Battleship game, and my daughter has to work with it long enough to get all of them out of the putty. Our OT taught us this.

She does something sensory with her hands like digging into in a big bowl of beads, dry rice or beans. Again, she retrieves something out of it like marbles and when they are all captured that should have been enough time. When the weather is nice we have a bin of play sand on the deck. But I don’t want sand in the house.

We got a little table-top fountain and the noise is very relaxing. Especially now in the wintertime with being indoors more often, it makes for a tropical feel. My daughter does get distracted when her kitten plays with the water or sticks her nose in it, but then at least she is laughing and therefore relaxing.

Completing one subject then taking about a five minute break where she can leave the homework area. (Use a timer/alarm so parent’s voice isn’t the one summoning). Then do the next subject, etc. I let her choose the order.

When she’s done she can play for x amount of time. She knows what the largest and smallest amount of time will be (depending what else is going on that we have to do) ahead of time, the largest and smallest depending upon how much she fools around, argues, etc. during the designated homework time.

For the very imaginative type kids, pretend time is so important for them. We stress that it’s her precious time, not mine, that she’s wasting and she should be a friend to herself by trying to preserve as much of this time as she can.

We have done, and still do, lots of things to convince her that this is to her benefit, that it’s not just what we are telling her to do. If she is efficient “as possible” with homework (she’s still going to be slower than a neuro-typical child), she has more time to do what she wants. Arguing, fussing, etc. takes away from her. I TRY to act as cool as possible (not always easy in the late afternoon/evening) to show her that I’ve got nowhere to be, nothing to do, it’s not my time she’s wasting...I sit and drink tea and read a fashion magazine...I’m just not going to listen to the fussing.

I’ve even had her draw a pie chart that’s like a clock, since she loves colorful charts and hates being concerned about time. It gives her a chance to really break down what is happening with her time, see which colors can be hers and which is homework, how she can make her time color larger on the chart...rather than hearing me go blah blah blah.

With my daughter, if she goes two days doing the routine with no arguing, fussing, etc. she can play x-box after dinner (that’s her choice, I think it’s good to give child their choice within reason of course). Like with anything, if the child blows it they blow it and there is no turning back, no bargaining.

With her teacher this year, if the student homework is not turned in they lose all 30 minutes of recess where they have to sit, hands folded, no reading a book or fiddling with anything, and watch the other kids play. If the work is sloppy they have to do it again using recess time. Whether I agree with this or not is another matter. But that is her consequence and I’ll help her organize, stay on track, relax, but I will not do her homework or negotiate with the teacher so she has to deal with it.

This has worked really well so far. She is going to OT and we are investigating other ways to help her and have scheduled more testing in the late spring but for now, on an immediate basis, this does help alot.

Also there is a lot of maturity gained between age 7 and 8 so that helps.