A lot like Polarbear's answer-- I've helped DD with areas of relative weakness (and by relative, I mean that related to her peculiar asynchronous profile)-- so in 4th grade, I helped her with organization on a massive assignment-- but it was truly a beastly thing, and they had little instructional support for breaking it into components, etc. To be clear, this was no 12 paragraph assignment. It was a 16 part research report on the history of her state, and needed multimedia finished product, citations, etc. etc. Numerous sources, and high quality sources, etc. I'm truly not kidding. I've never seen the like for that grade level. She was so resistant to even starting the darned thing that we were waiting on her to do it so that she could move into 5th grade. Anyway, that's my reason why we did that; I also wound up scribing about a third of it because she refused to do any of it-- but we were also honest with the teacher about that, and she had a little discussion with DD about ownership of one's own work, etc. (With our blessings, actually.)
I've usually offered my assistance to DD in one of three ways:
1. Editorial advising-- careful reading of the assignment rubric, offering yes/no answers to "is this good enough" and even offering such advice as needed.
2. Fine motor related* skills-- AS REQUESTED, and with the understanding that I will never be doing more than is necessary to model and teach DD the skill-- then I let her do it. Her graphic design/layout skills are amazing as a result-- I'm sure that people have seen her posters and THOUGHT that parents were doing them, but it wasn't so.
3. Instructional-- when it was lacking, we've filled the gap in INSTRUCTION. If she asks about a math problem, I'll look for a similar one and model a solution, then have HER work one for me, stepwise. But never-- ever-- have I "done" work FOR my DD when that work was to be evaluated by others. That would be wrong.
I consider that plagiarism, and so would she; it's effectively having her present a parent's work or intellectual property as her own. No way.
Worse (IMO) is that it sends a message to your child that his/her efforts are inherently inadequate and that the end justifies the means. Bad, bad juu-juu, that message.
Yes, I see a lot of parents do this kind of thing. I'm aware that many of them see nothing wrong with it, and they tend to assume that all other parents are doing it too, and that this makes it okay somehow. It doesn't.
* I scribed with a keyboard for DD when she was <9yo. I occasionally did hand-written scribing for her until she was about 12 re: prewriting/organizing/project planning. HER ideas and words, and my physical skills to get them captured. It was that or voice-to-text. I never 'reworded' things, though, and I never took control of that process. There was also always a plan (in my mind) to fade the support as her asynchrony shifted to allow for her to take more control over the fine motor skills that she needed. We were teaching her keyboarding skills, for example-- once she had those, we let her do that aspect of things for herself.
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 03/04/15 02:29 PM.
