Work tends to be either necessary or unnecessary. I have no problem with teaching my children to do work that is boring but necessary--like cleaning their rooms and studying new vocabulary words, for example. THAT builds character. But I will not require them to do work that is unnecessary. All that teaches them is that parents/teachers are illogical and that either the kids must ignore their own good sense and kow-tow to us, or they should rebel against us.
Neither is the kind of character I want to build...
I encourage my son to prioritize his work, and to use his own very good sense in deciding what he needs to spend time on, and to only spend time on those things he really needs to work on, which means cutting out anything that would be busy work for him and to challenge himself. To challenge himself he finds harder things to work on than I would have assigned and he is happy to show his dad what he has been doing and learning at the end of each day.
My stepson, now 34, was made to do busy work. He hated school, dropped out because he wasn't learning anything. I talked to a kid who was in my son's musical class and is now in his first year of college. I know he was made to do all homework including busy work, but he got to college and put writing assignments off until the last minute and had to drop out of a class.
If doing homework and busywork is good for kids, why is it that it seems like the younger generation has less of a work ethic than previous generations?
My son gets enough lessons in character building in helping me provide respite care for his grandmother. It doesn't matter if he or I have a really bad headache or are sensitive to smells, we do what we have to do and we do the best we can without complaining, because family and their needs are always priority.
I told my son's piano teacher about our priorities and why he sometimes doesn't practice as much as he should and she understands, but I think a lot of people don't.
