Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Do you help with homework?

We just landed in this dilemma - DS is in K at a gifted school - which says from the outset at the info sessions - we give homework here, don't send your kid if you don't believe in it - so we expected homework and to have to be involved but so far it has been more painful than expected.

DS does all the thinking work correctly and quickly but the writing of it is torturous because he does not want to do it. We had to have a whole discussion with him about how repetition is how you learn something physical - something intellectual is done by reading and reviewing -which he does all the time but never saw as learning!!! We also pointed out that this is how his teacher sees what he can and cannot do - so if you know how to do it but just don't feel like it - she won't be able to tell that.

I like the teacher's advice here - but I absolutely understand the desire to see that its done right, especially when you know she can do it But having her take responsibility is never a bad thing! Maybe when she gets back comments from the teacher saying what's wrong with the writing, this will translate into more careful work the next time? Interesting that is asking for checking of the math but then battling over it - maybe rather than checking, just ask her to explain to you what she did and leave it at that?

DeHe

I struggled with this too, since the beginning and just at regular school. DD8 has never had a problem starting or doing the work. Our battles have also been over things like the worksheet asking for the problem to be shown or solved in a particular way. My personal thought on that is that if a child passes all the tests or demonstrates the knowledge in anyway, that should be acceptable. Elementary grades matter so little in the long run, unless they are worth something to the child...

Also, I have been learning quite a bit about MY particular child. It can be frustrating, but she is ABSOLUTELY a kid who would rather make her own mistakes than listen to your suggestions about the best or easiest way to do something. Sooooo what I do (or used to do, we are transitioning to homeschooling-it's all "home work" now, hahaha) was Butter would do her work at the dining room table, usually while I made dinner in the kitchen. I can totally see her and am there if she needs help, but I'm not hovering...if she needs help, she will ask, or, occasionally, I will suggest a short break, snack, water, if she seems to be anxious or struggling. Sometimes we just take a few minutes to chat about what she is supposed to be doing. I think that is a positive, supportive role. "Helping" is where you start to do things like sit down and organize the steps in making a book report, etc. The level of that will be dependent on your child and where they are...for example, I "help" my 8yo with her book report by being a sounding board and asking her to tell me the main characters of the book which she will highlight in a book report.
I also review DD's work...I stopped telling her to check things for a while, but now I have her look again, so SHE can see where she made her mistake. 99,9% of the time she says "Ooooohhhhh, that was silly!" or something like that
Backing off doesn't mean not being available or supportive, it just means, if everryone is happy with the progress in the classroom, don't sweat that homework and let her enjoy some of it

For math, I'll ask either if she wants me to check, or if she wants me to tell her if there are errors. Our school is low-homework, though, so she never has math homework unless it's a worksheet she doesn't finish in class. I've contemplated asking her to bring all of her math worksheets home because the combination of her not reading and the (non-mathy) teacher's explanations not making sense to DD means that she'll often completely blow a worksheet. But so far, I've kept my mouth shut, and so far, it's working.

For writing, I just keep my mouth shut. The time when DD's assignment was to write a story using 10 spelling words, and copy it over using her best handwriting? What she turned in was 4 pages of scrawl, having chosen not to copy it over, and she got full credit for it. If the teacher doesn't care, why should I care? If the teacher does care, and DD is indifferent to the consequences, but it's clear she understands the important part of the assignment, why should I care?

I only go to the mat over homework when DD isn't learning, not when what she's learning is "not everyone expects perfection."

Man, I totally would care. I would care because she is getting full credit for not following the directions. I think that's a bad precedent. I remember getting good grades on substandard work as a kid, and I remember the sort of smarmy but also weird and guilty feeling it gave me. It was like I pulled one over on them, but in my heart I felt wrong about it.

I think this teaches kids that they can do just fine regardless of whether they do their best work, or even good work. It also can teach them that "Hey, I'm smart enough so that I can get away with not doing it right," which I think can lead to obnoxious feelings of superiority or excessive ego.

It's not that I think that "best handwriting" is such an important learning goal, but if the handwriting actually doesn't really matter, then leave it out of the assignment.

I don't have any part of homework, other than checking DS7's agenda for what his homework is and seeing if it is completed. He just does it and doesn't ask for help. If he did ask for help I would help or give some ideas, but let him do most all the work. My DS7 is fairly logical and black and white in thinking...so some of the writing and open ended things are harder for him. He can answer, but it is quite succinct, so in the past I have asked some open ended questions to get him thinking. This year he generally only has spelling, ELA, or Math for homework and not a lot of writing other than sentences with his spelling words so no help needed. He can look up words he doesn't know and figure it out.

IMHO, DD's spelling assignments in general are ridiculous nonsense, and stupidly graded. For this one, I figured that the sheer volume DD produced offset the lack of tidy handwriting, and I personally care more about willingness to produce volume than I care about penmanship. But I'd have been perfectly happy had she gotten a low grade on it - I'm just not willing to fight the "your teacher has unacceptably low standards" fight over handwriting.

For the one that was "come up with 10 more words that fit this week's pattern," and the pattern was "take a verb that ends in -ate, and modify it to form a noun ending in -ation and an adjective ending in -able," I did explain the pattern, and provided a list of -ate verbs for DD to modify. The teacher wrote a note on the page that any word ending in -ation or -able would have been counted right. For that one, I was strongly of the opinion that if the assignment was to follow the pattern, DD needed to follow the pattern. (And that the fact that no 4th grader could possibly have come up with 10 words that fit the pattern without assistance is just proof that the assignments are ridiculous nonsense.)

My parenting in this regard is influenced by my own experience as a kid, when my parents told me (repeatedly) that getting an A was meaningless, because the teacher assigned work that was too easy / graded too laxly. "Perfection isn't good enough" is not the message I want to send my kid. If I want her to work harder on something, we'll work on something at home, but I leave school standard-setting to the school when possible.

I've only read the first page of posts in this thread, but I tend to agree with the posters who say to let your DD run with her homework independently if that's what she wants. Here are my thoughts on your concerns about her mistakes, and her refusal to work with you to correct them.

I can easily picture us being in this situation with our DS6 at some point (he is super resistant to us working with him, but isn't focused enough or reading well enough to do homework independently yet). If he weren't getting reinforcement from his teacher that his errors or sloppy output need correction, I'd take a few minutes at some other time in the week when he's not doing homework, and have a serious conversation about how we feel about his errors/sloppy work: how we understand that his teacher seems to feel this is okay, and how our values are a little different; how we feel that we should keep learning and correct our errors when we can do so, and how working with dad and me would let him learn more accurately as he moves through school; that ultimately it is his choice whether to do this or not, but that we don't agree with his current chosen approach.

Ultimately, it's her choice, but you could share your feelings with her, so she can consider them.

My first thought when reading this - and I'm not sure I've thought it through so please feel free to shoot it down - was of a book dd has, "The Gifted Kid's Survival Guide". In it is has a 'gifted bill of rights'. I can't find our copy, but one on the list that has always stuck with me is that gifted kids have a right not to have to give 100% in everything. This doesn't mean "not pass that subject", just that it isn't necessary for them to have to do the best they can in every subject. The implication was they should put in the effort for those things they value but that they have the right to only put in enough effort in other areas to enable them need to to ensure that they have the skills to support the things they do value.

I.e. if a kid is madly passionate about science, then that's where they should exert their energies. However they still need to be able to write to be a scientist and so they need to develop those skills, but they don't need to perfect them.

Obviously this needs to be applied with a dose of common sense (obviously "I want to be really good at watching TV" is not how this was intended to be read!)

I guess what I am saying, is if she's doing ok at things like writing, why not let her get adequate rather than phenomenal marks in it and up the challenge in the things she enjoys? She might even come to enjoy it later (I write for a living - not that you know from my posts - and writing IS hard if you're not interested in the subject matter).

I appreciate there might be many reasons this isn't appropriate in your circumstances, but just thought it might be a different perspective.

No, of course not, and I certainly did not tell DD that (for instance) her report card today was meaningless--I told her I was proud of her that she had done a good job. And I would hesitate to get into any "Your teacher isn't rigorous enough" conversations, for sure--that's directly subverting the teacher's authority. But when we have the assignment in front of us and it isn't graded yet, I want DD to try to follow the directions, even if I think the directions are kind of stupid. (And at times I have told her--well, not exactly that, but "I know it seems silly to have to show your work when you already know the answer, but...")

Coll, I like your approach. I always forget how useful it can be to discuss something outside the heat of the moment. DD is very fiery when it the thick of something but is often very reasonable at other times.

I'm still struggling with my own homework dilemma with DS9. He doesn't have much in the way of homework to begin with, because he does it all in class, but when he does have it, he can't be bothered with doing it -- or after doing it, he can't be bothered to remember to turn it in. He brought home a "U" --unsatisfactory -- grade for Home Reading and Homework on this first quarter report card. The only homework he really has regularly is the Home Reading one, where he is supposed to write a little something about things he's reading -- ask a question about it, make a prediction about what might happen next, silly things like that. He turned in one or two out of nine for the quarter. At some point in the quarter, he announced that he had figured out that if he did only the odd-numbered ones, he would get a P on his report card, but he didn't actually even do that.

So my dilemma is, should I ride his butt about homework and make him do it, on the assumption that remembering things like this is a part of his Asperger's and he needs help with it, or should I let him do whatever he chooses and take the report card consequences, on the assumption that he needs to learn to remember things? I haven't made up my mind so far. I should add that I get home from work at 6:30, so it's already dinner time and then bath time and bedtime, and the homework should have already been taken care of but is something that apparently DH can't be bothered with remembering either.