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

DD is 7 and attends a gifted magnet school where expectations are fairly high, but by no means too high. The school does have a lot of homework (IMO, too much). We have had an increasing number of homework battles where she is either not following directions (wandering off- topic with writing, not following the prompts) or unwilling to buckle down to a math problem she finds scary because she doesn't know how to approach it. I feel torn because my understanding is that helping with and supervising homework is key to student success, yet the battles we are fighting seem counterproductive.

We had a conference with her teacher today. DD is exceeding expectations and has the equivalent of straight As in everything. The teacher basically advised me to back off and not help with or supervise homework much anymore.

I like the idea because it sounds easier for me, but it feels kind of like slacking or failing to do my part as the parent or something. Though we do battle at times, at other times I feel like I am genuinely helpful. Thoughts? What do others do?

I would let her do her homework on her own, even if she gets lower marks-- and even if that were an issue. Self-reliance when doing challenging work is important. The only help I'd give is in general encouragement, helping her schedule her time (DS is big on picking when he does his homework), perhaps giving occasional extra rewards for doing a great job or just working extra hard without complaint, etc.

DD seems to be performing extremely well, so there are certainly opportunities for her to make mistakes without crushing her self-perception. And since we learn so much more from our failures than our successes, I'd say the teacher's advice is sound. Let her write it wrong.

Besides, your relationship with DD is more important than a letter grade, so if this removes a source of contention, you both win.

I must say, I have many contradictory feelings about this! Part of me says "Good--backing off is what I wanted to do, but felt like I wasn't 'supposed' to" and part of me feels like DD can benefit from the one on one help she can get from me that isn't necessarily available in the classroom, especially when she is performing well above the standard and is likely to be considered "fine and great" in all areas. I've seen some work from her recently that is well below what she can do, but it's "fine" and she knows she will do "fine." I worry about that pattern getting stronger if no one expects more of her.

Then again, she is pretty self-motivated and is only 7...then again...then again...

(sigh)

I personally don't help with homework unless I'm asked. I do tend to look over math worksheets, because my DD8 is the kid who doesn't read directions or look at signs, so she could easily do an entire problem set completely wrong. But I try to limit my feedback to "You're doing those problems wrong. Read the directions and look at the signs," unless she asks for more help than that. (DD and I are also too similar, and we butt heads over perceived corrections. Explanations provided upon request generally work for us.)

FWIW, my DD has turned in several open-ended assignments where I felt she was both off-topic and not following the prompts, for which she got full credit. Teacher perspective is different than parent perspective.

Yes, DD can be like this, also. She also skips problems unintentionally or forgets to show work because she's moving too fast. So yeah, I don't know if I should just let her turn stuff like that in and learn from it or if I am "supposed" to make sure she doesn't do stuff like that. She is my oldest and this is our first year with any "real" homework, so I still feel like a novice here.

Plus, I actually work in the family and social science field, and have read umpteen papers about the importance of parental involvement in schoolwork and parental help with homework. I guess most of those papers are not about "my" kid, but when you read that over and over....

I helped my son with homework for the first couple of weeks of school. Their writing work is actually pretty fantastic: on day one they have to read a chapter in their book, then write a very short summary of the chapter, and choose one thing that happened that reminded them of something that happened to them and explain. Day two they have to read another chapter and then briefly explain what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the chapter. Day three they read the next chapter then have to do a venn diagram of a character/them. Day four they have to read another chapter then do a longer summary.

My son had a lot of trouble with summarizing things. He would want to recount the entire chapter! So we would sit and talk that through the first few weeks. He's gotten a lot better at it now.

I should mention that she does DO the homework on her own, unless she asks for help, but then I check it, and that's usually where the problems are. With math: "But that's right! I don't KNOW how ELSE to do it!" With writing: "I don't care. It's fine. I want to hand it in like this."

Well, don't look at it as if you're abandoning your parental duty to help with homework, because you're not. As long as you're still available to help when needed, and DD knows she can come to you any time, you're still providing what she needs.

But more importantly, you're also providing DD with the independence she needs to tackle problems on her own.

I think it is harder parenting skill to back off and watch them struggle or make mistakes on their own. Stop looking at it as 'slacking'... I know in my case that it would be twice as hard on me to stand back.

At our house, homework is always a struggle and a fight. DD's medication is well worn off and her attention is non-existant. She detests math and is very vocal about it through every exercise she does. She needs constant encouragement/threats/prompts to stay on task. I have to push her to add details to her writing assignments and to always try her best. She says that she is happy with messy, half-finished work but when she gets a poor mark then she is upset and guilt-ridden. We are trying to find the happy medium between being entwined in the homework fight and standing back and letting her flounder on her own.

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.

This has been bouncing around my head for awhile, so I'm glad that Ultramarina brought it up.

In our household, I've looked at the issue in terms of when "scaffolding" becomes a "crutch."

My DS10 started 7th grade this year -- first year of jr. high in our district -- so I had ample scaffolding in place to help him adjust to the shock of several teachers per day, no recess and considerably more homework than he's seen before.

I have always helped with homework, but this assistance is limited to checking work for accuracy. It's up to him to come to me if he has questions, and even then, I dole out the help in as tiny bites as possible.

It is important in my mind, however, that he gets the work 100% correct before turning it in. Not so much because of the homework grade, but instead because I want him properly prepared for quizzes and tests.

One thing I've stopped doing is pointing out the specific errors, especially in math. I did this because my "scaffolding" had definitely become a "crutch" in that he was racing through his math homework, hoping his rush job would get everything correct, and then he'd simply go back over the problems that needed more effort. This really became frustrating for me so I simply began kicking back the entire assignment telling him only that some were wrong without saying which ones or how many.

Ha.

This turned the tables on frustration and quickly weaned him of the rush jobs. His first-round efforts have improved dramatically as a result. Success!!

(Poor kid. He hasn't figured out that his teacher doesn't record grades for homework --it's simply "complete" or "incomplete.")

-- -- --

In writing, though, I've not taken down too much scaffolding. I'm very disappointed with the teacher's feedback and believe she's too easy on him. Her idea of an A paper is far removed from mine. Because of this, I work with him on every paper so that I am satisfied with the outcome, knowing that she will accept much less. I remember my essays being positively destroyed by my teachers -- virtual seas of red ink -- and am stunned to see his papers returned with nary a comment beyond, "Nice work!" I really wish she'd spend more time critiquing so that he hears it from someone other than me.

-- -- --

I'm curious to see where the year ends up and how much I'm really able to back off everything. I'm already trimming back my constant reminders and have replaced most with a checklist that he must review each morning and evening -- so far so good. (He's somehow managed to lose only a single piece of paper in these first three months of school -- that's a huge success!)

I consider homework very important - if nothing else, it's certainly teaching him about time-management. My parents' entire involvement was simply, "Is it done?" And too often I'd say, "Yup," hoping I'd figure out a way to tackle it in the morning before class. That was likely where I began the keen development of my procrastination habits.

I was still working with my daughter at age 7. She did the work, but I checked it and we discussed it together. We had so much fun doing it. I was usually cooking supper at the same time so I was not giving my full attention.

She is now fourteen and a freshman in high school. She rarely wants help anymore, but she does like me being around her. And at this age, I jump at the chance to be around her. I helped her with Spanish verb conjugations and words, but am very impressed at how she keeps up with everything. I often review any papers she has, but have had to make very few changes.

I don't have advice except to say that you probably don't have to back off very much. Teachers do not have very much time with each student and your help does allow them to learn more and to learn to organize their work.

I appreicate all the perspectives here. I told DD that we are going to sit down and talk about what she wants from homework time and what I want, and how to make homework time more pleasant and less stressful. I think we'll come up with some good ideas.

I will add here that one major stressor I haven't mentioned is her little brother, who adores her and is chomping at the bit to go and play with her as soon as she gets home. He is 3, and he is loud and chatterboxy and hyper, as 3yos are. Talking to him and being distracted by his antics definitely prolongs the HW pain. But she doesn't want to go to her room to do the work (she's an extrovert and always wants to be where the people are). I truly do not know how people homeschool with toddlers and preschoolers around!

I wish there was less of the homework, really. She gets about 7 pages of math, one longish writing assignment (about a page), and a two-sided spelling worksheet every week, plus various independent projects. She also is required to read aloud to us at least 20 min a day, which I think is awesome in many ways (it's been great for her vocabulary) but is a time commitment for sure.

I am sure that there are different opinions on this, but I definitely would push the homework if it is something doable...and it doesn't sound like he has all that much. He's going to have to learn to work on homework to pass in the future. In our house, you get a snack and can't do anything else until homework is done. It's not an issue for DS7 but it may be in the future and it's important to get the routine down. If he wants to spend forever doing it, it's just less time for other things. He does get distracted some and has a 4yo sister who can distract him....but other times she asks for homework and does homework next to him. I wouldn't get onto your son for not doing it...just don't let him do other stuff until it's done. For us the 30 minutes he gets on the Wii would be a big motivator. But when you mention the situation with DH that makes it really hard. 7pm homework time is not very fun. I would just ask DH to make sure he checks his homework before he gets to do any privileges. Maybe he will be on board for that....Hopefully! Good luck!

Our son's teacher checks his homework well...so that's another reason I don't really have to. He usually gets everything right and if he doesn't he has somehow already corrected it before bringing it home. The teacher is quite structured, and very perfectionistic. A little too much at times. She will write things and put arrows if she wants things moved over. She once wrote on a test "did you study every night for this? you seemed surprised you had a test today." This because he got 2 wrong on a social studies test (still the highest in the class). She corrects all his grammar and addresses neatness, etc.

We have always expected our daughter to complete her homework and work the bonus questions. This has paid off handsomely in Middle School and High School when the hormones kick in. She knows our expectations and completes the work-no matter how important she thinks it is. At this age, they don't think any of it is important.

P.S. I wish there was a "like" button for Dandy's response.