Just curious what is "normal" in terms of parents helping a gifted (non-2e child) with homework? Apparently some of the teachers in DD's gifted program are very upset with parents for helping their child write/type reports, projects, etc., and are telling the parents that if they continue to help, they will give the child an F. Kids are being grilled on whether their parents assisted or not. I can understand that for, say, a 10th grader, but these kids are in fourth grade and the teacher gives huge assignments, like write a report with 12 paragraphs on New Jersey.
Here I thought that by NOT helping (and at times DD not doing anything resembling the assignment), I would look neglectful, like I'm not supporting my child's education, but the teachers are now on a witch hunt trying to find out which kids are getting help.

I personally don't help my kids outside of their 2e challenges, and they haven't ever asked for my help either. If they have questions about how to *do* a problem, for instance a math computation or a grammar question or essay construction question, I'll answer it - but I've never typed a report for them or helped them complete an assignment just because it was a big project type assignment. FWIW one of my kids is entirely nt, one is dysgraphic and has an expressive language challenge, and one is dyslexic. I have typed countless times for my dysgraphic ds, but that's an accommodation for a kid who has significant deficits in fine motor skills. I proofread essays for my dyslexic child because she is still working on grammar, spelling, etc but again I see that as help required for learning for a child who has a significant challenge. I proofread essays for my nt child because she loves to write and wants help with the finer points of grammar/etc - things beyond what she is getting in school at this point. I used to help the same dd with math when she was younger and completely lost re concepts, but with help she got over her math frustration and is now doing her math assignments completely independently. So in summary, I help where our kids need instructional help or support in the form of 2e accommodations, but that's it. They have always written or typed their own reports, prepared their own posters, done the rest.

We've had an assortment of teachers re how much and what type of homework is assigned. My dds had assignments as large as 12-paragraph essays in 4th grade but my ds never did. Keyboarding/typing was built in as an expectation at school, but our kids were also given opportunities to learn/practice at school. I've also seen a wide variety of parent-help among classmates - there have definitely been parents who did a lot of the project/prep/typing work for some of the kids in each kids' class... and it was pretty obvious, to my kids and to me. On the flip side, I don't feel that my kids were ever marked down because they did their projects without that type of parent support.

polarbear

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.

Hmmm good question. DH and I were - um - discussing this last night. I was helping DD10 with her weekly French reading (which she hates). She procrastinates doing it and so it was last minute. Also, she has in the past had anxiety attacks over _not_ having homework finished. So, my thinking was to gently push her towards getting it done _before_ she is too tired to think clearly, and also avoid having a melt down.

DH thought I shouldn't be helping her - she should learn to do this type of work on her own. Which is true, but her frustration level was high and I didn't want to end up in a bad place. I wasn't doing the work for her, just sitting with her as she was reading, and prompting her when she was stuck on answering the questions.

With DS7, I generally sit with him while he is doing the work in order to keep up the momentum. I did help him with a coloring assignment because it was silly and would have taken him a long time. He told me which color to use and we worked together to fill it in (I did some teaching at the same time of pencil grip and so on).

Not sure any of this answers your question - is _all_ help banned by the teacher? Or is there a range of allowed 'help' (e.g. encouragement, feedback, scribing) and not allowed (e.g. research and actual writing)? For 4th grade, 12 paragraphs sounds like a long assignment - I'd be tempted to help as well...

I suppose this depends on what level of parental intervention is defined as "help."

I confess to having done the lion's share of work on my DD10's school projects that have involved art. This is partly because the learning value of said activity is questionable at best. It's also because my DD will select a project, select a media (often modeling clay) and then sit at the table rolling clay into a ball, then rolling flat, and repeating for hours on end, accomplishing nothing except drying it out, because she's not sure how to approach it. I end up "helping" by building most of the project while she continues kneading.

DD will set these projects next to those of her peers, some of which clearly look like the child was left completely to their own devices, some looking like they had parental participation, and some looking like the kind of polished, highly-detailed, professional art pieces only an adult could have made. Since my work looks something like the middle group (I don't art), I don't waste a lot of time feeling guilty for my role.

Research papers, on the other hand, I've been involved with very little. In earlier grades, I got involved in directing her to data sources, evaluating their usefulness in a glance, and helping her skim for relevant facts that she can organize. She has this down now. Other than some proofreading in early years, I've never gotten involved with her actual writing process. This is because, unlike making pirate ships, this exercise reflects an important skill that will serve her well throughout life.

I can't say she's been asked for 12 paragraphs, though. That seems excessive.

I would be interested to hear your teachers' perspective on this, because if some children are turning in research papers that look like the polished art pieces in my DD's class, that's a valid complaint. The student learns nothing when the adults do all the work. These teachers should be seeing smaller writing samples from these kids on a near-daily basis, so they should know when the paper doesn't match their style.

The other night, DD was doing prealgebra homework (writing down equations for an arithmetic series). She could do the increasing ones, but couldn't immediately figure out how to write an equation for the decreasing ones. The entirety of my help was to ask, "OK, so this one is correct - explain to me how you got that answer. How do you know what this coefficient is? Now, what do you think you could do to apply the same rule to solve this one?" Then I bit my tongue for a full minute while she stared at it. Then she figured it out and banged out the rest of the assignment.

I see that as an appropriate level of parent help.

I have typed answers at her dictation for online forms (e.g., camp enrollment questions), but I don't think I've done one for a class assignment since first grade, and I got teacher permission ahead of time for that.

When DD was young there was active requests from schools that encouraged parents to be involved with homework. I think what most posters have written has reflected the type of help we were asked to give.....listening to reading initially and helping with sight words. It was a bit pointless for us as DD was a fluent reader so she had comprehension homework and I was expected to help her work through it.

As kids get older help usually means checking what homework they have, talking about how they plan to tackle the tasks, how they are going to make an appropriate space to work, advising on taking breaks or staying on task. Modelling how to do a math question or physics question by finding a similar one and working through it is fine. I am no longer any help with that but there are plenty of places to go on the Internet.

I don't have a problem at all with editing, all authored work needs editing and if you are too close to a piece it is usually hard to see even some obvious mistakes. Advising that a sentence seems repetitive or a paragraph should be moved or brainstorming a better word to mean X is all pretty normal but the bulk of the work should be the student's. Our DD wouldn't let it be any other way because they do courses on plagiarism at school.

At the end of the day it is all about facilitating learning and growing children with the meta analytical skills to manage on their own. But if they need he,p to get there, be it from a teacher or a parent, then they deserve help. Doing it for them isn't help. Sometimes it can be hard to know whether you are helping or doing but the key is, is my child learning or am I taking the learning from them.

This article is a review of the research of parental involvement in homework.

http://www.hfrp.org/publications-re...-school-program-staff-and-parent-leaders

My kids are pretty independent with their homework. As I tell them when they occasionally ask for more help than I think appropriate, I already passed 4th grade (or whatever grade) so I don't need to be the one doing the work.

That said, I tend to help my 4th grader by scribing his brainstorming. He spits out concepts, I write them down with no add-ons. He brain just goes so much faster than his hands, especially this year since they are required to type everything and he only types about 15 wpm.

For my middle school child who is 2e, I haven't really helped her with anything this year other than minor stuff like coloring a section of a poster to her specifications. She occasionally asks her older sister for help with a math problem that she can't get. Her sister doesn't give her the answer but makes her work through it.

My high school student would be deeply offended if had anything to do her homework. I think that she asked her dad to help her figure out something in math once this year.

We check that the homework is done (3rd grade regular classroom, 5th in math/language arts). If something is illegible (somewhat frequent), we have him rewrite that item. We also give spelling words aloud and have him spell them for us. Have helped him with dioramas a bit more, i.e., helping him find materials, but after he's come up with the idea.

We do not normally check his answers. We are flying around trying to get everyone fed and in bed at that time. I figure if he gets it wrong when it is scored, that's better than us showing him the error and him getting a perfect score at this age. Too many of those already.

I do expect to review and suggest edits once the kids are older and writing long amounts of text. My mom did that for me, always explaining what could be changed, and it turned me into a pretty solid editor. Freeform thoughts on this BB notwithstanding.

I don't know whether it's "normal" but it is my understanding that in my area, help from parents is encouraged for K and 1st while the students should be doing his own work by 3rd grade. Of course, there are always some parents who do their kids' homework, which is the reason why many teachers discount/disregard work that is completed outside the classroom, at least as an evaluation of the student's ability.

However, I believe it is always okay to answer questions and clarify concepts that your child do not understand as well as check to see that your child has completed his homework. That level of help is acceptable because it still allows the teacher to grade the student's work product rather than the parent's.

My two younger kids got their own laptops the summer after 2nd grade, partly so there would be no excuses about access and so they can easily practice researching/typing/preparing/printing their own assignments.

Having said all that, I am guilty of sometimes helping DS (who has borderline fine motor skills) with cutting/gluing/taping stuff when I didn't want him to waste too much time.

At DS's school (he is in 2nd grade), all parents are required to check if homework is complete. The homework packet is very light, and has probably 30 minutes to an hour's worth of work for the entire week. I don't check his answers, but if it is something I can't read, I have him go back and fix it. He is expected to read for 20 minutes, and I don't tell him to read either (he reads a lot; about 80-90 minutes every day. Somedays he reads constantly, when he is in the middle of a very interesting book)

We definitely don't have paragraphs of homework or huge projects. I am actually thankful for this, because I don't really believe that homework at younger elementary ages serves a lot of purpose.

In some cases the appropriate helpis writing to the teacher to say your child won't be doing the said homework.

In my opinion school time is for school and working. After school its play time outside then dinner and relaxing. Thankfully my son doesn't have a lot of homework and he reads at night to relax his body but we don't time him or anything like that.

Sometimes it is obvious that help is expected (rubric for first grade only gives full credit if everything is spelled correctly), sometimes I ask. Most of the time, if we help, she put the names on the project as [child name] and we write, with help from [adult name] next to it. We started doing that in K because she did a very cool project with no help from us and had a model due at the same time that she couldn't have physically done by herself. While I no longer believe she is 2E, she is very out of sync and doesn't always feel good about herself at school. It somehow made us feel better in some small way to differentiate between the two so she could be more proud of the work she did by herself. She needed that.

We kept it up as she moved forward. I don't think anyone at school has noticed, but I think it really does allow her to feel more accomplishment with the work she truly does.

I don't know that this would made sense in 3rd-4th grade, but I do imagine we could very well still be drawing guidelines on posterboard for her to write on pretty late in the game, and I wouldn't feel badly about that--or about helping tape and glue if that is not the point and it gets frustrating and I know she's really tried.

If rubrics demand no spelling or punctuation errors, I also imagine that I will demand to proofread, whether she wants it or not throughout elementary school, though I do believe it is better to say "you have x spelling mistakes" than it is to actually find the mistakes for the child.

Some parents may do the kids' homework, but I just don't get the point. How can they ever feel good about what they've done if they didn't actually do it?

I will say, if the school requested that we didn't help with homework, I'd be communicating with the teacher about every little thing I helped with to make sure it was okay.

So apparently one parent just typed the report for her kid, not sure how much she helped with the actual "writing". These kids don't know how to type because the school isn't teaching keyboarding. So it's hunt and peck, but they want a 5 page report? Since DD is so far behind with writing and probably has a writing disability, I was actually sitting with her and helping her form coherent sentences. I made the teacher aware she was getting help. I stopped doing this because I need the school to see how bad her writing really is. But even for kids with no disability, writing a long research paper is really tough so I'd be really surprised if there are any parents who don't help at all. DD's idea of listing her "references" was to put things like www.google.com. or www.my mom.com, or www.myself.com. The teacher circled these and put question marks. If the assignment is appropriate for the ability level of the kids, then I can see not helping, but I don't think that's the case with a lot of the assignments. DD had to construct a board game for one assignment and present it to the class. That involved printing images from the computer, getting poster board, gluing things, etc. No way could she have figured all that out herself. There is another presentation coming up where they have to dress like the person they did a biography on. Parents are invited to come view these presentations. So they think parents aren't going to help arrange these costumes? For the science fair, it was completely obvious that most kids had parental help putting together their posters boards if nothing else. So I'm not sure if the teachers are stupid enough that they really think kids are doing these things on their own, or if they expect help with some things but not others, or ????

blackcap, I have one kid with a writing disability and one who is an outstanding writer and I've done this for both - it's simply teaching a skill to a child who needs to learn it. I don't see this as being the same thing as writing *for* your child if you're not giving your child the ideas re what to write about or actually doing the writing for them.


When the assignment seems beyond the ability level of the kids in the class, I'd talk with the teacher. First check in and be sure you and your child understand the assignment parameters and expectations, and if that still checks out as seeming to be unreasonable, express the concerns to the teacher.


I'm going to diverge in opinion here. My kids had to do assignments like this in 4th grade and they were able to do it independently. It took one "how-to" lesson at a very early age to teach my kids how to use our printer. (The larger life lesson was how to prevent my then-three-year-old from *not* using the printer to print images she found online... sorry for momentarily veering OT...). Yes, parents have to purchase poster board and supplies, but I'd expect a child your dd's age to be able to put together her own poster. It might not look polished like it would if a parent helped... but the expectation is the parent isn't helping.



We've had projects like this too. Yes, parents help kids pull together costumes if they need to find pieces for them, but in reality my kids had their own ideas for costumes, I just had to help with pulling something out of the adult closet occasionally or finding material. This isn't the same thing as the parent going out and buying a costume or creating the idea for the child.


As I mentioned above, having judged a lot of science fairs, it's usually pretty obvious who's had parental involvement vs over-involvement vs no-involvement. Most science fair judges take that into account. It's also not usually just the board that's the most obvious - but talking to the kids you can find out pretty quick whether or not the project was a student idea carried out by the student or a parent-infused project.

I don't think that the issue is whether or not teachers are "stupid" - my guess is that teachers can see through a situation where a parent is over-stepping bounds in helping, and that's what led to a request of the whole class that parents not help with typing or whatever.

I'd also add - parents and teachers aren't the only ones who can usually see when some students are receiving extra help above and beyond what is expected from parents. My kids are *very* aware of this, and they don't come home saying "Mom, why didn't you do this for me too?", instead their take-away is more of thinking it was lame on the part of the other parent. They rarely see it as something that has anything to do with the student, fwiw. Also, please know I don't mean that's *you* at all blackcap

polarbear

My son is in 6th grade (Middle school here). The only homework he ever had in elementary school was spelling - so yes, I did help quiz him on his spelling words. Anything else, he's on his own. Interestingly, he had some homework yesterday, part of which was asking what our homework policy was. Questions included whether his parents helped with his homework. He answered with a big fat NO - bolded, huge font,in red and underlined Having said that, he does his homework as soon as he gets home, before we are home. I have tried to help with math a couple of times, but each time ended with a huge meltdown (I won't say on who's part), so we don't do that any more Yes - I am of the firm belief that homework is HIS work, not mine.

polarbear, DD must be inept then because I had to ask Dh for help in terms of printing out game cards, and images that were the right size for the poster board, as well as a map that was the right size. I suppose she could have handwritten/drawn everything but it would have taken hours, involving much drama, and the end result would have been laughable--not something fit to be presented to a class. DD has impaired executive functioning ability, but even for "normal" kids, I think planning/designing a board game about a specific topic, including the relevant information that the teacher wanted included, would be difficult.

I do think parents are helping too much, because the assignments are too hard, but the teachers don't realize that, and they actually do think some kids are doing things on their own when they are really not. They actually have rubrics, for instance if a kid writes a research paper and has more than 2 grammatical/spelling errors, they get marked down. Really? For fourth grade? So my question is, where should the line be drawn...when is it Ok to assist, correct, whatever...esp. if it's something that the kid can't figure out on their own, they are expressing frustration, refusing to do the assignment, etc. The teacher has these harsh criteria, but now she's saying that it's Ok if they get an F but then they can re-do or fix the assignment and get an A or a B. I don't understand that logic. Why not just make the assignments easy enough that kids can do them correctly (on their own) the first time?

blackcat-- my DD had a number of those assignments (build a game) through elementary school.

No, the end result was often not too "pretty" at the time, but she did actually enjoy doing them-- well, some of the time, anyway.

I understand the concept of revisions in the writing process (all evidence here aside, I mean-- LOL); but I also tend to agree that in that case, why "grade" the initial rough draft to begin with??

It makes no sense to me to even call that initial submission "finished/final" if it can be regraded after revision.

Why not have it be explicit that this is two different components to the assignment in the first place?

I think, honestly, that such policies ("regrading" and very harsh initial grading) tend to foster really unhealthy perfectionistic tendencies in some kids-- and extremely sloppy work habits in others.

Sometimes both things in the same child, in fact.

It also robs children of any pride that they might take in their own accomplishments and hard work. It feels capricious, and as though the teacher (and parent, in the cases where s/he seemingly MUST be involved) are the ones "owning" the process, not the student.

Which makes me wonder--

where is the growth and learning for the student in all of this?

I think all it teaches my DD is that it's Ok to turn in a piece of ****, and get an F. You can always re-do it. Or not. She couldn't care less about her grades. But other kids get very worked up about it, and eventually may stop trying. In Jr. High, they are not going to be able to re-do work or tests the way they do now (they also allow kids to re-take tests that they fail).
The teachers say "Oh, you got an F. No big deal. Re-do it if you want." So what does this really teach? I don't get it. Since some kids are really worried about the grades or doing the assignment as written, they either stress out about the assignment, or ask for help from the parent. In some cases, parents don't want to see F's. So they help. Parents are probably thinking their kid is about to get kicked out of the gifted program because they are doing so bad. So the teachers are perpetuating this weird situation.

That is the same attitude in my child's school - homework is graded for "completion" and not "accuracy". So, as long as DS finishes his homework, he is fine. If I see busywork, I do it for him and tell him to go do something else that is useful to him or fun for him. I don't think that there is anything wrong in helping - exceptions are the cases where homework is meant to remediate the child's weaknesses in class.

They are really inconsistent. With some things, all the kid has to do is show up and they get an A. But other things, they get an F and they actually have to re-do it according to the strict criteria to get their grade raised. The teacher comes across as having a "whatever" attitude, but then has these very strict assignments. Diorama rubic: 4 points if ALL objects are attached securely. 3 points if 2-4 objects are insecure. 2 points if something fell off and is rolling around the diorama, etc. This prompted one parent to ask for a hot glue gun when she DROPPED the diorama on the way to school and things fell out. The teacher was bewildered and asked why the parent was trying to do the diorama for the child. Don't quote this please, since I'm going to delete it later.
If you ask the teacher about an assignment, she acts like none of it is a big deal, and if the kid fails, that's not a big deal either. But yet she has these strict criteria that she tells the kids to follow. I think there are a lot of bewildered parents/kids.

I see highly variable levels of parent involvement at DD's gifted magnet when it comes to projects. I know kids have been scribed for...I think I only did this once when DD was in 2nd or 3rd and "typed" was a requirement (DD still really can't type). I try to provide only guidance and suggestions about things like...if you glue that on first, how will you attach the other thing? And her projects look like it, though she happens to be artsy (not as much on 3d stuff). But since 2nd grade, I have been seeing projects come in that look like a talented adult made them. The teachers appear to be canny about this and DD has never been graded down for turning a project that looks like an actual child made it. Still, I have had moments of cold doubt in the stomach when seeing what other kids were bringing in!

With daily HW, I used to check DD's, but stopped around 4th grade. I now assume that she is following through and if not, well, that's her concern. I still look at DS's because he's still kind of inclined to screw around and dash off something terrible if not in the mood. DD has got a pretty good work ethic by now.

For a big written project for DD, I will read it over and point out grammatical or spelling errors (I don't fix them for her), as well as things like, "You might want to cut out this part here where you say, 'Duh.'".

BTW, blackcat, we also have the highly detailed and uptight (IMO) rubrics.

While I don't teach writing at the elementary school level, I do teach writing. I allow revisions on all essays. Even though I teach at the college level, many of my students do not understand the necessity of revision. In addition, they often have serious writing deficiencies that aren't addressed by just turning in a final paper or even by turning in a rough draft and a final. Some students need more revisions than others. My goal is to teach my students how to write well. That's pretty much all I care about.

If students take me up on my revisions offer and come to my office hours and rewrite their papers until they learn how to write well, I'm all for that. If they need the carrot of a grade to get them to put in the extra effort, I'm cool with it--as long as the outcome is better writing.

Does that mean that some kids turn in crap because they didn't start on time and essentially get extra time to finish? Yes, but I find students actually learn more when they continue to rewrite. I give feedback on every draft. It takes an insane amount of time. I'm okay with that. I haven't always offered unlimited rewrites. Over time, I have found that the students who get them become better writers than those who don't.

I don't know about the school in question, but perhaps the teachers are finding it really difficult to see what their students can actually do? I'd talk to the teacher about what "helping" entails. No proofreading at all? No giving ideas or editing sentences?

I believe people learn most through their mistakes. As a parent, I think it can be difficult for parents to allow young children to make them. It hurts to see them make grades lower than they are capable of.

I also hate the idea that projects are graded on whether or not the student is good with a glue gun. I wrote in a couple of weeks ago about a project my daughter spent a month on. She ended up making 89 on it, which (outside of spelling tests) is the lowest grade she's made this year. She got points off for speaking too quickly and not appearing to listen well enough during other people's presentations. At first I was irritated by the grade because I do want working hard to matter. Why should she make 100s in reading where she doesn't work at all and then make a B on a project she spent a full month on? What does say? But then my husband reminded me that this IS what we want. We don't want her making perfect grades. We want her to realize she needs to speak slower, and if she received full credit, that wouldn't hit home.

So yeah, it sucks. But I think it is ultimately better for the kids to learn this stuff now than to be propped up by the adults now and start failing when grades matter more.

Anyway, just my take...

I think that they aren't able to see what the kids are actually able to do, but this is because they assign so many HUGE inappropriate projects that require work at home and parents help probably because they think they're supposed to. They never sent out an announcement to parents indicating whether they want us to help or not help. Up through last year (before the gifted program) i had to sign a form for DD stating that I was her "homework helper" for math and responsible for checking her work. So on the one hand (and one year) teachers want parents to help, and then the next year parents get reprimanded FOR helping. It's very confusing.