Boy is this a timely discussion for me. Normally, DD10 has about an hour of homework per night. Last night DD10 had soccer practice and her teacher decided to make it a massive homework night. They didn't get something done in class so the teacher sent it home on top of all their regular work. We get out of school at 4. Soccer practice with travel time takes about 2 hours. She also needs time to eat. We usually can fit in an hour of homework since she's pretty organized. DD usually goes to bed at about 8:30. Needless to say, yesterday by 9 she had come no where close to getting her work done. She was sobbing at this point and I told her that she needed to stop and get some sleep. She had a tough time calming down and going to sleep because she was stressed out that she wouldn't get it all done. She woke up early to try to get things finished before school. She completed the writing assignment, her required reading and spent 45-60 minutes on math. I finally told her that I would write the teacher a note explaining that DD had put in over 2 hours on homework and that I was cutting her off.
I don't always like but can deal with our normal hour of homework. What I find difficult is the unpredictability of the workload. We never know when one of these extra homework nights is coming. Is my 10 year old really getting any educational benefit from staying up late and stressing out because the teacher didn't meet her own goal for getting stuff done in class? I want my 10 year old to have the opportunity to play sports and do other things. I don't think that she has an unreasonable schedule -- she only has practice twice a week. Now, I'm reconsidering whether to let her add private music lessons because her homework load may be too great. Grr!
