Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Do you make your kids do all their homework?

A tip that might work for writing - as nearly every boy on this site seems to be having that quite normal for boys problem: link the writing to something else they LOVE! e.g. - my brilliant DH made a connection between DS6's recent fascination with the new "chalk markers" his teacher had at school, the white board markers DH has in his office at home and the Thomas The Tank "white board" we had already provided iwth pens ages ago for DS6. It turned out the key to getting DS6 to follow the arrows on his white board was as a simple as a new set of whiteboard marker pens! He sat for an entire 4 hours during one of his suspensions having a great time doing what he hates most -writing.

The clues to what "turns them on" are often right infront of our eyes -but we have to turn ourselves on better to pick up on the clues !!

Oh - DS6 also loves chalk from spring - fall on the driveway - very good for math I find.

Jelly Beans - how simple can life get. Write now - jelly beans after dinner or on a Friday night for ALL the completled assignments are working wondesr. Somtimes, its lovely taht they are still 6 and so easy to please!! We have 2 flavors of blue - former favorite color. DS6 LOVEs to read the back of the bag as part of the treat - for some reason he always obsesses over "collections". So in this case, he can read every flavor, before it was reading every Thomas train in the collection in those tiny brochures, or studying every detail of a DC comic hero set...or studying all the available LEGO in the Clone Wars set ....the list continues.....

Homework in elementary school is truly a character building assignment. If students know there is an escape clause (boring or too hard or fill in the blank), then they will begin failing classes later on when you cannot change their minds.

I have had a few gifties who hate homework and were not made to do it because it was boring. They are on the failing list every week and never get to do any of the great programs offered due to this character trait.

Somehow 'character trait' seems a bit judgemental (nothing against you El, it just sounds off to me). There have been times when my son truly suffered through work that was a repetition of stuff he knew. I sometimes regret making him do it. I think he was turned off from math due to this and is just now seeing his way back into it. Boring repetitive work can be downright harmful and I think the practice of withholding harder work unless easy/boring is complete is not good. Kids need to be placed well for them and the schools to really shine.
Otoh, my son does like to do all his homework; maybe this was instilled by me being so firm earlier, but I am not sure there are that many parents out there as mean as me.

Have you read any of the recent spate of books discussing the body of research evidence on this issue, such as Bennett and Kalish's The Case Against Homework and Kohn's The Homework Myth?

I've always been suspicious about the value of homework on the purely anecdotal grounds that when I was a child, homework in primary (elementary) school was practically unheard of, but that I don't think my generation is especially characterless. The authors I mentioned clearly have strong views, and on other topics I know Kohn at least can sometimes be a bit selective with the research he cites - but I have looked, a bit, for research that genuinely shows positive results from homework for children of this age, and I've never seen any that was convincing. What there's a lot of is research that shows a correlation between completing homework (if set) and doing well. That's utterly unsurprising, and doesn't show that the homework causes the children to do well. If you know any, I'd be interested in citations.

We're very happy to have DS in about the only school in our city that doesn't give (compulsory, written) homework to children of this age. Indeed the head has been vocal about why, and about the fact that the school's results improved after he introduced this policy.

Colinsmum - intersting point, I actually veered away from putting ds into a international bacclaureate program here because although some stuff sounded great, I was told by several folk that there was a big emphasis on homework, lots of it. I just knew that this was not for ds. Not to be soft on him, he just doesn't need that, in the way I felt it was going to be done. He needs play time and lots of it, and to move forward at a fairly brisk pace through material. Some practice, yes, but not a couple years of addition. Sigh.

I agree. The big focus on homework in the early grades is a relatively recent development in education, and I don't think it's a positive one. Especially if the work is below what a child is capable of doing.

FWIW...

I make my child work hard, but I make him work at things that we both agree are valuable and necessary. That doesn't mean he always wants to do it--he is a kid!--but he gets why it is required of him and he values the learning that results from the work.

That, to me, is character-building.

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...

Yes, true. Though I confess that I'm not really in love with the idea that a person should just do whatever dumb thing they're told by whatever authority figure tells them. I'm not a big fan of sheeple, even for young kids. There's a difference between respecting authority and allowing one's self to be disrespected by it.



Too, I suppose I'm really coming at it from a different perspective, since one of the reasons we're homeschooling was that *I* couldn't stand how much useless homework DS7 was bringing home. Hours of it! At age 6! And not one bit of it useful or necessary!

We spend about as much time on school now as we used to spend just on homework--after 7 hours of school!--and he's actually LEARNING stuff! The whole homework enterprise just seemed like a humongous waste of time to me.

<shrug>

I know I'm in the minority on this particular opinion of mine. I'm okay with that.

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.

I agree with what you are saying regarding blindly following instructions. My motto in life is "Question EVERYTHING."

It's our job to help our kids think for themselves, not do (or not do) something just because someone said so. Again, certain homework assignments provide useful practice while others waste our time. Right now, I'm not going to require my DD6 to do something that does not provide any benefit.

This is going off on tangent a little bit --- here's some psychological studies to consider:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment


I want my kid to be the one who responds with "Heck, no! I'm not doing that." I live my life that way - a lot of people think I'm nuts for starting something or quitting something, but I know what is beneficial for me and those around me.