10 Ways to Ease the Homework Struggle with your Child
At Camp Kupugani, our overnight summer camp in the beautiful Midwest (just two hours northwest of Chicago), we recognize that great campers often make great students, who often become great adults. As child development professionals, we recognize that it’s sometimes a challenge to navigate the craziness of parenting! A recent article from the Washington Post elucidated some of the challenges and proposed ten ways to take the struggle out of homework.
Kids procrastinate or shut down because they fail to see the relevance of a task, prefer other distractions, or struggle with comprehension, organization or motivation. And nagging isn’t going to work. “Kids want a voice, and many would rather have the reputation of being forgetful or irresponsible than admit they don’t know what they’re doing.” With a little creativity, though, parents can help kids overcome those barriers to productivity. Read below for 10 ways to encourage kids to approach homework with more confidence and less conflict. Click here to read the full article.
- Establish routines and discourage bad habits
- Choose a place where your child can do homework without distractions.
- Do homework at a set time each day.
- Find the best way your child works
- With a planner?
- By themselves in a quiet space?
- Close to a family member that can motivate them?
- Name and tame negative voices
- Name negative voice to help identify that they are only a small part of the conversation.
- Help your child to use positive self-talk.
- Create ways that when they hear negative self-talk to reshape the conversation.
- Dress for success
- Let them choose “work clothes”.
- Thinking cap or glasses
- Have items ready and in the child-selected learning places.
- Let them choose “work clothes”.
- Let school be “the bad guy”
- If your child is struggling, inform her/his teachers.
- They may be able to brainstorm ways to help your child
- They may offer to do the work at school
- This can help your child confront issues with adults.
- If your child is struggling, inform her/his teachers.
- Give kids options, but inspect what you expect
- Allow your child to choose the order she/he does her/his work.
- Allow your child to talk with the teacher themselves.
- Check in on work completion.
- Confirm with the teacher via email the child talked with them.
- Introduce physical breaks
- Use physical fitness to help energize your child.
- Have your child go outside after a set amount of problems or a subject is finished.
- Introduce mindfulness tasks.
- Kneading dough?
- Blowing bubbles?
- Hand-eye coordination based tasks?
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