I recently read The Homework Trap by Kenneth Goldberg and highly recommend it as a Back to School Teacher gift, or just as a good read for yourself if you feel you have a homework trapped kid.
The following is a guest post by Kenneth Goldberg, Ph.D. who is the author of The Homework Trap:How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students, and Teachers. He has 35 years of experience as a clinical psychologist. He is also the parent of three adult children, one of whom was seriously homework trapped. His website is www.thehomeworktrap.com.
As the summer comes to an end, you hear a sound in the air,
a collective “sigh of relief,” knowing life will soon be normal again. Sure,
that family vacation was fun, but you spent the rest of the summer wondering
how to manage work and home, with bored children underfoot. You chuckle
remembering the office supply store commercial, before last school year began, with
the parent gliding down the aisle on a shopping cart singing the Christmas tune,
“It’s the best time of the year.”
Perhaps, you are that parent who looks gratefully ahead for
the school year to start. Perhaps, you’re not. Perhaps, you are at home,
fretting that the summer homework has not been done despite your constant
reminders (should we say nagging?), knowing you’re about to face another year
of frequent homework battles. Last year, you followed the teacher’s
suggestions. You read the paper with its homework advice. You may have even
purchased a book or two touting homework nirvana if you did it right. It didn’t
work then, and you don’t believe it will work this year.
So here’s some uncommon advice. Chuck the summer homework
assignment. Don’t do it for your child (you’re only teaching him to cheat), and
don’t force him to get it all done (as if compliance and rushed work is what
learning is about). Just, write the teacher a note: “Just to let you know,
Johnny didn’t get his summer homework done.” The consequences will be small. You
have bigger issues on your mind: what’s going to happen through the rest of the
year.
Instead, start by observing your child as summer comes to an
end. If he’s like many homework-trapped children, you will note that he is quite
interested in getting his school supplies – his book bag, the notebooks, pencils
and pens – so he’s ready to start his new school year. Listen for the
excitement in his voice and realize that he’s really looking forward to school.
And notice what he does for the first three weeks. He’ll bring home some good
grades, and if he’s in middle school, he’ll bring home great grades and make
you feel proud: that is until the calls start coming in. The reason I focus on
middle school is because your middle school child will have several different
teachers, and because of that, he’ll get all the work done for some of his
teachers, and none for the rest.
Obviously, it is not your goal for your child to pass some
of his courses but fail the others. But it is important to take note of what is
happening with him since this early school-year behavior is an important sign
to help you dispel the Myth of Motivation. Typically, parents and teachers
alike see the homework-trapped child as not motivated to work. This is not true,
which is why it is so important to pay particular attention to these early school
year signs that he wants to do well. Homework noncompliance is almost always
misread as a behavioral problem, when it truly is a learning problem in
disguise. When we miss this point, the child feels trapped, acts out in
response, and ends up becoming a behavioral problem in the end. School
districts throughout the country are overburdening their child study teams and
creating unnecessary school district-wide expenditures to manage behavioral
problems that they create by not understanding why some children don’t do their
work.
The issue is pace. The school day is bound by the clock.
Adults work at jobs where they are paid by the hour. Yet children are sent home
with a folder full of assignments that they have to keep doing until it all
gets done. People do not work at the same pace, yet they can function together at
school and on their jobs, and in many other tasks large and small, simply because
they work on the task for a fixed period of time. Homework trapped children
cannot get their work done as quickly as children who don’t have this problem. They
typically have problems with working memory (sustaining attention) and
processing speed (usually handwriting). If the child cannot complete the
assignment in a reasonable amount of time, that child is destined to suffer
harm. The child will either refuse to do the homework, at a cost to his grades;
or will do the homework but fail to develop social skills.
The solution is simple: bind the homework session by the
clock. Require that the child work a reasonable amount of time, knowing he’ll
be totally free when that time is up. Any parent can implement this solution in
his or her own home by simply setting that standard with the child. Inevitably,
the child does more work than he ever did battling hours on end, regardless of
the reactions he gets at school.
Obviously, we want to protect our children from failing
grades when they put forth a reasonable effort, so it is important to contact
the school and seek support from the teachers as well. This means asking them
to accept the fact that you as the parent are in charge of your home, and want
a reasonable adjustment in the grade penalties for work that is not done.
In the end, you may need to institutionalize these recommendations
in a formal plan called a 504. The specifics are found in my book, The HomeworkTrap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students, and Teachers. But first and
foremost, don’t let anyone say that your child is not motivated, or that he’s
any lazier than any other child. The Myth of Motivation can get quickly
asserted without considering the other signs that your child really wants to do
well.
