To homework or not to homework?
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Anonymous
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So I have a daughter who will be starting third grade. She does very well at school, she usually reads at home without being asked to and she gets great grades at school. The main issue she has is that she is ADHD and OCD (and aspergers), making homework time a nightmare for all of us. She goes to after school daycare, where she has an hour of homework time and then they move on to other activities (reading, music, cooking, etc). I would much rather have her do those things than repeatedly harp on things she's been talking about and working on for 7 hours already.
But then she gets home and most days homework is still not finished. She usually has a reading sheet (story on one side, questions on the other), a math sheet, a spelling exercise and a science/social studies sheet. Every day. So she gets home usually with math and spelling still needing to be finished. She is only home for a couple of hours before bed time. I hate the thought of using that time for more homework. I was reading this today and realized I'm not alone: [/url]phttp://www.scarymommy.com/my-elementary-aged-kid-will-not-be-doing-homework/?utm_source=FB[url] I'm curious to know what others think about this. |
Anonymous
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In your case, I would talk to the teacher and see what she recommends. We don't get that much hw (also third grade). Takes about 10 minutes, so far. Just two sheets maybe, plus independent reading. But the teacher has told us she doesn't want it to be a struggle or time consuming and to please let her know if it is.
So try talking to yours. Sorry OP, good luck! |
Anonymous
Agree. If your child is able to do the work in a reasonable amount of time than I believe it is a good way to reinforce the learning and give them necessary practice. If, for whatever reason, your child is taking an excessive amount of time then the benefits no longer outweigh the cons. Is your daughter on an IEP?? If not, she may need to be. Homework might not be appropriate for her. |
Anonymous
| No Homework!!!! Studies show it has no benefit for learning until upper grades. So why are we doing it???? I understand reading, but the worksheets???? |
Anonymous
| OP here, she does have an IEP, but it does not including homework changes. It never occurred to me that it would be "allowed" to add the reduced/no homework thing to hers. For now it just has things like being close to the teacher in class, being able to walk to the office to cool off and regroup (she calls it giving herself a timeout), noise canceling headphones and things like that. |
Anonymous
| I don't know if this is any help as I'm not sure of your school start time but I often try to bump homework into the following morning when they've had a good night's sleep. |
Anonymous
Those sounds like 504 accommodations. What % of her grade is homework? If it is a % percentage, I wouldn't stress over making her do it if she is stressed about it. But talk to her special ed teacher and ask about having her homework load reduced. |
Anonymous
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Teacher here.
Talk to the teacher. Ask how long it should take. I tell my parents, "homework should take 10 minutes. If it takes longer, stop and write me a note: 'Larla could not finish the homework'." FWIW, that sounds like a LOT of homework. Be kind and honest and the teacher will listen. I sure hope she does! 
If not, do what you can and keep writing notes "we made it this far with homework tonight" an staple it all together, or whatever. I'd be sad if I knew my student was spending hours on homework. |
Anonymous
This! And most schools in elementary are not using homework for a grade other than participation if any- there's no way to know how much a kid did on his own. Talk to the teacher, they are usually very reasonable. They want your kid to be happy and successful! |
Anonymous
| In third grade, our teacher said it shouldn't take more than 30 min. I'd talk to the teacher to hear the rule of thumb for your school and go from there. My son has ADHD so I understand your concerns. |
Anonymous
| My child had homework over the summer. He has anxiety and was obsessing over it. I threw it away! Summer is his time. He can worry about homework during the school year. |
Anonymous
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Another teacher here:
It should be 10 min per grade so 3rd grade should have 30 min per hw max. My DD often had more than that, but she only resisted or was openly upset when doing hw with my XH. We're working on resolving that this year. See if you can have your DD's IEP updated to include a no HW accommodation or at least reduced workload for HW. The only time as a teacher I've been less supportive of parents who are struggling with homework is when I assigned something as preparation for the next day's class and the parent wanted the child to turn it in two days later for full credit which completely ignored the purpose of the assignment (to ready the child for the next lesson). |
Anonymous
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Mom of two older kids with ADHD (and a few other things going on). I took a different approach. I gave my kids the responsibility for their work. Rule was that it had to be done. But time, place, and supplies were at their discretion. For big projects, we developed a schedule of what had to be done every day.
Each day I ask my kids to list their responsibilities and then ask them for their plan as to how they will get everything done. So long as the plan doesn't include starting something at bedtime I agree to it. I let them fail so they could learn how to make better plans. But I didn't cut homework. Now that we are in MS and HS, I am very glad I taught them to manage it instead of eliminating it (which I could have done because we did have a homework reduction in their IEPs). Things only get worse and harder when you have a special needs child so you have to start young with helping them develop the skills to manage life and at your daughter' sage, managing lifenonlyni gloves self care, chores and homework. It gets so much more complicated. I can't tell you how many moms of special needs kids tell me they wish they had worked on independence when their kids were in ES. |
Anonymous
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The problem is that down the line homework is going to matter for her grades so teaching her she doesn't have to do it is a bad precedent.
You really need to speak to the teacher about it and if it is truly something that she can't do it needs to go into her IEP. |
Anonymous
This. I could see a compromise of skipping the homework to focus on doing handwriting or other ways if she learns better in a specific way. Many of us struggle with our kids and homework, but we do it and have the battle as its not just about now and it is useful in many other ways. |