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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How much homework do they have? Are they right that it's a ridiculous amount, or do they just feel overwhelmed and lose perspective so that 30-45 minutes of homework plus instrument practice turns into them feeling that it's all they do every evening?

If you have a reliable estimate of how long homework usually takes them, can you show them that on a color-coded daily schedule? That helped us somewhat, when they could see that the time they really needed to spend on homework was usually right around half an hour, shorter than most of their favorite TV shows, and would still leave them room to do other things if they stopped the procrastinating.

Can the instrument practice reasonably be moved to morning, or after dinner, or a time separate from whenever your kids do their school homework? That might break the perceived mountain of tasks up a bit and make it seem more manageable.

We did homework in 15 minute chunks with a 5 minute snack/walk around the house/listen to music/do a yoga exercise break between each one; this worked until about 7th grade. "We can do anything for 15 minutes". Somehow, that amount of time didn't seem so bad and didn't generate near the fighting and complaining that the general instruction to "do your homework" did.

Typically we do homework right after we get home, before anything else or any free time. They get the amount of free time that is left over after their homework is completed to my satisfaction. If it's sloppy I make them redo it, and if I can tell that they're being extra careless out of pure defiance or if they start getting mouthy and disrespectful in their avoidance of the work they get one warning then I might assign an extra chore or a "mom school" assignment of my own that has to be completed.

Basically, our philosophy is "Homework is not optional. It will get done, and done in such a way that you can take pride in your work. There's two ways it can get done: the easy way -- where you buckle down, give your good faith effort the first time, and get it out of the way so the rest of the evening is your own, or the hard way -- where you procrastinate and whine and waste your whole evening making a great big noisy fuss over something that would've taken you around XX minutes. It's your 
choice, but I sure know which one I would pick if I were you."[/quote]

OP here.  Our philosophy is the same, but lately it seems that our kids choose the latter, and they seem willing to fight and procrastinate and use the afternoon and evening to employ delay tactics rather than tackle what needs to be done.  After a couple of hours of this, we find ourselves frustrated and ineffective. I like the idea of frequent breaks and it seems that the theme here is that homework needs to come first.  We often let them have a break after school, but perhaps this is misguided.  It's harder to leave free time than to work for it.  I appreciate all the suggestions and admire all of you well-organized parents! [/quote]

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