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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't help my 12 yr old unless she asks. She asks me to quiz her to study for tests sometimes. Earlier this year she had a week with TONS of homework and when I looked at it, [b]a lot was busy work. I did a big chunk of that for her since she already knew it[/b]. [/quote]

This is why so many teachers have stopped having kids do projects at home, because they know parents like you do it for them.  What do you think you are teaching your child here?  Will you also be the mom that types up her paper for her when she is in college because she's so stressed?  [/quote]

I'm teaching her that after she's done homework for five hours, enough is enough and I will help when the workload is ridiculous. When the teacher is punishing the entire class for three kids bad behavior by giving everyone two hours of busy work on TOP of their regular homework, yes I will call bullshit. In college she will type her own papers. But she's not in college now, just sixth grade. In college you don't get busy work. [/quote]

So teach her that enough is enough by BEING HONEST... don't do the work, take a principled stand and tell the teacher why not, and accept any consequences. Otherwise, if she wants credit for the work she needs to actually [i]do the work[/i]. Otherwise you are simply teaching her to cut corners, lie, and quite frankly - cheat. Something turned in for evaluation/credit should be primarily the work of the person whose name is attached and it certainly shouldn't be something someone else did for the person. You already passed sixth grade; how is your daughter getting credit for the work you are capable of producing in any way acceptable?

Listen, I get it. I do. Our (high school aged) kids definitely have times where they are overscheduled and overwhelmed. But that doesn't mean I allow them to cheat. Anything they will be getting credit for at school will be their work. Divide and conquer is a great thing, and our family typically does A LOT to take the pressure off of whoever is temporarily extremely busy -- if one of the kids is swamped with schoolwork, it's not unheard of for oldest sibling to make a library run for his sister's preliminary research for a paper while oldest daughter is doing math homework, or for one of the twins to write out a set of foreign language notecards that both will study from while her sister types both of their already written lab reports. DH and I have no problem proofreading papers, doing the physical work of putting together posters, skimming research paper outlines to suggest where something needs more support, or anything like that. The kids also similarly step up if DH or I gets really busy at work by helping manage more of the workload at home as we keep chores flexible since people don't always have time. Additionally, often if we bring home something to work on we will have one or two of the kids who aren't buy volunteering to edit written work or be a first audience for briefing slides or something. That's just family helping family when someone is busy and overwhelmed, but anything that ends up submitted as someone's work under someone's name is understood that it must be that person's own words with only editing or facilitation by someone else.

If your middle schooler is regularly working for 5+ hours a night, that indicates a potential issue with either the volume of work or something about how your daughter is approaching the work, and I would suggest you talk to the teacher. That's  crazy.

I realize our experience is probably atypical in the other direction, but when the kids were in middle school it was rare for them to have more than 90 minutes and often much less. Granted they made excellent use of free time during the day or on the bus and they were careful about the ratio of effort expended to effort needed for required result and very efficient in their work habits, but still 5 hours seems nuts to me. I wouldn't allow that to continue unchecked.[/quote]

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