How to Prevent Homework Battles

It’s been a long day of school. Your child is tired and wants to relax, however they have some homework to finish. You ask them to do their homework, but they refuse, and this causes an argument. These arguments between a parent and child over homework are very common, and known as homework battles. In hopes of avoiding a homework battle, I’ve compiled a list on how to make doing homework easier for you and your child.

1. Expectations
Sit down with your child and discuss your expectations and goals for homework now. This step will only get harder as the school year goes on. Having clear expectations will make sure that your child can’t say they didn’t know they had to do their homework

Also, as the year goes on, it might be more difficult to keep track of the expectations you set at the beginning of the year, but you must fight this, and keep reminding your child that they have expectations to keep. The constant, daily reminder of expectations, will make sure that your agreement never slips either your or your child’s mind.

2. Set aside time in the day
Creating a daily routine, and setting specific time for homework is important to acknowledging their importance and making sure your child isn’t doing anything else. Very often in homework battles your child complains that they were playing and don’t want to do their homework. With a specific time for homework, you can tell your child things like: “it’s 5 o’clock, what do we always do at 5 o’clock.” 

For a good time to do homework, I recommend giving them about an half an hour to an hour of free time when they get home from school, before setting aside time for homework. Also, feeding them a healthy snack before work can help their brain better engage with the work.

3. Know how much to help
It is not a bad idea to help your child do their homework, but doing their homework is another story. In fact, children sometimes use parents to do their homework, so they can get back to playing. In hopes of avoiding this, you should help the child get to the answer, but never ever actual give them the answer. This will help them critically look at a problem, and be able to solve it themselves. A perfect gauge of the effectiveness of your helping, is seeing if your child can answer a similar question alone. If they can, that means you helped them figure out the process to get an answer, and not the answer itself.  If you feel like you are just giving away answers, just walk away and let your child work alone.
4. Find the best location
At the beginning of the year ask your child to pick the spot that makes them the most comfortable to concentrate and work in. Once they’ve picked, make this the homework spot, and they sit there when doing their homework. Each child has a different spot that is comfortable, finding the perfect one is a key to making them happier and less argumentative to do their homework.

5. If all else fails, visit us!
 Light in the Attic Learning does offer the Homework Hub. The Homework Hub is an instructor monitored work center, where students can complete their homework. If they need help, the instructor is there to assist them. As always, If you have any questions about the Homework Hub you can click the email button below and email me.

In the end, I hope these five tips will lead you and your child to less homework battles and more, smoother homework sessions.

All the best,
David

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