How to Help Your Kids With Homework

Homework—it’s an opportunity for your child to practice and perfect skills learned at school. Here are some tips for parents dealing with its challenges.

One of the least-liked words of school-aged children is … homework!

Students often ask, “Why do we have homework?” When I am asked this question, I often ask them if they have learned any skill such as walking, riding a bike or playing the piano. Undoubtedly they have. Then I ask if they ever learned any of those things in one lesson. Of course, they didn’t. We then reason through the fact that it takes practice and work to acquire and perfect any skill.

Practice makes perfect. From a teaching perspective, after a student learns and practices a skill at school, he or she needs to practice it again at home to reinforce it. It’s much like the Christian way of life—after we learn what God wants us to do, we must also put it into practice (James 1:22-25).

Teachers

Your child spends a lot of time with teachers, but sometimes we forget that we as parents are their primary teachers. While a teacher is responsible for teaching specific academic skills, we parents are responsible for helping put it all together into a wonderful package for our child. 

As parents, we should help them learn those character skills that will enable them to grow up to be productive, responsible, law-abiding citizens and Christians. Children who are obedient to their parents “in the Lord” will be blessed in life (Ephesians 6:1-3).

Issues with homework

There are some common problems that children express about homework. Here are a few:

• “I don’t know what to do!” is something you might repeatedly hear from your child. And depending on how many children you have in school, this can be very frustrating for parents. You might wonder, what, if anything, the teacher did all day!
•  “Homework takes all night!” Homework should not consume your child’s entire evening.
• “I’m frustrated!” Children can get frustrated—often from homework overload.
• “I don’t have any homework.” Or “I put it in my backpack, but I lost it.”

Possible solutions

• If your child doesn’t know what to do, he or she may need some prompting to remember what was done in school. Review the day and the subjects studied in a fun way that will enable your child to recall instructions and get his or her homework completed.
• If homework is consuming your child’s evenings, try setting a timer. Children need to be aware that as they grow up there will be time constraints for accomplishing tasks. You may need to involve your child’s teacher in this. Let him or her know that your child is having problems getting homework done in a reasonable amount of time and that you are working with your child. The teacher might have some additional suggestions.
• Your child may get frustrated or discouraged if homework is stacked up in front of him or her. Just take out one assignment at a time. Have your child work on one part at a time and take a short break before beginning the next section. The task will seem more doable, and your child will build up stamina as the process continues over days, weeks, months and years.
• Help your child set priorities as he or she advances in school. Encourage him or her to work on the assignments that are due immediately, but also do a portion of a long-term project. This will help your child learn not only to prioritize and work on urgent items first, but also how to divide big assignments into smaller parts.
• Keep in mind that eventually your child will be solely responsible for getting homework done. If that responsibility is not accepted and learned at an early age, the problems will only get bigger. Help your child with homework, but be careful not to do so much that your child doesn’t realize that it is ultimately his or her responsibility.

Teach your child to be responsible for:

• Bringing homework home.
• Remembering to do homework in a timely manner.
• Getting homework back to school.
• Turning homework in.

• Build in a small, logical reward for successful homework accomplishment.

Realistically, homework for early elementary school students should take between 30 minutes and an hour. Additionally, many schools also encourage 20 to 30 minutes of reading each night. Many families find it helpful to build this into their evening routine.

Specific help

There are some great websites that have a plethora of information about how to help your child with homework for any grade level on any given subject.

One that I like as a teacher is Great Schools. From my limited investigation, this website is easy to navigate and has lots of great information. 

There is so much out there that it can be difficult and time-consuming to sift through it all. Your child’s teacher or school may also have some information about homework that might be helpful.

Bottom line

Remember, as parents it is our responsibility to train our children in the way they should go (Proverbs 3:25). Teachers—whether of public or private schools—only assist us in that role. Homework is just one tool to achieve the end result we want.

Susan Scott Smith is a third-grade teacher and a member of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, in Texas.