How to encourage children to do their homework

Apr 23, 2016

Parents around the world would love the magic formula to encourage kids to do their homework

Parents around the world would love the magic formula to encourage kids to do their homework! Alas, it's not as simple as waving a wand, but there are some methods for encouraging your kids to develop and stick to a regular homework routine.

Understand the benefits of homework.

If you're not convinced that homework matters, it will be even harder to convince your kids. There are some good reasons behind a moderate amount of homework:

  • Homework reinforces learning taught during the day.

  • Sometimes homework teaches additional skills not taught at school due to lack of time or resources

  • Homework instills self-discipline, teaching time management, organizational skills, concentration skills, and self-responsibility.
     

Make peace with the reality that most kids don't like doing homework.

When there are many other infinitely more interesting things happening, especially in our electronic gadget age, it's hard to make homework appealing, so stop trying. As a parent, guardian, or other person responsible for getting kids to do homework, acceptance isn't about agreement with them. It's about understanding and infusing the rest of your approach with that understanding, while remaining prepared to set the boundaries and stand by your expectations that they will do it.

Ensure that your child has everything needed to do homework, from pens and paper, to a laptop and books, calculator or phone with a calculator and be sure to get special project materials in advance, to avoid the excuse of "I don't have what I need".[5] Take a moment to sit down with them when they start homework to see what else they might need, including bookmarking quality kids' information websites they can use as part of their homework research tools, such as the US Kids.gov site,[6] and an online dictionary.

Discuss homework with your kids in a direct and enabling manner.

At the beginning of each term or semester, sit down and talk about how your kid intends to handle homework in the coming months. In this way, you set mutually shared ground rules for getting homework done, ground rules that you can call on to remind them when they're slipping, or to praise them for when they're meeting them.

Use praise to achieve intrinsic motivation.

Praising work done well and ignoring or downplaying poor performance is an approach that will enthuse your kid a lot more than focusing on the negatives, and it helps to remove the tension for you, along with any inclination to tear your hair out.

Shift the responsibility from you to your child.

This may feel really hard for you, especially in a time when parents feel a sense of self-responsibility about homework, but it's absolutely vital that your child learns as early as possible that the consequences for not completing homework rest on them, not on you.

Let the kids deal with the consequences of not doing their homework.

Teachers are usually not very happy with students if they don't do homework. If your child flat-out refuses to do their work, then let them see what their teacher does the next day.

Remove your knee-jerk reaction of needing to do your kid's homework.

If homework is meant to be done by your child alone, stay away. Too much parent involvement can prevent homework from having some positive effects. Homework is a great way for kids to develop independent, lifelong learning skills

Be engaged, not nosy.

Nobody appreciates the nosy, stand-over person, and kids are no different. Try to make your approach to their homework one of engaged curiosity, not of nosiness or trying to cross off every discrete task as it's done.

Consider doing your homework at the same time as your younger kid.

When you are inspiring younger kids to get involved in homework, one neat trick is to do some homework of your own, to show your child that you're being responsible and completing essential chores too. Show your child that the skills they are learning are related to things you do as an adult. If your child is reading, you read too. If your child is doing math, balance your checkbook.

Find out what motivates your kid.

A recent study has shown that middle school aged kids who have an ambition that requires education before a career are more likely to knuckle down and do their homework than kids who lack ambition or who seek to work in an area that doesn't require a university education. 

Find a new name for homework.

Every kid's ears prick up at the mention of "work". It's bad enough asking them to clean their room or to clear the latest art and craft disaster off the floor without having to insist also that they do homework. A little trick is to sidestep this in your household, and no matter what school is referring to it as, calling it something like "home learning", "brain boosting", or even just plain old "study". Always talk about it in terms that suggest it's about learning and growing, not about work.

Turn the homework into a game.

Usually kids don't do homework because it's boring. Why not turn it into fun?

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