I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.
~ Lily Tomlin
“If they don’t learn to do their homework now, they’ll never make it in college.” These were the exact words of a teacher speaking to a parent about the necessity of homework. She was adamant the children in her classroom learn to be responsible and self-disciplined. While it might be possible to fathom this statement coming from a high school teacher or perhaps a middle school teacher, it is hard to believe it came from a kindergarten teacher. That would equate to the absolute need for a five-year-old to go home after a full six hours of school and then do more work.
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“No it takes time away from my family.”
Homework has become the norm for children in kindergarten through high school. Homework is viewed as an intellectual discipline to establish good study habits and develop good character. Teachers use it to ease time constraints on the amount of material that can be covered in class and to supplement and reinforce the lessons covered in school. Homework is intended to foster student initiative, independence, and responsibility.
While the thoughts and ideas behind homework are well intended, logical, and reasonable, how do they actually play out in the reality of most school-age children? If you took a video camera into 100,000 homes after school and filmed what was happening during homework time, what would you see? Intellectual discipline or rebellious chaos? As many parents would testify, you would see the latter—rebellious chaos. In fact, for Billy, you would see rebellious chaos unmatched by any other activity children are asked to perform. You would see Billy yelling and tearing up his homework. You would see pencils flying, books being slammed, and tearful cries and threats of “I hate you—I’m not doing this homework and you can’t make me!” Billy would rather go to the dentist than do his homework. In addition to seeing Billy exhibiting negative behaviors, you would also see parents hitting their window of stress tolerance. You would see parents reverting to being two-year-olds as they reach new levels of exasperation. And all of this would be in the name of “learning.”
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“No. Homework causes stress and stress causes nightmares.”
Articles and books with new coined phrases such as “homework stress” and “homework wars” are available for parents seeking answers to this dilemma. Most of the expert advice centers on how to get children to do their work, but focuses on the outcome of children walking into class with their homework in hand to turn in to their teacher.
The combination of the words “homework” / “stress” and “homework” / “war” warrants a moment to consider and explore. The juxtaposition of these words can in no way foster our children’s love for learning. First, we know from scientific research that stress causes short-term memory loss. An oversecretion of stress hormones adversely affects the brain and can prevent the brain from laying down a new memory or accessing already existing memories.1 No one can learn when stressed out. Second, war is about winning, which implies someone will lose. When homework becomes a battle, everybody loses; there are no winners. Learning is supposed to be fun, not a conflict or fight for survival.
Traditionally, homework polices in schools throughout the United States have been written with a high level of rigidity and fraught with fear. Strict policies and procedures are described in detail to ensure the completion of out-of-school assignments for the students. Here is such an example:
“Homework is assigned every evening in every subject. This includes weekends, holidays, and vacation days. If a parent is told or believes that their son or daughter does not have nightly homework, instead of accepting an explanation from the student, please call the school immediately! The preparation of homework is a shared responsibility—the student-parent-teacher. Please call the principal as soon as possible if you sense any kind of problem concerning the homework. Also, where homework is not completed or is inadequately prepared, parents will be called by the teacher. Continued failure to prepare and turn in homework will be considered a deficiency that will affect the student’s final grade.”
Typically, the language chosen to lay out homework policies is militant and creates a feeling of “us” (the school) against “you” (the student). As the example above shows, it is reactive in nature and exudes a power-and-control tone. A “do not even try to get away without doing your homework because we will catch you” fear-based message is given to students.
Traditional parental guidelines for helping children with homework usually focus on logistical procedures to follow at home. Recommendations include monitoring television viewing, establishing a specific homework time, planning a homework schedule with the child, and allowing free time only when assignments are completed.
Educators place a tremendous amount of emphasis around the lesson of responsibility and homework. The two are tied closely together, as if they are one and the same: “Children need to know early on that homework is a responsibility; everything else is a privilege.” Homework in this traditional perspective takes precedence over extracurricular activities such as music lessons, martial arts, or social activities. One educator from Brown University, who represents the mindset of so many of our children’s educators, says that getting homework done is the single most important job a child has. She states, “Parents who put extracurricular activities ahead [of homework] have it backwards.”2
Parenting experts, especially those specializing in working with oppositional children with trauma histories, stress the importance of making certain that homework be 100% the child’s responsibility beginning as early as first grade. In the traditional view, it is thought that children like Billy purposely seek battles and are relentless about control. Thus, when the parent engages in a battle over homework, the child will automatically fight it and nothing will be accomplished. Instead, these experts recommend that the parent not interact in the homework process. They believe that when the child learns that the natural consequence of not doing homework is an automatic zero or F, the child will move toward improvement by putting out effort. This process of the child putting out effort is seen as a way to build a child’s self-esteem. Additionally, children “must believe the truth, that an education is vital to their success in their adult life, and that their brain must have exercise to develop properly.”3
Professionals helping families struggling through homework issues traditionally suggest writing a contract between the parent and the child. The contract includes both the parent’s and the child’s participation and approval. A copy is kept in the child’s file at school and a copy is given to the family to post at home.4
Books written on helping children with their homework suggest the parent help only when the parent is not angry or frustrated with the child. They also suggest the parent help only when the child can describe the teacher’s instructions—this is to ensure that the child understand the importance of paying attention to teachers. Other books recommend that the parent hold rigid boundaries of “work before play,” with no exceptions, and that the rules be enforced matter-of-factly.5
Some experts working from the traditional perspective recommend that to prevent a child from becoming dependent on the parent, the parent should avoid the habit of sitting at the table as the child does his homework. (“If your child needs you to sit with him, something is wrong.”)6 This view also stresses that the parent should not do the homework for the child, because when this happens the child misses the point of homework, that “homework is meant to be practice. That means you are allowed to make mistakes.”7
The Brain. As previously discussed, the neocortex gives us higher cognitive abilities such as alertness, attention, planning, memory, and the ability to regulate appropriate social behaviors (i.e., emotional and impulse control). In children, this part of the brain is still developing and will not finish developing until they are at least twenty-five years old. Research over the past ten years clearly shows that stress impairs this part of the brain in adults and children.8 Plainly stated, this means when children become stressed out, they cannot think clearly. Asking children to do homework during this time is a setup for failure and frustration.
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“No, because it just fries your brain and doesn’t allow time for breaks and bond[ing] with with your family.”
The traditional suggestions around homework do not account for this finding. The solutions given are cognitively based. They assume the child is in a position to think clearly through his choices. Yet if Billy cannot think clearly, policies and procedures will make no sense and certainly have no impact on motivating him. In fact, policies and procedures typically create more stress and negatively impact Billy’s sense of motivation.
Cause-and-effect thinking requires upper-level brain capacity. Traditional homework techniques assume a child who fails because he has not done his homework will correlate the two together and come to a logical conclusion. It assumes a child will understand that to pass, he must study and do homework, and thus motivation will be established. It also assumes the child wants to pass. Billy already believes he is a failure and unworthy, so failing grades will merely confirm these beliefs. Failure will only widen and deepen his internal pit of overwhelm, keeping him trapped and feeling more worthless.
Traditional thinking around homework also fails to consider Billy’s emotional state. It views children as logical machines or computers and suggests parents respond in this mechanical way as well. Children, especially Billy, do not operate by “if-then” statements. An if-then statement is just what the name implies. It is a statement that proves if something happens, then something else will follow: “If I don’t do my homework, then I will fail.” This may be logical thinking to an adult, yet from Billy’s perspective and from his level of brain development, it does not compute. Homework needs to support Billy’s brain development, not punish it for being underdeveloped.
How can we continue to punish and blame Billy for not being able to think clearly through homework issues when we know from scientific evidence this is a perfectly normal response? Putting stress on Billy to do homework after a long day of being stressed out at school is like trying to pump water from a dry well. There is nothing more to give.
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“No because homework should be school work because at home you’re supposed to spend time with your family.”
The Homework. In addition to the research on the brain, research on the issue of homework itself is quite revealing. In fact, it is stunning. Research from the Institute of Education in the UK found that homework causes such friction between parents and children—especially middle-class families, where concerns about a child’s future can lead to a climate of pressure to succeed—that any potential educational benefits are lost.9 Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth, states:
“There is absolutely no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in elementary or middle school. For younger students, in fact, there isn’t even a correlation between whether children do homework (or how much they do) and any meaningful measure of achievement. At the high school level, the correlation is weak and tends to disappear when more sophisticated measures are applied. Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework builds character or teaches good study habits.”10
Research has also shown that the most effective homework is “prep,” where children are asked to prepare something for an upcoming lesson.
Emotional Regulation. When children become upset and demonstrate frustration, anger, and even hostility toward the parent or their homework, they have exhausted their window. Forcing Billy through his window will result in him losing his love for learning. It will also result in losing the opportunity to build a strong, loving, and safe parent-child relationship. Nothing is ever worth losing this relationship—nothing.
John Bowlby, in his work in the area of attachment theory, described how the mother is the regulator for her child.11 As discussed in chapter 2, by sitting with your child in a state of calm acceptance for the struggle he is having, you are resonating positive energy through your physiology; you are being the “thermostat” to help your child shift back into a state of balance.
Instead of creating more dysregulation for Billy and being a counterforce in the connection with him, think about becoming a positive and loving influence to the level of regulation within Billy. You have the power to counterbalance the dysregulation by your state of regulation. In the late 1800s, Walt Whitman wrote about this in his poem, “Song of the Open Road.” In lines 139 and 140, he writes:
I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes; we convince by our presence.
What is exciting is that now we have the scientific evidence to back such a poetic truth.
The traditional perspective regarding homework—“If your child needs you to sit with him, something is wrong”—fails to take into consideration the scientific proof that children with high sensitivities to stress have difficulty self-regulating. Of course they need you to sit with them. One of the best solutions for Billy, who is chronically dysregulated, is to have the parent sit with him (as long as the parent can stay in a balanced state of regulation) during homework time. It also requires that the parent understand and acknowledge the level of fear that homework presents to Billy.
For children with histories of abandonment, neglect, and rejection, facing a worksheet of homework can be like sitting down to hear a jury’s verdict. It is as if that piece of paper is going to determine whether the child lives or dies. Children at this level of survival fight against doing such an assignment for hours on end. Homework time is a life-threatening event. The parent’s perspective—“It is only a simple sheet of math problems”—fails to understand the threat such a math sheet presents to the child. It takes the parent understanding and seeing what a significant threat homework can be for a child.
For Billy, mistakes mean, “I’m bad. And if I’m bad, you won’t love me. And if you don’t love me, I will die.” It literally comes down to such a survival-based interpretation when considering homework. If picking up a pencil meant that your life might be over at any second, you too would fight against doing such an assignment.
Children like Billy who live at this level are unconcerned about their future. In their eyes, their future does not even exist. Believing that they have the capacity to “believe the truth, that an education is vital to their success in their adult life, and that their brain must have exercise to develop properly” is unreasonable and far beyond their capacity.12
Remember, Billy lives only for the moment. His world is black and white—here and now. All his resources are focused on the moment at hand to survive and ensure his safety. Long-term planning is part of the brain’s higher-order thinking, which is outside the realm of Billy’s primal brain activity. Expecting Billy to develop and engage in this type of thinking comes from an adult perspective, void of any understanding of Billy’s level of survival thinking.
Solutions. The best homework solution would be to place a cease-and-desist order on homework altogether, though this may not be possible. Solutions that are possible—those that decrease stress around homework and simultaneously help Billy regulate during these stressful times—are the focus of the rest of this chapter.
Have Billy Teach You. Those who teach are the greatest students. When you take interest in Billy’s schoolwork, you are giving him the message that what he is learning is important. This is also an opportunity to join Billy in his world, an opportunity lost far too often. When parents jump into a child’s world, the child feels important, special, and loved, which then correlates to building both a strong foundation and secure attachment with the child.
Help Billy Regulate. Teach Billy how to take deep breaths to calm his neurological system. Interrupt negative feedback loops by taking breaks with him. Go for a walk, play with the family dog, blow bubbles (for breathing), or have a snack together. Keep in mind that none of his resistance is intentional. It is not against you. It is an internal battle going on within his heart; it is a manifestation of his own self-rejection. Sometimes this self-rejection rears its ugly head against the parent because it feels better for Billy to project it onto you rather than feel it himself.
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“Yes, cause sometimes you get homework that you don’t know and then your parents help you with it.”
Break the Assignment Down. Understand that Billy is feeling so overwhelmed that he cannot do the work. It is not that he won’t; he simply can’t. Relate this to your own experiences of being overwhelmed in your work. You walk into the office and see 150 emails to answer, numerous phone calls to return, an overflowing inbox, and a note from your boss reminding you that an extensive report is due at noon. How do you feel? What do you do to overcome this feeling? Maybe you get up and go to the break room and get some coffee (a regulatory beverage).
So for Billy, break up the twenty spelling words and start with just five. Yes, five. Five is better than none. Five is better than pencils being broken or paper being shredded. Work to build up Billy’s window of homework tolerance. Eventually he will be able to do ten, then fifteen, and then twenty. Trust in the process and stop pushing Billy beyond his capabilities.
We all learned to walk before we could run. For children to find their way through homework assignments, we must realize it is a sequential process. Baby steps now will lead to giant leaps in the future.
Give Emotional Space. Many children have not learned to use their voice or they have not been given permission to use their voice. Instead, they fight and rebel against homework assignments.
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“No—I learned all day, when I get home I want to play.”
We as parents, fearful our child will not pass or, worse, that we will look like bad parents because our child is not completing his homework, fight back with controlling measures to save face with the teacher. It takes the parents shifting out of their own fear and stepping into Billy’s fear. The fight Billy is putting on is saying, “I can’t do this anymore. Stop controlling me and stop making me do this because it is only making me worse!” Think about how it would feel if your boss pushed you and pushed you and fought you over getting an assignment completed. How would it feel to be controlled like this? You would probably fight back—or simply quit. It is no different for Billy.
Trying to convince Billy he needs to do his homework will only breed more resistance. Giving him logical reasons why he needs to care about his homework and his education will leave him feeling isolated and on his own to defend his position. Billy needs you to listen to him before he can listen to you. Here is an example of an interaction that helped a real-life Billy get through his resistance to homework:
Mom: Let’s look at today’s schedule and you tell me what time you would like to do your homework.”
Billy: “I don’t care about any schedule because I’m not doing my homework.”
Mom: “Wow. You sound like you’re quite upset, Billy.”
Billy: “Of course I’m upset. I hate doing homework.”
Mom: “I can see that.”
Billy: “Why do I have to spend my playtime doing homework? I’m at school all day long.”
Mom: “That is hard, isn’t it?”
Billy: “I hate it. And you can’t make me do it. I don’t care if I fail.”
Mom: “That’s how hard it is for you, isn’t it?”
Billy: “I’m sick of it all.”
Mom: “It’s hard doing all of this on your own, isn’t it Billy?”
Billy: (Nodding his head to say, “Yes, it is!)
Mom: “What can I do to help you, sweetheart?”
Billy: “I don’t know.”
Mom: “Maybe I can sit down with you and help you, just today?”
Billy: “Maybe.”
Mom: “This is too much to have to handle on your own. I’m here to help you through it.”
Billy: “Okay.”
Billy needs support and validation from his parents. He does have the ability to make good choices. He needs to know he is understood and supported, not judged and controlled. It takes the power of the parent-child relationship to help steer Billy in the right direction.
Reduce Stress. Eliminate stressors in the home environment that might be stress inducing and creating more overwhelm for Billy. Additionally, see if there are any factors at school creating more stress around homework for Billy. Many times just the thought of a consequence for not finishing homework, such as not being able to go to recess or being singled out from the other students, is enough to create such a black cloud around Billy that his level of stress becomes completely overwhelming and it stifles any ability he may have to complete the work. Ironically, consequences intended to motivate become the block that decreases or entirely stifles motivation.
Speak with Billy’s teacher and explain that Billy has a high sensitivity to stress and that the fear-driven consequence is creating a negative situation for him. Some teachers resist adjusting their policies for one student, saying, “If I make an exception for Billy, I’ll have to make an exception for every child.” The reality is that not every child is having this difficulty, so not every child needs this exception. Meeting the needs of one child to ensure a successful educational experience should always be the priority.
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“Yes, because your family helps you with what you don’t know and I get to do it with my family.”
Find Different Times for Homework. Allow time after coming home from school for Billy to reconnect with the parent instead of insisting he complete his homework right away. Yes, it would make life easier to have the homework done and not have to worry about it for the rest of the evening. However, the reality is that Billy may not be able to do this.
Relate this to your own experiences. When you get off work, do you feel like pulling out your briefcase and sitting down to do more work? Or if you are a stay-at-home parent, when you finish cooking the last meal of the day, do you feel like spending the next hour or two in the kitchen drumming up a new recipe? No. You are depleted of your internal sense of motivation and drained of creativity. You need to be refueled. The same is true for Billy.
Have Billy set what time of the evening he would like to come back to finish the homework. If Billy continues to struggle in the evenings with completing the homework, ask the teacher for the flexibility for Billy to complete the homework on the weekends. Weekends are less stressful, and the relaxed atmosphere can create a drastically different environment for Billy to find his way through the stress of homework.
Reduce the Pressure. Billy’s educational expectations need to be equivalent to that which matches his abilities. If your family of origin stressed academics as paramount to success, examine these beliefs objectively to determine if you are putting this past family stress on Billy.
Accept that Billy is doing the best he can do for this moment. Trust that he has the capacity to do more and know without a doubt that that time will come. It takes meeting Billy where he is to help him develop a stronger self-regulatory system and find his own internal sense of motivation. Forcing and threatening will only block progress and create resentment toward you and his entire educational career.
Work Through Problems with Billy. Children can learn by demonstration as well as by doing the work themselves. If Billy is resisting doing the work by himself, do it with him. In fact, if his fear drives so much resistance to the homework process, complete the homework for him. Yes. You read that correctly. Do it for him. Simply ask Billy to sit with you and talk through the problem as you complete it.
This may challenge your values and belief system to the core and that is good because this means you are opening up to the truth about homework. Homework is intended to help children, not hurt them. By going as far as doing the work for Billy, trust that he is still learning. He is learning the academic material by your teaching. Your fear might be saying, “No, what Billy will learn is how to manipulate me into doing his homework for him.” This is the fear that keeps us from making homework time different.
SURVEY SAYS:
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“Yes, because you get help from your parents and it is quieter at home.”
By doing the homework for him, you are creating a positive homework experience for Billy, free of stress and threat. Billy will learn the important fact that you are committed to helping him and you will take every step possible to ensure his success. This is the ultimate lesson in learning responsibility—having someone take responsibility for you teaches you how to take responsibility for yourself in the future.
Within a short time, you will find that Billy actually wants to do the homework himself instead of you doing it. Children do not like sitting and watching. They are doers. They like to participate; they do not like to be bystanders. How many children do you see sitting on a park bench just watching the other children play? None. They want to play too. Give Billy the jump-start to doing his homework and help him break the barrier he has been fighting to maintain for protection. Make it safe. Make it fun. Create joy in stressful situations.
Do you think homework helps you learn more?
“No. I need some playtime so I can focus better in school.”
The bottom line is that low-stress environments keep the brain calm and regulated. The people around Billy, the intensity of the requirements and expectations, and the level of emotional openness will influence the effectiveness of the environment for Billy. In the past, too much emphasis has been placed on getting children to complete the work without considering any of these factors. Here is a true story of a mom who implemented the ideas in this chapter around homework, and six years later her “Billy” is excelling and the daily homework battles are nonexistent:
When my Billy was in the fourth grade, just about every homework page had tear tracks and an overabundance of anger and frustration. I decided that I was no longer going to sacrifice my child’s childhood for a school policy so I made it a family rule to put relationship first and schoolwork second. It was then that I began doing the homework with Billy. Sometimes just the first few lines or problems of the homework were my handwriting; other times the entire sheet was in my handwriting. On good days, Billy would take over and do it all himself. On the days that we struggled, I would attach a Post-It Note saying, “As you can tell, this was rough. I ended up being the scribe, but I assure you he sat next to me and the work and answers are his.” Billy is now in tenth grade and is enrolled in all honors classes and does his homework on his own. But more important than this, he is an honorable and loving person who lives from a place of love, not fear.
Creating negative experiences around education and learning for our children is a tragedy. No homework assignment is ever worth sacrificing a child’s self-worth or suffocating a child’s natural desire to explore and learn. When approaching the task of homework, stay focused on helping your child move forward not backward in his educational career. Stay attuned to both your regulation and Billy’s level of regulation. And most of all, when fear overcomes love in the connection between you and your child, homework time is officially over for the day.