What to change first when homework becomes a fight

If homework ends in an argument most evenings, the child is usually not lazy or stubborn. Homework is genuinely hard for that child, and a fight is shorter than forty minutes of getting things wrong. So the first thing to change is not your child. Here are six things to change, in order.

1. Change the time

Most homework is done straight after school, when the child is tired and hungry. Try food first, then a break of forty minutes with no screen, then homework. Or try the morning. A child who cannot do a page at 7 in the evening can often do it in twenty minutes at 7 in the morning. Test this for a week.

2. Shorten the session, not the work

Set a timer for twenty minutes. When it rings, stop, even if the page is not finished. Take a five minute break, then twenty minutes more if needed. Your child can see the end from the beginning, which makes starting easier. The timer decides when to stop, not you.

If the work cannot be finished in forty minutes, tell the teacher. A note saying your child worked for forty minutes and reached question 4 is more useful to the teacher than a finished page that took two hours.

3. Sit near, not over

A parent leaning over the page catches every mistake in the first line. It feels like helping, but it teaches your child to wait to be told. Sit in the same room, doing your own work. Be available, but do not look at the page until it is done or until you are asked.

4. Start the first question together, then leave

Do the first question together, out loud, then go away. Before your child writes anything, ask them to say the first step. If they can say it, they will usually manage the rest. If they cannot, stop. The method was never learnt, and the next forty minutes will be a fight about something the child does not know. Write a line to the teacher and put the book away.

5. Send the honest page to school

Most parents correct the homework before it leaves the house, so the child is not scolded. It is kind, but it makes things worse, because the teacher never sees the mistakes and so cannot fix them. Send the page as your child did it, with a note if you like. A teacher who sees three weeks of honest pages knows exactly what to do.

6. Check the basics

If the fight has lasted more than a term, and it is always the same subject, the problem is probably older than the homework. Give your child the same kind of question from two classes below. If that is also slow or shaky, your child is missing something from an earlier class, and no amount of pressure in the evening will change that. The useful step is to go back and teach the missing skill, twenty minutes a day, for several weeks.

One thing to say to your child

Tell your child that you think the work is hard, and that finding it hard does not mean they are not clever. Children who fight homework have usually decided something about themselves long before you noticed the fighting. Hearing a parent say plainly that one skill was missed, and that it can be learnt, changes the evening more than any timer or reward chart.