Homework

“Noooo… I can’t do it. I don’t have the time!!”

Have you heard this from your child when she sits down to do homework? My gosh, it wrecks me.

I can feel her overwhelm and so relate to it.

I know what it feels like to have so much to do and what seems like no time to do it.

So, I jump in and try to help.

“It’s ok sweetie, let’s write down all the things you have to do to get it out of your head.”

“NO!” she pouts back, “That won’t help. I don’t know any of this and I have to get started now.”

What do you do with that? You see the problem, you know the steps to take to fix it and yet your child pushes you away like you couldn’t possibly know what she’s talking about or what she’s dealing with.

School districts “no homework” policies miss the point.

It’s not that black and white. In fact, the research many journalists cite is frequently misinterpreted for a clickbait headline or to get people riled up.

Is homework getting you down?

You dread it as soon as you see your child take his backpack to the kitchen table or maybe even get in the car.

You anticipate the fights, the struggle and sometimes the necessary bribing and manipulation to get the homework done.

Just the other night, your child cried at the kitchen table for 20 minutes because he didn’t want to even try a hard math problem.

You had no idea how to help him. Maybe you tried Youtube, you tried googling, but nothing.

Or perhaps your daughter sat there with the assignment of writing a 5 paragraph essay but refused to actually write something.

She sat.

She stared.

It was painful.

My daughter used to leave the kitchen table and throw herself on the couch.

“I can’t DO it,” she wailed, “It’s TOO hard.”

Every afternoon became a neverending negotiation –  one I dreaded.

I just wanted to pour myself a glass of wine and hide in the closet.

What do you do at that point?

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Your child brings home a page of a page of double-digit subtraction problems.

You know… the kind where you have to “borrow” from the tens place to do the operation in the ones place.

You got this, you think…

But no, your kid politely informs you. You aren’t supposed to borrow. Instead, your child needs to use a method where he “counts up” from the number.

What in the world? This isn’t subtraction…at least not the way you learned it.

How are you expected to help your kid when the method doesn’t even make sense?