Help — Not Hinder — Your Child With Homework

Your child is struggling with math, and you show her a quick way to calculate long division. Or she needs to turn in a report on the rain forests, and you stay up late compiling a list of websites to be researched. How can you smooth the homework routine to help your child, but ensure that she’s learning the skills she needs for later in life?

Parents can be a great help when it comes to homework. Working with your child can strengthen communication and help speed the learning process. Sometimes, however, homework help can confuse kids. Your knowledge may be different from what the child is learning in school. Other times, parents do so much of a child’s homework that the child doesn’t learn the material properly.

Here’s what the U.S. Department of Education suggests parents can do to help their kids:

• Provide a quiet, comfortable spot to work. Make sure the television is off and other distractions are minimized.
• “Shadow” the work. Show your child he’s learning skills he’ll actually use later in life. If he’s doing math, write out bills. When he’s reading, get out a book or magazine yourself.
• Work together on time management:
  • Have your child choose a regular time to do homework, such as when he finishes an after-school snack or right after dinner.
  • If your child has larger projects, help him plan them into the weekly schedule, including weekends.
  • Go over the necessary steps for a larger project: choosing a topic or defining questions to cover, finding resources and doing research, doing an outline, writing and revising drafts, completing the final copy.
• Don’t jump in. Provide guidance, not answers. She’ll learn better if she does it herself.
• Stay in the loop:
  • Keep in contact with teachers to make sure your child is doing the assigned homework and doing it correctly.
  • Check assignments to make sure your child has completed them. Ask to see the teacher’s comments when the assignment comes back.
  • If your child is having problems, work with teachers to resolve issues, such as homework that’s too easy or too hard, unclear directions, catch-up assignments, or learning disabilities.

Reviewed by: Patrick S. Pasquariello Jr., MD
Date: October 2010