Abridgement8807740

For the last few months, my son has been drowning in homework! He's in second-grade. As you may know, he has dyslexia and ADHD. But, his "disabilities" are not the problem. As a matter of fact, our targeted interventions and his hard work have put him very close to "grade-level." He hates writing (the process of forming letters, not composition). Otherwise, he's progressing nicely. Nonetheless, he's drowning in homework. This past weekend, do my homework he had a three-day weekend. (In theory, anyway.) We invested three hours every time on homework. By Sunday afternoon, I was crawling out of my epidermis! I thought, "Geez! I am intended to help some other mom and dad AVOID this mess! Exactly what information do I provide other people that I am not taking for me?" I practically grabbed my "Homework Help for mom and dad!" CDs and study through the table of contents. not the very first time period I produce done this. Two years ago, after my son was in kindergarten, I had to re-orient myself with all of the coaching I discovered over many years as an in-home tutor and homework coach. I am happy to say that I identified our problem areas and corrected course. I rediscovered my "day Before School Tool" and "Chip Clip System." points began to hum once again. Maybe it would work this time period, too. I ran through the checklist of topics in the CDs. I mentally checked each one off of the checklist. "We are doing that...and that...and that..." I thought. "Now, exactly what am I missing?" I thought to me. Parent Guilt is an ugly thing for all of us, but this was a lot more than just Parent Guilt. Since exactly what I do for a living, Professional Guilt set in. "Oh my gosh! Precisely why would anyone trust me personally if I can't help *myself *out of this..." I WAS SUDDENLY STRUCK BY A LIGHTNING BOLT OF THE OBVIOUS... We simply produce too much homework! It seems ridiculously obvious to me personally now. But, after emotions are in charge -especially Mama Bear Emotions - logic takes a back seat...by a long shot! I was trying to be a responsible parent and teach/model/encourage the same level of responsibility in my son. In the midst of that, however, I missed the clear signs that we were well beyond age-appropriate levels of homework. I produce been coaching parents and students through homework for over 15 years and produce spoken with hundreds of parents about homework battles. I can usually trouble-shoot any homework problem, as long as the parent *really* wants to resolve it. "Too much homework" is the trickiest problem to solve! Don't get me personally wrong, I adore my son's teachers. I am forever grateful for the way they embrace him with compassion, yet hold him to high expectations. He highly respects both of them and I don't want to compromise that in any way. THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY I must tell you, after I was a classroom teacher, I had NO WAY of knowing if the workload was too much! I assigned exactly what I *thought* was reasonable. The homework simply came back to school, complete and accurate. One time, after teaching third grade, I received a note from a frustrated mom. She wrote, "I help Bailey with her math homework every time, but it is tearing her apart! She gets overwhelmed and very upset..." I had no idea! In class, Bailey held it together. She did "fairly well" on tests. do my homework I didn't know that "fairly well" was not good enough for her. She put pressure on herself to answer every homework question perfectly. She didn't understand that homework was "practice." It was perfectly okay if she got some questions wrong. She could learn from mistakes. Now, I assured Bailey and her mom that I did not assign homework to make them miserable. If homework was causing tears, then it was time period for them to wrap it up. Bailey's mom could write me personally a note and we would trouble-shoot from there. This experience made me realize that mom and dad accept homework without any question. From talking to all of those frustrated mom and dad, I know how reluctant they are to complain about homework. We don't want to teach our children that they can "complain" their way out of responsibility. We can struggle and fight to no end with our kids over homework, but all the teacher sees the next morning is a perfectly complete assignment. Inspired by Bailey, I created a platform for regular homework feedback. I added a cover sheet to my weekly homework assignments. The cover sheet asked parents to rank their child's understanding of each assignment, on a scale of 1-5. I also included a space for mom and dad to write a brief homework summary each week. This feedback was incredibly valuable!