Helping Children With Homework: Things Not To Do
Helping children with homework is fine. Indeed, sometimes it is indispensable. However, keep in mind that your goal is to foster children’s autonomy when they study and foster the development of problem-solving and time-planning skills.
Whether the children get good grades or are the best in the class is not a “healthy” goal. The important thing is not that, but that the child learns and develops their skills.
Children must learn to feel capable and to seek strategies that will lead them to get better grades. Doing homework for them or following them step by step as they study won’t help them. On the contrary, it will most likely affect both them and their development.
Below we want to show you what are the worst mistakes that parents usually make when they decide to help their children with their homework. Of course, we will also offer you tips to correct yourself! Read on.
Things not to do when you want to help your children with their homework
Sit next to them and do your homework for them
When children are small, they may need parental help. For example if they are starting to read or write. But even in these cases, the child must be given a certain autonomy and let him carry out the assigned task alone. In any case, double-checking the exercises done does not mean doing homework with the child.
However, many parents, distressed by the amount of homework assigned and / or wanting their children to get good grades, sit next to them and do the homework for their child, including studying.
In this way, children do not become autonomous and independent, they do not learn to face difficulties or to manage their time correctly. And they end up feeling unable to do things on their own.
Even if the child does not perform a perfect task and does not get as good grades as he could, he still has to do the homework on his own and learn to solve problems. Both those concerning specific tasks and those represented by organizing to study.
And he should only turn to you parents when he has doubts. Only in this way will you know what your child really needs help for and can help him unleash his full potential.
Threatening children to take away their favorite activity
Many parents threaten them to motivate their children to do their homework quickly and get good grades. For example, they forbid them from doing their favorite extracurricular activity. By doing so, however, they only get the opposite effect and help generate even more tension and distress in the child.
On the other hand, if they want to help their children with their homework, it is much more effective for them to talk to them and help them organize and manage their time, both for the single day and for the whole week.
Most kids work faster to keep doing their homework when they should go to the pool or to music, so they can make it on time.
Another alternative to encourage children to be faster and work well and offer them a (non-material) reward if they finish on time.
Demanding perfection
Perfection can hinder a child’s progress in homework. Even more so when the children’s idea of ​​perfection has nothing to do with that of their parents.
In fact, with the amount of homework children have, demanding perfection of them only adds to the daily workload.
It is much more effective to ask the child to do their homework in an orderly and correct manner. And to point out when it is good, so that he himself feels incentivized to commit himself as much as possible.
Forcing them to study for many hours
Children need to move, get some air, play, stretch and, in general, enjoy their free time. Forcing them to sit for hours and hours in front of books and notebooks does not help them improve or help them learn to organize themselves. It only serves to arouse negative feelings in them about studying.
On the other hand, if we want to help our children with their homework, we should offer them moments of rest, starting when school finishes. We can give them time to have a snack and relax their minds a bit before they get back to studying and doing their homework.
It is also advisable for children to play sports and be outdoors. It is not a waste of time, but a way to make the baby feel fresher and less stressed.
