I need all your tips, tricks and ideas - both to help my kid get started on and finish her work, and to help me get through it. Because currently it’s painful for both of us. I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin, sitting with her and trying to make myself stay focused so I can help her stay on task.
What does your evening look like? How often do you take breaks and what do you do during the break? Do you have any fidgets, wiggle chairs, etc., that you keep in the “homework area” for them to use while they’re doing their homework? Anything you’ve learned almost always derails things?
What we’ve tried so far (she’s in 4th grade):
- Do one entire item (ex: worksheet, reading passage, spelling list) then take a break and do something fun - this works for some things but others we’re sitting there for 20-30 minutes struggling to finish it
- Set a timer and do as much as she can in 10-15 minutes then take a break - this works well at the start each evening but each time it’s more of a struggle for both of us to come back and do more homework. I feel like it may be too many transitions for our tired, end-of-day executive functioning abilities (or lack thereof).
- Earn a small piece of candy for each question answered, math problem solved, etc. - This works well for math, but I don’t like to use it before we eat dinner, and usually we do at least some homework before dinner.
I just want to help her find some skills she can use to tackle “have to do” things - because as we all know it’ll be a daily struggle even as adults (at least during the work week).
If I remember my childhood, a lot of crying and screaming. I hope to do better when my kids get older.
M&M for math is a good one. I used to “earn” a dime per page of math problems.
Just be ready with several strategies. What works today won’t work next week, but if you keep rotating strategies, it keeps the dopamine going. This also works for your own to-do lists. Migrate the list to a new system occasionally just to shake up the process and get it moving.
Yeah, you’re right. Switching what we do even throughout one evening would go a long way. I pretty much almost never had homework until I got to college, and that was a very rude awakening for me. I had no study skills, and I’m determined to better equip her.