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Replies to '03/23 Homework Hell'
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December 4, 2006, 9:01 am PST
 Quote From: exjerseygirl You know what; it is not always the parent's fault. My oldest child, Julia, has many issues. Whenever there is a challenge presented to her, she whines and cries, throws temper tantrums and shuts down. I am not a drill sergeant, but I do expect her homework completed within a reasonable amount of time. I do my best to keep patience. Homework has become such a problem at home; it sometimes can take her up to 6 hours to complete her homework too She manipulates people well, sometimes a little to well, so she does not have to complete her tasks. I have gotten a TSS worker to help with this situation for both home and school. (So, I am not the only one that is having the problem) The problem is, the TSS work is temporary, usually for a few months. I have been there, and still there, so I am not judging anyone. I have found myself saying the same things to my daughter after a few hours of temper tantrums. What do you do in instances where the child refuses to complete his/.her homework? I make her sit at the table until it is done. Sometimes she goes to bed and her homework is still not completed. I do not stand over her and say complete your homework, I check in on her every half hour or so. I should not have to fight with her to start or finish writing her spelling words 10 times each, or to complete a simple addition work sheet. She is 11 years old. She knows that she is supposed to put her coat away and start her homework as soon as she gets home; she has been doing that since she has been five years old. Nothing has changed. In addition, the homework she comes home with, she should be done within 20 minutes. So, why does she make it out to be this horrible task she has to complete? Why does she act as if completing her homework will hurt or kill her? I have offered her reward options if she completes her homework, but she is not interested in them. She would much rather sit at the table and whine or shut down. People just do not understand and are too quick to judge others without knowing the whole story. you know it is true, people blame parents too much. Sometimes I do too, then these situations come up and I think of my own daughter. She is doing the same as yours. After trying to be patient for a while you sometimes say things you don't want to. I also have other children to interact with. I wonder if they just sometimes think that they are the only ones when they shut down. I don't always have these problems with my daughter which tells me she does know better and she can do well at times. It is just the manipulating thing. She acts just as you stated, that is it is going to hurt or kill her. I am not sure what the TSS worker is though. |
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December 7, 2006, 1:47 pm PST
Quote From: exjerseygirl You know what; it is not always the parent's fault. My oldest child, Julia, has many issues. Whenever there is a challenge presented to her, she whines and cries, throws temper tantrums and shuts down. I am not a drill sergeant, but I do expect her homework completed within a reasonable amount of time. I do my best to keep patience. Homework has become such a problem at home; it sometimes can take her up to 6 hours to complete her homework too She manipulates people well, sometimes a little to well, so she does not have to complete her tasks. I have gotten a TSS worker to help with this situation for both home and school. (So, I am not the only one that is having the problem) The problem is, the TSS work is temporary, usually for a few months. I have been there, and still there, so I am not judging anyone. I have found myself saying the same things to my daughter after a few hours of temper tantrums. What do you do in instances where the child refuses to complete his/.her homework? I make her sit at the table until it is done. Sometimes she goes to bed and her homework is still not completed. I do not stand over her and say complete your homework, I check in on her every half hour or so. I should not have to fight with her to start or finish writing her spelling words 10 times each, or to complete a simple addition work sheet. She is 11 years old. She knows that she is supposed to put her coat away and start her homework as soon as she gets home; she has been doing that since she has been five years old. Nothing has changed. In addition, the homework she comes home with, she should be done within 20 minutes. So, why does she make it out to be this horrible task she has to complete? Why does she act as if completing her homework will hurt or kill her? I have offered her reward options if she completes her homework, but she is not interested in them. She would much rather sit at the table and whine or shut down. People just do not understand and are too quick to judge others without knowing the whole story. I've gone through some of the same problems with my kids. It has taken them much longer than it should have to complete their homework...the thing is they are just plain sick of it. Why do we expect these young , young children to put in 40 plus hour work weeks?! My kids are in school 35 hours a week. Kids who ride a bus have even more time consumed by school..THEN we expect them to come home and do more work! NO WONDER they resist! They are fed up. Teachers are overworked ....ha! Look what we are doing to our children! The U.S. Dept. of Labor only allows a 40 hour work week for a 14- 15 year old during a non school week. But we have 5 and 6 year old kids putting that much time in. It is crazy! Then we have the problem of obesity among children... they sit in school day after day , often wih no recess and phys. ed. once a week, nd we wonder why they are overweight. Maybe if kids could play outside when they get home like kids should then we wouldn't have this problem either. |
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December 7, 2006, 3:10 pm PST
Quote From: exjerseygirl You know what; it is not always the parent's fault. My oldest child, Julia, has many issues. Whenever there is a challenge presented to her, she whines and cries, throws temper tantrums and shuts down. I am not a drill sergeant, but I do expect her homework completed within a reasonable amount of time. I do my best to keep patience. Homework has become such a problem at home; it sometimes can take her up to 6 hours to complete her homework too She manipulates people well, sometimes a little to well, so she does not have to complete her tasks. I have gotten a TSS worker to help with this situation for both home and school. (So, I am not the only one that is having the problem) The problem is, the TSS work is temporary, usually for a few months. I have been there, and still there, so I am not judging anyone. I have found myself saying the same things to my daughter after a few hours of temper tantrums. What do you do in instances where the child refuses to complete his/.her homework? I make her sit at the table until it is done. Sometimes she goes to bed and her homework is still not completed. I do not stand over her and say complete your homework, I check in on her every half hour or so. I should not have to fight with her to start or finish writing her spelling words 10 times each, or to complete a simple addition work sheet. She is 11 years old. She knows that she is supposed to put her coat away and start her homework as soon as she gets home; she has been doing that since she has been five years old. Nothing has changed. In addition, the homework she comes home with, she should be done within 20 minutes. So, why does she make it out to be this horrible task she has to complete? Why does she act as if completing her homework will hurt or kill her? I have offered her reward options if she completes her homework, but she is not interested in them. She would much rather sit at the table and whine or shut down. People just do not understand and are too quick to judge others without knowing the whole story. I agree that he was WAY too hard on the mother. It seemed to me that she honestly didn't agree with what her relatives were saying about her, and Dr. Phil kept insisting that she couldn't get better until she 'confessed' to things she may or may not have done (like calling her son 'retarded'...I BELIEVE that she never did and her mother made it up). I KNOW that having a child like that can make you defensive of your mothering skills.
My son started taking up to 6 hours to do his homework at about the same age as the one on the show. I tried backing off, checking every few minutes, but he would not have gotten anything done. If I sat next to him to help, I had to bring his attention back to the homework every 30 seconds; he'd get frustrated, scream, throw things. Those of you who are critical of that poor mother, try doing that for a few hours every night and see how much patience you have left. I often had to send him to bed with the homework not done, after 5 or 6 hours of trying, which, of course, got me a note from his teachers saying that I needed to "work more with him on his homework".
We took him to an ADD specialist, and he DOES have ADD (non-hyperactive). The specialist told us that many non-hyperactive, distracted ADD children do well in school up to about 5th-6th grade, when the work gets too difficult to just use their intelligence to muddle through...at that point they have to pay attention to learn, and that is difficult and frustrating for them. My son got on the right medication, and it's like day and night. He turned his grades around in ONE semester. He's cooperative and finishes most of his homework during his study period in school. He's no longer frustrated, and is much happier, and so is his drill sargent (me). I know now that NO amount of patience or me "backing off" would have helped him, because the problem wasn't anything I was doing. I'm surprised that Dr. Phil was pushing the 'brain toxicity' idea when, to my mind, ADD is the first thing to check. |
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