Homework – Is Your Kid Dying Of ‘Nerdism’?

Are your kids getting way too much homework these days? There is often a debate surrounding this. Nothing quite stresses out students and parents about the beginning, middle and end of the school year as the return to homework, which for many households means nightly battles that will make the battle between the Starks and Lannisters look like a Sunday school picnic (if you didn’t catch the reference you need to make some time for some well-deserved ‘seriaaaaas’ series watching!)

But a new study in The American Journal of Family Therapy, found students in the early elementary school years are getting significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended. The standard, endorsed by the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association, is the so-called “10-minute rule” — 10 minutes per grade level per night. That translates into 10 minutes of homework in the first grade, 20 minutes in the second grade, all the way up to 120 minutes for senior year of high school. In the study involving questionnaires filled out by more than 1,100 English and Spanish speaking parents of children in kindergarten through grade 12, researchers found children in the first grade had up to three times the homework load recommended by the NEA and the National PTA!

The current study also examined the stress homework places on families and found that as the parent’s confidence in their ability to help their child with homework went down, the stress in the household went up. Fights and conflicts over homework were 200% more likely in families where parents did not have at least a college degree. True story!

Undereducated parents really believe that their children are supposed to be able to do (the homework), therefore, their children must be doing something else during school” instead of focusing on their studies. Parents argue with the kids, the kids feel defeated and dumb and angry, very angry and the parents are fighting with each other. You have a recipe for disaster right there!

So, what can parents do about this homework situation whether they feel kids get too much or not enough homework?

Many parents might feel stressed just reading about homework, but there are specific things they can do to make the entire homework experience less anxiety-producing for everyone in the household, parenting experts say.

Jessica Lahey is author of the just released book “The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed.”

Lahey recommends that if parents are concerned about how much time their children are spending on homework, they first look at how and where their child is doing their homework to see whether that’s a contribution to how long it takes. For instance, are the children being distracted by smartphones, music or other household activities? If a parent has done that and determined the child is still spending too much time on homework, contact with the teacher makes sense, said Lahey, who is also a columnist for The New York Times and a contributor to The Atlantic and Vermont Public Radio.

If you come at it from a ‘Can you help me solve this problem, can we partner together to talk about why this might be so?’ that’s going to do much better for you and for your kid in the long run. Too much of a good thing isn’t good either, but enforcing homework can bring families closer as students may ask their parents or siblings for help on their assignments. Not only will this help the students get a better understanding of their work with any parts they get stuck on, it will also allow parents to get more involved in their child’s educational life.

Everything boils down to managing stress and tempers. It doesn’t mean that homework will always be a favourable situation, but like life, it has to be done!