As a parent, a big part of the responsibility of your kids doing well in school rests on you. One of the most challenging things that parents face in this regard is getting their children to do their homework themselves. The following seven tips are helpful in stimulating children’s desire to finish their assignments:
- Play The Role Of A Guide
This is something that most parents already know but have some trouble reminding their selves. If you want your child to do their homework, you need to know the difference between guidance and over-functioning.
What does this mean exactly? You need to make sure that the burden of doing the homework is placed on their shoulders, not yours. Maintain a certain distance from them when they are doing their work but be close enough that they can ask for your help if they have questions. This will be incredibly helpful especially if you want your child to grow up as a responsible person.
- Avoid Controlling Your Child
Controlling every aspect of how your child wants to do their studies may seem like an appealing option but it will not work the way you intended. More often than not, they will only be more disengaged about it.
For one, you should stop the nightly fights you have with your child. That is incredibly counterproductive as you are only making the kid resent you and your efforts to make them do their homework. It is not your job to accomplish their homework but it is your task as a parent to make them realize that they need to do the assignments given.
- Set Whatever Structures Needed For Them To Do Their Homework
Try to remember in the past if there was a time when you were able to convince your kid to finish their homework. What made that certain scenario different? What made your efforts work? Try to have a conversation with your child and listen to them. It may give you some insights on what would best make them cooperative in this regard.
It may also be worth looking into external factors that may affect your child’s willingness to do their homework. Are there perhaps gaming or computing devices that are distracting them? Is the schedule allocated for finishing homework not ideal? Are they too preoccupied with weekend activities? All these may have an impact.
- Give Them Enough Freedom
As a parent, you need to back off a bit and let your child act their age. Set some parameters around which they will be operating and give them the freedom to decide within those rules. Do not make homework a power struggle between you and your child. This may result in them purposefully doing bad to show you that they are the ones truly in charge.
- Help Them Understand The Consequences
The freedom that was given to them means that they should also be willing to accept the consequences. To make them appreciate the effort you are doing, sit them down. Make them understand the possible things that may happen if they do not do their homework. This way, you can spur them to action without any issues.
- Check Whether They Have A Learning Disability
Parents should also consider the fact that their child may have a learning disability. If a learning issue is hampering your child’s interest in doing homework, you should know about it. This is so you can act accordingly.
Children with learning disabilities will need special attention from a child psychologist. A visit with the child psychologist will go a long way in helping you do what needs to be done to help your kid. This is also a way for them to avoid falling into the “learned helplessness” trap even when they can do the work themselves.
- Believe In Your Child
Lastly, you need to believe in the intellect and skills of your child. They need to be empowered and not be looked at as helpless kids who cannot even accomplish simple homework activities.
As much as possible avoid telling them “I want to help you” as that can have the opposite effect. A lot of kids interpret this as “You need me because you are failing.”
- Introduce Homework Apps
These days, kids are smart and can learn things themselves. But you have to believe that your kids can learn themselves. You can find many homework and study apps that can be enough to provide answers to all the study related questions your kids may have. Say for example, the best college study app is a perfect app to have when you are an iPhone user. On the other hand, the top android education app can be your choice when you are an android user. Your kids can find tutorials for so many subjects including English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Math and more. The learn history app can be the solution for easy ways to memorize history. These apps make life easy for students of all ages. And you as a parent don’t have to help much with homework when you give your kids access to these study apps.
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