How Can I Avoid Doing My Child's Homework?

According to Stacy DeBroff, doing homework independently builds confidence and fosters good study habit and responsibility. If you get over involved with the process and start doing assignments instead of encouraging your child's work, you will interfere with this crucial learning process. Below are somethings you can do to avoid doing your child's homework:

1. Be available for assistance, advice, and review.

2. Don't let your child's homework become your responsibility.

3. Think of yourself as a homework consultant, not a participant.

4. If your child does homework in their room, stop by periodically with words of encouragement and offer words of praise.

5. Constantly pushing your child to get his/her homework done on time can condition your child to depend on your forceful voice to finish work.

6. Even if your child doesn't complete an assignment on time or does a poor job, resist the temptation to jump in and do the work.

7. Dependent children often convince their parents into giving them more help then they should.

8. Children need to experience the consequences of their decisions. If your child doesn't start a book report until the night before it is due, let your child suffer the consequences.

9. There is nothing wrong with lending your expertise and problem-solving skills to help your child struggle through a particularly challenging or difficult homework problem, but make this an exception to the norm.

10. Encourage your child to use resources to find tough homework answers. (Examples: Internet, encyclopedias, and atlases)

11. Ultimately, by allowing your child to complete the tough stuff on his/her own, you will give your child a sense of accomplishment and foster a healthy independence and confidence.

12. If you are unsure of how much assistance to give your child, clarify with the teacher your role in helping to correct your child's work.