Homework sucks (for them and us)

Site Default - 7 Apr 17

When I was little I remember practising my letters in a handwriting book whilst my mother sat next to me. I remember wanting my letters to look perfect. I remember my painstaking attempts to keep within the lines. I remember being super-excited when I got stars for my homework and gutted when I didn’t. I remember wanting to always do my best.

Now that I’m a mother myself, I’m having to sit down with my 6-year-old each week and guide him through his homework. But I’m not finding this easy.

Sometimes my son will go into one of those ‘I’m not doing it!’ almighty grumps and it will take two hours to write just five lines about The Great Fire of London. Sometimes he will deliberately scribble all over the blank page or write massive letters that go way outside the lines (the sub-editor/perfectionist in me finds this particularly hard to cope with). Sometimes he will shout ‘I hate homework!’ and storm off outside to play football. Sometimes he will mess up his drawing with a big black line through the middle, just to make a point. Sometimes his more than/less than maths work is torn up into tiny pieces in a moment of rage.

There are times when I get angry too. When I get so frustrated with my son’s lack of enthusiasm. When I rub out what he’s done and make him do it properly (and teachers hate rubbing out). When I give him yawn-boring lectures on the importance of doing well at school. Because I worked hard at his age, I suppose I expect him to do the same. But I know that’s not fair. He isn’t me, he’s his own person. And crikey, he’s only six…

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when my son does do well at his homework. When he sits and concentrates for a whole twenty minutes. When he lets his amazing imagination go wild and shows off his work with a big satisfied grin on his face. These moments are great. These moments make up for all the effort you both put into homework. But sadly these moments don’t occur that often.

Talking to other parents with children in the same year it seems that I’m not the only one who struggles on a weekly basis with the dreaded homework. There are even mothers who refuse to let their children do homework because they know how stressful the experience can be. There are full-time working mothers who simply just can’t fit it into their jam-packed schedules, who have to get the teachers to help them out at after-school club. There are a lot of parents out there who think, like their kids, that homework actually sucks.

But how do we get our children to do homework without having an almighty tantrum? How do we get a football-mad 6-year-old to engage in the diary of Samuel Pepys when the sun is shining and kicking a football around the garden is far more tempting?

I think homework for little ones needs to be more about going outside and discovering things and less about writing out fractions and getting worked up about spelling. I think there should be more homework that says ‘Take a walk around your garden or through the park and write down a list of all the birds and bugs you see.’ Science homework is great for younger children too. The best homework my son ever had was a banana experiment: he had to weigh a peeled banana then mash it up and weigh it again to see if weight changes when you alter the shape of something. He loved it (especially the mashing bit). And I loved it because he did it with a smile on his face the whole way through.

Homework shouldn’t be dull. And parents shouldn’t have to go through a weekly struggle with an uncooperative child. So instead of getting angry next time my son tears up his maths homework, I might actually ignore it, take his hand and go on a bug hunt. Now that sounds like much more fun…

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Fiona Pennell lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and their two boys, Jack, 6, and Otto, 4. A former YOU magazine sub-editor, Fiona now spends her days being trampled on, going on slug hunts and dreaming of lie-ins. (Twitter: @fiona_pennell)

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