Homework = stress any tips?

[purplemurple]

ds 7 has just gone into the juniors, his homework has trebled. He has spellings and then sentences to make out of the spellings, literacy sheet and maths.

It is causing him a lot of stress and me too. He gets the homework on mon to be completed by fri. He is reluctant to do it every time. He will get himself all worked up, crying etc.

I have tried spreading it out over the week but that makes every night stressful, I sit with him and help him, but when I can see he is not doing what is required and try to point that out to him, he goes into meltdown for example his spellings he is supposed to make a sentence. The spelling is boy so his sentence is Boy game. He will only do it his way and I have given up trying to point out how it should be done because then he will give up.

He finds the literacy home work the most stressful, his hand aches, and so the quantity of work he is producing is not enough. Now he is in the juniors if homework isn't done satisfactorily they get a yellow card, the whole time he is doing his work he is just repeating I am going to get a yellow card. (he has never had one so far in infants and it is a big fear).

On the plus side when he was doing his maths homework his older sister was mouth agape. He was adding thousands, hundreds and tens without even thinking about it. Just looked at the sum and wrote it down within a second no workings out. if it was all maths homework he would be fine.

[insanityscatching]

The school should make reasonable adjustments. So if ds finds writing hard would he find it easier to type? Could you scribe for him? Will they send worksheets where he just needs to fill in the odd word? Put the ball back in their court and ask what are they going to do to enable your child to do his homework like his peers?
I have to be honest I always made it perfectly clear with schools that I didn't consider homework a battle I was prepared to take on so if ds refused it wouldn't be done. There was never any punishments though because they knew ds would avenge any sanctions ten times over but he did get rewards for each time he did supply a piece of homework.

[WilsonFrickett]

Talk to the school, they need to either adjust the amount or the way it needs to be done. Make sure he eats first is my only tip, sorry if that sounds facile, but DS is always starving when he comes home and it did take me a couple of weeks to realise that hungry DS = rubbish homework session.

[rebl]

My ds is only yr 1 but is getting more homework than he can manage for similar reasons that you give. Its not all been done this week and we've not managed to hear him read once. I've spoken to the teacher this morning and she told me that its not compulsory and as long has he's had a stab at something thats good. Very different tone to the letter she sent home about homework.

So if I were you I'd speak to the school. I'm with you about not making homework a battle and I'm sure the school would be the same. He's not going to be benefitting from it when he's in this state.

[purplemurple]

I spoke to the school last year about homework, I asked if his literacy hwrk could be based on non fiction every other week to boost his confidence and was told no.

I have been considering buying ds the aplhasmart or asking school to provide one, he was assessed by physio and OT last year but they only did sensory and gross motor skills.

In some ways the school are fab in other ways not so fab.

[pramsgalore]

my ds is in year1 and he is getting homework, dd only ever got spellings with no dead line to get them back, but ds homework is more and only gets a few days, and the weekend to do it in, the first lot he did took him 5 mins and honestly you could tell he did not want to it, the following week he just point blank refused, so i had to go in and explain it to the teacher who sat him down straight away and made him do it, don't know how much he did as he will get his new homework folder tonight and lastweeks will be in there, but i can not make him do it, he has trouble holding a pencil and understanding instruction so everything is harder for him, but it looks like teacher will be making no allowences for this

[nickminiink]

My son is 10 years old yr6 and homework is still a battle, like your ds purplemurple he has no problem with maths picks it up and amazes me sometimes in how quick he can do the sum (not so good on written numeracy). Literacy he gets stressed, meltdowns, it takes alot of time to explain what he needs to do and then we have to shadow him because there are always so many questions. The homework sessions would go on for hours, it was not doing both of us any good due to the anxiety and stress. So we approached the school and his EP and now he does no more than 20 mins homework and if we do not hand in any literacy there is no detention etc. He is obviously alot happier, don't get me wrong he does try but when it gets too much we just stop him, my only concern is SATS and secondary school is vastly approaching. He needs to do the homeowork to keep up with the course work, but at the moment all he does is maths. Difficult situation as upto 2 weeks no official dx, but now we have Dyslexia and he has always had SLD.