To think parents shouldn’t be doing kids’ homework?

[PuzzledObserver]

This was mentioned on a thread about wifework - doing kids’ homework.

Surely kids should do their own homework? It’s set to reinforce their recent learning and give them practice using the new techniques they’ve learned. If the parents do it for them, they don’t learn as well.

Or AIBU?

For context - I have no DC, so maybe I just don’t understand. My parents never did my homework.

DD2 needs a lot of help with homework. She needs help to decode the task, and to have enough confidence to tackle it.

"I don't do my son's homework but I do need to help him A LOT. He just gets way too much and in my eyes sometimes this stuff is beyond what he is capable for. This has been raised with the school but they are happy for parents to help....in fact this is what they want. They want parents engaging with the child's learning. We used to get my older son to do it all my himself and leave any mistakes so the teacher could see how we was coping. The school has now told us they don't want parents leaving mistakes uncorrected and instead to help the child and show them / help them correct any mistakes. Sometimes this approch makes me feel like I am practically doing the homework for him (apart from the physical writing)."

This epitomises one of the things about school that really annoyed me. I was a full-time working single parent. My son used to go to after school club everyday and I would collect him at 6 and go home for tea, bath and bed. There is no way we had time to be doing this of an evening. My DS was way too tired, I was way too tired, and as others have said homework us a compete waste of time for primary age children. School seem to think you gave nothing better to do than do school related activities. Often with little notice. No awareness of family circumstances or other responsibilities. And it's all a bit nanny state.

Anyway we didn't do it. My DS was an avid reader and we did lots of reading anyway which is useful and we used to do times tables on journeys etc. But no homework. I told the school it was unnecessary and wasn't happening.

I hate this attitude: I am too busy, I don't care about school, it's not my problem. Other parents are just lazy and have time to waste.

You don't want to, fine, own it, but other parents are just as busy as you are - they organise themselves differently, they have weekends.

I am fed up of kids whose parents can't be bothered to do anything, so have to be given more time in class and waste the other kids time in the process. It's a vicious circle, concerned parents then have to spend even more time with their own kids to compensate.

Thankfully, it all works out in the end but it's still annoying.
I do feel sorry for the little ones always in tears because "mummy is not here" when the other parents are around. It's always the same kids, and there are always tears.

I agree with PPs. It's not about doing the homework but making sure time is set aside for it, cajouling children into doing it, supervising and helping in the kind of way a teacher might. You need to be fully involved with reading if they're of the age where they need to read to you. You need to test them on spellings. You might need to get them set up on a computer or tablet. It's really time consuming and difficult when you're working and children are in wrap around care. As my ex doesn't do any homework, the weeks where he has DC at the weekend are particularly difficult as I have to fit all the homework into the little time that's available in the mornings and evenings on week days and there is a lot of work to be done.

It's always the same kids, and there are always tears.

Yeah my kid is one of those without the tears though. Because i work!! And work in a school looking after and teaching other people's kids.

And while I'm a fairly involved parent, I also know that the sky won't fall over if we don't read for 4 days or if she just copied a fact sheet of the internet for her homework.

I'm lucky though that I know all the things they are doing in school, I know where to find extra resources if she struggles, I can ask my coworkers for help, I have the time etc. I'm not blinkered enough to not realise that other people might struggle due to the hours they work, number of kids they need to help and ferry around or simply lack of knowledge of fronted adverbials,determiners,present perfect tense and prepositional phrases.

I've spent months trying to teach my daughter time . It was one of her targets in November, it shows up on worksheets , etc they've only started doing it at school last week ffs!

At primary school, there are lots of projects that children just couldn't do without heavy parental input. Think...make a model of a Roman villa or make a model of the pyramids. This takes so much time...thinking of idea, buying the materials and actually making the sodding thing.

I wasn't helped at all with homework but i would have benefited from a bit of support and encouragement. Mine did homework on Sundays until year 6.
Dd1 needs prodding a bit.
Dd2 is fiercely independent but likes help setting up a revision timetable and help with revision, as does dd1.
I'm happy to help

PuzzledObserver did the person say that doing your child's homework is part of wifework or suporting them to do it? Can you link to the thread?

God, I wish I didn’t have to help with homework. My 6 year old has 96 (!) pages of reading assigned just for home (about a paragraph per page), plus 40 minutes of phonics and 40 minutes of maths, each week, plus 4 other projects due each term. If I didn’t help and have a whole calendar system to deal with it, it would never happen. It’s truly hell. I quite often just lie and say she’s done it because I can’t bare to spend 1-2 hours a day on it. She’s 6. She should be playing in mud!

I had 3 at the same primary school at the same time. Their homework requrements became ridiculous and couldn't be done without a parent. The one that required 5 year olds to research Van Gogh and produce a handout on his life and paintings was pretty standout in the ridiculousness stakes, also the one asking them to prepare a presentation about Howard Carter discovering Tutankhamun's tomb (also year 1), but there were lots like that, alongside reading and spelling. Much of them were simply not possible without heavy parental involvement. With 1 child it might not have been too bad, but with 3 there simply weren't enough hours in the day to get through it all. Homework was due in on Fridays, and if you still hadn't handed it in on Monday they were kept in at lunchtime. Now all are in secondary so I almost never get involved in homework.

School rewards the child with the overly interested parent re: academics IMO.

The difference between a child perceived as average versus above average at Primary school, academically, is an interested & very invested parent IME. Some average kids at our primary see tutors just to get ahead, teachers think they are then inherently brighter, etc.

I assume that they just mean helping them. Whether or not they should be doing that depends on the child. At primary school they shouldn't spend hours on homework so if that is happening I don't blame them for giving a lot of help or even pretty much doing it.
I didn't help with any other than reading and reminding them to do it but my children were quite academic so didn't really need any input from me.

I agree kids shouldn't have homework. I don't think the parents actually sit with a book and pencil doing their homework. I sit with them for Maths and Gailige, I help them to breakdown the sum, words but don't do their homework, I find it reinforces what they learnt in school.

DD aged about 8 was given homework with no source materials or prior discussion, "Write about the history of Halloweeen."

I didn't do it for her, but even as one of the top pupils in the class, she needed substantial help with that one.

It causes upset in our house. Would prefer it to be done at school, I'd gladly pay for an hour homework club twice a week.
DS leaves before 8am and is home about 4.20. He's honestly had enough by then

My DD's secondary school has a good homework support room which has been good in helping my DD figure out homework techniques, but some of the things she brings home still need adult input.

Getting supplies for projects has been a big one as has doing online research which comes up quite a bit. It is often 'Write on [topic]'. I've at times supervised to help her figure out between good sources and naff ones (and to not just take the first thing google spits out...). It does feel there are a lot of assumptions that kids will automatically know how to do certain tasks, particularly with tech or research.

Also, some kids need a bit more help with setting up habits and reminder systems, especially for on-going things like my DD is meant to spent a certain about a time on a few different websites for different classes each week. She's made it part of her routine now, but it was a change for her to get used to doing. That's before getting into the end of week/end of term tiredness and grumpiness.

So there is a bit that I think could come under doing homework as a parenting tasks beyond actually doing it for them.

I don't mind a worksheet. It's the vague project type stuff I can't stand.

DH had a lot of fun with DGD's homework. Make a castle. We'd had a washing machine delivered and had the box. Towers were added and a draw bridge. It was huge. Then came the moat and animals. DGD enjoyed the whole process and painted it with gusto. Then she commented that she didn't think we'd be able to get it in her DF 's car as he only had a mini!

She still wanted it though, so DH drove it to school when the half term was over. We haven't had any more constructive homework since.

I don’t think they meant doing the actual homework, rather overseeing it and helping if needs be. I hate primary school homework and say this as a teacher from a long line of teachers, it’s utterly pointless.

It gets the parents back up to speed ready to do their children's GCSE coursework. I kid you not, one very well regarded London day school every parent I know who has kids there admits to doing their coursework for them.

This sort of thing drives me bonkers. The homework expectations from (at least some) primaries are actually widening the gender pay gap as it's mostly the mums doing this stuff. I am a teacher and my DH is a lecturer and I will admit we have pretty much done the literacy and project work on some occasions (I make him do his fair share but I think I'm pretty much the only one who does, judging from conversations with other parents). We just want to get the damn stuff done (because we can't spend all evening/weekend on it - we've got our own work to do!) The latest is we've been told not to read the books in one go as they're getting longer. There are 5 books a week. There are 7 days in a week and DD (aged 6) is in school 7.30am to 5.30pm for four of those and slightly less the fifth day.

The crazy thing is DC often seem to get way less work in year 7 than at primary.

That was long. YANBU but it's going to happen if the homework is inappropriate in quantity or type. If this seems to be going on a lot at a school, the school should consider its policies. A school I taught at (secondary) made a serious attempt to investigate and improve its homework setting and it was a useful thing to do. If you're dissatisfied with what your school does, tell them, politely and go as high up as you can. You never know. Others may feel the same way.

I never helped with ds's homework in primary (there were a couple of exceptions when he couldn't be bothered, for example, finishing a stupid igloo model he had already spent his on).

Now he is in secondary I help much more than primary, but don't do it for him. If he is stuck on an area in maths and can't remember (usually I dont know it either!) he will try before asking for help. I'll ask him to explain what he does know and then ask questions until he remembers/works it out. If that fails I'll usually watch him look at online resources for help. One he know how to do it he'll get on with the homework again himself.

For French I help him revise vocab using his homemade flash cards, and he tries to explain regular and irregular verbs to me (which I continue to pretend not to understand) but not much else. Chemistry /physics I'll help if he asks me to quiz him prior to an end of unit test.

English /modern /pe he never asks for help in as it's mostly done in class so far.

It was much easier finishing off igloos!!

I'm not sure what your definition of 'doing it' is- we do it together, and I ensure it's spelt correctly, but she writes it. I dispise doing it, but we are expected to, so I do. There is a fair bit also done independently- school has an expectation the child does mathletic and reading eggs each week, as well as written homework. I expect them to be done independently.

It's often one of the parents worst nightmares: chasing them to sit, stopping them from daydreaming, making threats and promises if they don't speed up, colouring in small bits to help that speeding up, coming up with ideas that don't sound too sophisticated and give the game away...its exhausting at times and I'm a teacher!!!
Kids are tired. Parents are rushing because of dancing/ football etc. Believe me it is work.