AIBU to insist my son does his homework on the day he gets it?

[orangesandlemonssaythebellsofstclements]

DS has just started secondary school. I did make it clear to him that we will be taking homework seriously and that I will be stricter on a few things once he starts secondary school, he will be expected to take more responsibility and in return will get more freedom. I've been slowly trying to get him used to this over the last few months of primary and during the summer holidays.
His primary school didn't give out homework so it's new to him.

He's just been issued with his first piece of homework today. Once he arrived home (he cycles independently) and settled in a bit I reminded him he has homework (the school makes parents aware through an app) and told him that he needs to do it tonight. He was very resistant to this and said he has a week to do it so doesn't need to do it tonight. I said our rule for home, from me and his dad, not from the school, is to do homework on the day you get it so it doesn't mount up. Get it out of the way straight away - that's what I expect of him. He's not happy and says it's a stupid rule.

AIBU?

I voted YABU as I think it’s really important they learn to manage their own time and tasks once they hit secondary school. That means you letting go a bit and if necessary letting him make his own mistakes/ miss a deadline.

By all means help him learn to organise himself / prioritise with a planner etc but don’t micro manage the actual doing of the work.

My house is never so tidy as when I have an essay due!

He’s just started secondary. It’s a big change. Your approach sounds a bit heavy handed. Agree he needs to learn to manage his time and that some days he might be too tired or not in the right frame of mind. Plus he’ll have some which is more urgent and some which he can leave a few days while he does the urgent stuff. I think you need to find a way of being more supportive.

And how is that teaching him to manage his own time? Stupid rule. They won't give him that much in a week that he can't cope with it.

I voted YABU. Now is his time to learn to take responsibility for his work. If he fails, he does so when it doesn’t matter. If is punished by school for missing a deadline it will have more impact than you micro managing him.

Support him by all means but by managing for him he’s not learning the skills he’ll need later.

That's exactly what we did as long as he had no other commitments. No negotiation. We started the "habit" from his first day. Evening meal at the dining table, and then straight onto his homework. Once done, the rest of the evening was his own. Only exceptions were where he clearly had too much to do in an evening, and then we'd look at hand in deadlines and pick a homework to be deferred a day or so. We started as we meant to go on and made it a habit. Far easier that way. He carried on doing it like that throughout secondary right up to GCSE years. We never had any last minute panics where he'd forgotten to do something or left it too late he ended up having to do it instead of another activity or other homework.

We've no idea what he did for sixth form, we didn't get involved and the school didn't put homework on an app, but he never seemed stressed, and got straight A*s in his A levels, so he must have been doing something right.

Obviously, it's a sensible idea to do homework on the night it's set in general. However insisting on this extra rule for homework that's far more stringent than the school policy, and by making it a contentious issue from the outset, I think you risk giving him the impression that he's doing the homework to appease you rather than for his own educational benefit.

If you enforce this rule before he's even had a chance to prove whether or not he would have been able to stay organised independently, he won't have the opportunity to experience the consequences of his choices. By micromanaging him, you might be shielding him from getting overwhelmed with too much homework in the short term, but he won't have as much life experience to handle these choices for himself in the long term.

It's hard for parents to adjust to secondary school, especially when the school share the info with you so it feels like they're expecting you to take responsibility for making sure pupils do their work, when really they expect the pupils to take responsibility, with support and oversight from the parents where needed. It's incredibly hard to strike the right balance as a parent, and it will take some time (and experience of homework over the next weeks and months) for both of you to adjust.

It's natural to worry about the transition to secondary schools but it sounds like you're trying to impose additional rules on DS for problems that don't actually exist yet.

If he starts getting a ridiculous amount of homework, then you will see that in the app and you can raise concerns with the school. And if he doesn't actually do his homework on time, then you can deal with that situation as appropriate.

But I think you're worrying disproportionately about future problems that don't currently exist. At least give him a chance to fuck things up first before you punish him!

As long as he does his best and hands it in on time then leave him to it!

Totally unreasonable OP.
I sincerely hope that you never come across any real problems with your son

You are not helping him develop independence by enforcing rules like this. If it is not due for a week why do it straight away seems a daft life lesson!

I get where you’re coming from, but I suggest taking a different approach whereby you ask him to suggest a plan for how he is going to tackle homework and what are his strategies for if/when there might be a lot of assignments around the same time. Working alongside him and showing him how you have to manage things like this in a work environment can be empowering for him rather than a “my house, my rules” approach. We did this with my DD (20) who learnt to plan her work during secondary school and she regularly submits uni assignments in good time. Time management is a skill to learn and develop rather than a rule to follow. Your son may not get it right first time, but he will learn more through experience.

Children shouldn't have homework. They're in school five days a week. That should be enough.

Good for you. It’s called being a parent. Kids need a lot of guidance and structure. Once they have sat GCSEs I would leave them to it but not before. Lazy parenting and low standards seem to prevail unfortunately.

Your principle makes some sense but simply won't work as a blanket rule throughout secondary. My DC is now in Y11 and over the secondary years there have been numerous homeworks which have been best tackled by doing 15 minutes per day for 4 days, or leaving it to the weekend to attack with a fresh brain. Some homeworks will be set where it's a project that needs several hours over multiple weeks. Even if a homework item is relatively short and can be done at any time - e.g. a sheet of maths questions - the point of the homework is to consolidate the lesson and get some practice, and sometimes that is best done a day or two after the lesson so that it uses the longer-term memory. For some learning styles, if you learn a technique at 2pm on Tuesday and then do the set half-hour practice at 5pm, you may have completely forgotten how to do it by Friday because it only used your short term memory. However if you tackle it on Wednesday, having mostly forgotten the lesson but needing to re-read the powerpoint slides/textbook/whatever to remind yourself of the technique, then your brain uses the medium and long-term memory functions and it is learned better. Language learning with vocab lists works a lot better if done in many small chunks.

Our rule is that all homeworks have to be completed by the evening of at least 3 days before they are due in, so that there is time to panic and find out what to do if they start tackling it and realise they have no idea how to do it, or need some additonal info/resources.

I think managing his own time is importantly to learn, how he manages and when he performs his best academically, all through school and university and now going back into studying again, I’ve always worked best much closer to the deadline. Let him work out how he wants to schedule his homework, if he fucks up ans misses something now is the perfect time to learn the consequences of that.

I was always a last minute homework doer. To this day, I can't focus properly on an assignment unless I have the deadline breathing down my neck. Last time I had an assignment for a course I painted both the kids bedrooms and rearranged all the kitchen cupboards just to put it off a bit longer.
Leave him to it and he'll soon figure out if he's a do it as soon as possible person or a leave it till the last minute person. And if he doesn't do it at all then he faces the consequences from school.

Rubbish I have never heard of this kind of micro managing, I consider my self virtually Tiger mum as well.

My DC has just started secondary school (he is in his second week and has already had several pieces of homework 😯) After school clubs have also started.

My plan is to get him used to doing things on the day they are set. We'll no doubt deviate as and when but I plan to start strong.

The school issue one homework subject on each day of the week - so Monday is always Maths, Tuesday is always Science etc - and they have also sent a planner that sets the expectation homework is done on the day it's set. In theory this leaves the weekends completely clear which is a bonus.

Of course last week as a complete pigs ear - people couldn't get into the various apps / the days the homework was due didn't align to the dates the kids were being told etc but we managed to get it all done.

I think you are removing the growth opportunity for him by enforcing a schedule - he needs to learn to self regulate

Yes because 20 assignments a week is the norm 🙄 my teens have no social life cos every waking minute (minus the nearly 7 they're in school) is doing the mountain of assignments per week.

I disagree that it's lazy parenting. I think lazy parenting is to put in place arbitrary rules and force children to do something for no real reason. I think it's much harder parenting to teach children independence, to allow them to make their own decisions and to, sometimes, get it wrong.

Youve given him the advice

maybe chat through options eg do it the night you get it, set aside some time each night/ specific nights to do it, a break time with friends to work on it together

then hand over to him, ask which he’d prefer and monitor

It's the kind of approach perhaps to take if school flag there's an issue. All you'll achieve by enforcing these rules for no apparent reason is to rob your child of an opportunity to develop and worse than that they'll end up resenting the work. I honestly have never heard of this before ever.

I did this with my son in year 7 last year and it worked well for him . I don't intent to police his homework for the next 6 years but it was really important to me to instill good habits in him of not leaving it all until the last minute. My parents didn't police my homework AT ALL when I was younger and I was lazy, left it until the last minute, rushed it or just didn't bother at all and then made up elaborate excuses as why I hadn't done it. I did alright at school but really could have done so much better in school if I had good habits and wasn't so damn lazy!

Very similar to what my kids school do, until yr 10 obviously, then it increases.
Never seems to be an issue to keep on top of.