To wonder if ND child should get homework

[Wildworldandteacakes]

My child is 8 years old (year 3). We have always had great difficulty completing homework, but we have managed 'just', with alot of stress, and parental support. No child wants to homework, I can deal with the usual moaning and reluctance. My other child is NT, and does homework without issue, usual parenting methods will work eg. stickers and rewards. Even this isn't usually needed though.

For my ND child, it is honestly off the scale and not laziness, or a 'just cannot be bothered attitude.' I feel homework is having absolutely no benefit other than affecting dc's mental health, and causing him mental overload. After his school day he is too overwhelmed, on weekends we would need to keep him in for the full 2 days, and even then, it would he difficult for him to do it without becoming distressed. If we have been out absolutely anywhere on the weekend, homework is pretty much impossible because it is again mental overload. I have tried every trick in the book from being stricter, softer, and inbetween. I've tried to make it fun and to feel less like school, while "we" do it, no demands or springing it on him out of the blue etc. He knows he gets a week to do it, and I give him gentle reminders that it is there for when he feel up to doing it. I have extensively researched and taken every piece of advice. I'm honestly at a loss at this point.

Academically he is where he should be be in most areas, ahead in some, slightly behind in one (because he isn't interested, and cannot give it his full attention, no matter how he tries). When he is interested, he can focus for ages down to the finer details, obsessively so.

I'm looking for those who have experience with ND children completing homework. Do they have to it, or can the school make reasonable adjustments eg. adapting the homework style for the child. I had a word with his class teacher at parents evening whose response was: "They all have to do it, my kids have to do it, try getting him to do it on a Saturday so he is less overloaded, off the next day, split it up etc. I am at a loss of what to do here. We have already tried all of this.

Watching my child have a melt down, hitting himself in the face because he has do this homework, and feels he cannot do it is heartbreaking. He has autism, adhd, and what we think is a type of pathological demand avoidance (awaiting diagnosis next week) but it looks pretty concrete from what we have been told.

My youngest is 10 and we are having similar problems with homework. He was greater depth in maths and expected in everything else but now he is expected in maths and working towards in everything else.

Exactly, he has only just turned 8; he has just under 3 and a half more school years to go before secondary. We are hoping to build resilience, equip ds with coping mechanisms to navigate school, and tasks in the best way possible for him. The poor kid has just really become aware of how different he feels he is from the other children. I'm hoping with the right help and support, things will improve over time.

That's why I mentioned 'later down the line'; I wouldn't be certain that things will just naturally fall into place for GCSEs and he'll suddenly think about homework completely differently. Obviously she should do whatever she can to lighten the load for him at this age but something to bear in mind for future.

My DS didn’t do any homework after the first term of secondary except maths which he enjoyed and was computer based. With the other subjects I told the SENCO that there was no point in the teachers marking my work because that’s exactly what it would be!
He then moved for a specialist school where no homework was set.
He passed his GCSES just about but would have done better had he had the skills to work at home.

We had some adjustments at primary (sounds like a rather similar child) and now in year 7 she does do the minimum without too much complaint. I can't get her to read though (except functionally - recipes, instructions, signage) and I mean can't!

I know what you mean about doing it yourself. The craft projects DH and I did!

My ND DS in Y9 doesn't usually do any homework. I wish we'd pushed for that at primary, he would get so distressed and it didn't add anything to his learning. At secondary we have an agreement with the school that we'll support him to do some of it if it feels like it's not stressing him out too much, and that he won't be punished for missing any.

If he was forced to do all the homework his attendance would fall because he's on the edge as it is. He finds the whole school experience incredibly stressful and anxiety-inducing. Getting him into school most days is an achievement.

As ^^ pp stated
go down the official route get a diagnosis then you will be able to legitimately state that homework is detrimental to his mental well-being ( school is for school work , home is for destressing/ relax)
fwiw my 1-1 very rarely does any homework

Respectfully, I’d be wary in case this is setting your child up to fail later in life. Real life will not cater or adjust to these needs and shielding them from what is reasonably expected of all pupils is going to make assimilation to adulthood very tricky further down the line. Their resistance to homework will reap no benefits during GCsE revision time either.

He is 8
Now is not the time to worry about this.

ND children have a different process to maturing and coping. DS now does all of his homework, on time, with very little prompting - he's in year 9. He has had the time and space to develop his own coping mechanisms and systems. It's all very well to say, "this is setting them up to fail" but the assumption you're making is that if we suggest homework in year 3 should be removed or restricted, that means we're saying our ND children should never have to work for anything. That's a ridiculous extrapolation.

I don’t think any 8 year old should get homework, apart from reading

Of course real life can cater to different types of people. I struggled with homework too. I chose a very intense career working with emergencies, but it required nothing to do outside of work hours and the hours were strictly set. I adjusted my career to one that would suit my temperament. I find it easier to engage with things that are urgent and I don't like to take work home.

I have 2 kids with SEN 8+13. Neither of them does homework. I decided when my eldest was in year 2 I think, that we weren't doing it. It was stressful, distressing for everyone. School is school and home is home. I just told the school we wernt doing it and that was pretty much it.

We do make this adjustment in our school but bear in mind that if you want him to do GCSEs then you might be creating a massive issue for yourself later down the line. I would go for reduced homework and then somehow get it into his routine even if it is you reading to him or writing in his answers for him. It is very difficult to persuade a ND teen that they have to suddenly start doing homework.

I write to the class teacher every year stating I do not consent to homework.

I’ve been a primary school teacher for 25 years. There is no evidence to support homework in primary school. All the evidence points to dinner round a dining table and a bedtime story as the key activities for primary school children.

My two didn't do homework in KS2; we were too battered after all those painful months of attempting the fucking "home learning" in 2020/21.

They have both coped with doing homework from y7. For a start it's not just years of the same repetitive, mind-numbing SATs practice exercises, and it tends to be app based. DS1 is begining to get more in-depth tasks in y9 and his capacity to deal with them has increased as he's got older.

It's a good job I didn't flog ourselves trying to do it... DS1 was kept in at breaktimes for not doing it in y6... he'd worked out that 1) it saved him loitering around tediously on the playground while the inferior lifeforms in his class ran around chasing a ball like demented dogs. 2) the homework took far longer to do eating into his precious non-school time than the low value time taken off on school.
So basically in DS1 logic, school was rewarding him for not doing something he hated.

I wasn't going to stand a chance arguing against that logic

It is very common for ND children to resent school work being taken out of context and inflicted on them in their home life. (This was flagged up in DS1's Ed Psyc reports)

My ND kids compartmentalise their lives & can’t cope with homework encroaching on their safe space at home. Both very bright, way ahead of their peers.

With the eldest I forced them to do it all through primary, with lots of tears and tantrums, but in secondary I left them to it. I did ask the school if they could do homework there, but after school hours.

With my youngest we don’t do any homework, ever, unless he chooses to. It hasn’t made a jot of difference to his learning.

I was a teacher for many years, and my view on homework has changed in that time. I used to think it was so important, but now I think it’s a complete waste of time.

@LadyIce2 30 minutes bursts for a child like ds who has just turned 8. It is too much. No, it wouldn't work. He is very intelligent and I don't worry academically about his future at all. I do however worry about him from a mental health point of view, which is my main focus at the moment. We are getting those diagnosis/s very soon, and then will learn how to navigate them. He cannot run before he can walk, and needs the 'right' help and support to build resilience, and grow coping mechanisms. I am not willing to risk his mental health so the school can tick a box.

Mine don't do homework. They still get assigned it and once in a blue moon they volunteer to do it but i can't be arsed with making them.

Well I think your ds has fantastic logic; this is definately something ds would do as well. He doesn't want to do school at home in his safe space. It doesn't matter how fun, and 'unschool' like I make it, by the time I get him to sit down to do it, he is worked up crying his eyes out by that point. It is at the stage where I am seeing my little boy extremely distressed, and for what? This isn't preparing him for anything, it is hindering him by causing a further resentment of school. Dh thinks the school will be on-board once we have the official diagnosis early next week.

I don't think that avoiding unpleasant stuff is a great precedent to set. I mean, why go to school? Why go to bed? Why do any number of things? It can't be much more than an hour per week. Better to get them both to do it on a Friday evening or whenever. If its not done, no fun stuff this weekend.

A child who is neurodiverese sometimes can't cope with everything in life it isn't always a case of getting on with it or "making them". Do you understand anything about any neurodiverse conditions?

In my experience, my kid took nothing in and ended up stressed and overwhelmed. It was pointless. He just didn't learn like that.

Your dh is likely right, once you have more information and have a diagnosis you can talk to the school about options, fwiw I wouldn't force him and write a note to the teacher slip it in with his homework book that he couldn't manage so you decided he wouldn't continue.

Further to this, I'm not a teacher but I have trained and mentored a lot of people at work and I have a relevant diploma. People do not learn by being bombarded with information. If you overload someone, they end up forgetting things because it simply isn't possible to take on endless fact after fact.

In a young ND child, you have to make things fun and engaging or you're wasting your time trying to force them to concentrate.