To not make DD6 (Year 1) do homework?

[Thesnailonthewhale]

She was 6 in December, an she's above age related expectations in all areas. Reading age of 8y6m.doing Year 2 maths etc

School are getting a bit uppity about her not completing the set homework each week. (Spellings, some maths sheets etc)

She reads every day without being prompted and is incredibly inquisitive etc helps around the house, plays creatively, is active.
She counts coins at shops, does puzzle books, can tell the time to quarters and halfs and (still working on 5 mins) - weighs and measures ingredients for cooking and baking etc. (all applied maths)

Should I make her do the extra stuff? I can't see the point personally.

You should be able to spend 40 minutes a week playing with your children AND still have time to spend 40 minutes a week doing the homework set. I'm glad your DS is so devoted to football, let's hope he makes a career out of that if you've already decided his teachers are irrelevant.

Goodness me projects AND locations, he must be soooooo smart and manly, however did you bag such a clever cookie, sunshine?

I’m asking how you force a child to do something?

”By actually parenting” could mean anything form gentle encouragement to full on physical abuse. How do you do it, oh great one with the project-having husband?

There is a difference between a child expressing dislike in a normal way and what the op is experiencing. My DS will sometimes cry and throw his pencil across the room because he doesn't want to do his homework (or more often because he can't find his special pen) but he will calm down eventually and do it whereas OP's DD does not seem to be able to calm down and do her homework.

If the school doesn't punish them at all for not doing hw, then school should expect there will be kids who just don't do it because their parents can't be bothered.

If in the later years (year 3,4,5,6) the school has punishments and detentions, the children should be expected to do their hw to their best of their abilities. And if they just refuse to do it, they can get a detention or have to stay in during play.

The “should” of my life is, funnily enough, not up to you. As I’ve said, in his school, homework is optional. Therefore we choose not to do it. Hardly scandal of the century

My my you do like making things up - when did I say his teachers are irrelevant? Please point this out as I don’t remember saying it.

I never had homework at primary school, yet I still did all of my secondary homework with no issue. Regarding jobs requiring you to take work home, 1) you decide what job you do and what your boundaries are when you pick a career 2) You aren't 6 years old when you enter the world of work.

I take it from your posts your kids are older?
Cant see many primary schools doing detentions.Im sure it will pain you to know this as you seem weirdly gleeful at the thought of children being punished.

maybe it ss because they realised they wasted their time making a tiny child do spellings and homework each night, and are just trying t insult the parents who question it for valid reasons, in order to convince themselves they were right, when... perhaps they weren't?

Millions of kids never did primary homework and coped just fine in secondary when they had to do it ... we still have a productive and intelligent society

Or, is she encouraging her DD to think for herself, consider the benefit of homework that doesn't teach her anything, consider if not doing the homework negative impacts anyone, and to understand that you don't have to blindly follow rules, it's good to question things

Wow, you sound lovely. Still, as long as you're a top rate tax payer, eh 🙄

They didn't do after school, the primary school just did lunch time ones. And when the class has "play time" on a Friday, the kids who hadn't done the work weren't allowed to join in and had work to do.

I genuinely can’t remember if I did homework in primary school. I wouldn’t have thought so. I’m sure we had to read at home but that’s about it.
I somehow managed to get through secondary and Uni and come out with a decent job in science. All this black and white thinking of “If children don’t do homework their parents think teachers are irrelevant” and “If they don’t do homework they won’t cope in secondary” “If you don’t make them do homework then you’re saying you don’t care about their education” is weirdly black and white. I sometimes think some MNers mustn’t ever meet other humans, given they don’t realise that life has nuance.

i am trying - the doctors keep dismissing me "wait until she's older" - the school support as much as they can, and we're compiling evidence - but still waffle on about doing homework. it's like they have to tick a box or something.

Primary school and meeting/ exceeding age related expectations then no I wouldn't make them as long as they were doing other things to support learning.

We learnt the hard way forcing child to do homework just made a whole lot of other issues worse.

For our children (one in particular) it was "school at home" and that felt wrong to them. They needed home to be home to be able to cope with school that they found a tricky environment.

Like you we practiced maths via practical problems/ games at home. We often got a crossword book out or did the I can't remember how to for spellings. Sometimes typing on the computer would engage them where handwriting sentence would be a complete no go.

We did talk about impact if they didn't know spellings etc but we often practiced non standard way so magnet letters etc... .
I would then write this on the homework sheet/ diary so this week X practiced spellings using magnetic letters, white board and

Reading one of mine hated school reading scheme but loves books so once the basics were there we read but just recorded what we had read. Now they are an independent reader I signed their reading record every week but don't force them to do the extra tasks unless they opt to. To mean reading for pleasure is the important skill and I don't won't to spoil that by forcing a task they don't want to do on them.

And yes I do that education is important and my child that has SATS this year is currently opting to do their homework not because of the SATS but because we talked about how having a good base understanding will help with the move to secondary school.

I agree with this, you need to get to the bottom of what is going on rather than simply remove the obstacle for her.

It must be OP! You asked a perfectly reasonable question and are suddenly being told you think your DD is above school and that you don’t care about her education.
It’s coming from a place of either being seriously unhinged or projecting their own issues

I think the only “top rate” thing that poster is is a top rate plonker

obviously i could force her, pick her sobbing body up, drag her back to the table by sheer strength, force the pencil in her hand, and make her write the words down and keep her there until she's finished all 10 words and her sums too... even if it takes 2 hours.... and yes, go through it each and every night and break her down to a crumpled anxious mess each night until she eventually submits to her fate and it and meekly obeys... but why would I do that? Please tell me why i should do that to a six year old in order for her to do some spellings after a full day at school where she is excelling and doing well, and when we can do the same learning in a different manner?

What will that achieve please? Please tell me why I should do that and the benefits of this submission? ... I'll wait....

Yes schools are weirdly tick-boxy
I think it’s on Ofsted thing.

i am tempted just to do the homework for her so they can tick the box.

You shouldn’t.

I actually don’t think it’s an indication of a bigger problem either. Some kids don’t like homework. Just as some kids don’t like going out in the car, or brushing their teeth, or reading. The expectation for every child to act in a perfect way and just like the next child is very damaging.

Your question seems to be, "My daughter turns doing homework into an epic drama of the likes you'd expect if you tried to demand a child swim through sewage. Is it fine to just pretend she didn't get any homework and ignore the teachers asking me to make sure she does it?"

And the answer is no. You know your daughter. Mine is stubborn af and sometimes she just needs to be told that she's doing a thing whether she wants to or not and if she chooses to make it take 2 hours, it's her own time she's wasted.

If you think that it's genuinely causing her severe mental distress due to an underlying condition then you need to get her help, which means going back to the school and the medical professionals until you have a referral or saving up to go private. What you're describing isn't normal or sustainable.

So if your child was curled up on the floor screaming that they didn't want their teeth brushed, you'd consider that normal and just leave teeth brushing until they all turned green and fell out?

And if a child wasn't brushing their teeth you'd just let them and not "force them".