Does anyone else have a child who just doesn't like hard work?

[Greythorne]

Dd is 7, nearly 8. We are in France and she gets homework every night.

Every night she has to be cajoled / reminded / envpcouraged to do her homework. Cue eye rolls from her and annoyance from me. She sits down and works at the pace of a snail. Needs lots of handholding to complete the homework. Never seems to take any pleasure in it.

Don't know what to think. Is this normal? Or is she just not a hard worker? And if so, what can we do to help her? Homework is becoming a battle at 7.

Why would she take pleasure in hw?

How much hw does she get a night?

Is the hw boring worksheet type stuff?

I think it's totally normal for children not to want to do hw. And nothing to do with being lazy.

Take pleasure in homework?! Good grief op you are expecting waaaay too much there! No child in the history of children has ever taken pleasure in homework

Sounds fairly normal to me, I had to 'make' DS do it and had to help sometimes, 7 is still young and after a full day at school she probably just wants to relax. Its too early yet to accuse her of being lazy or that she's afraid of hard work. Lighten up.

Doesn't every kid do this?

Of course she doesn't like homework she is 7! so happy I am not in France anymore
Assuming she is in a french school:

Does she find it too difficult? or just boring?

Can you let her to it? My DD really doesn't like any support she knows she can ask questions if needed but that is it.
Give her 1/4h, if she has finished her homework then TV/computer time (what ever may motivate her to do it quickly)

If it is too hard, she might need other kind of help especially if you are not french yourself (not being mean but even if you are bilingual there is always some accent/mistakes remaining, I know by experience!)

Also teacher sometimes especially in france have their way and most parents have been taught differently and actually are an hindrance when doing homework, again I know that by experience remembering my parents' "help"

Can you break it down in 3 x 5min sessions?

Do you do english schooling after school? In that case it might just be too much.

Lastly have you try to let her do what she wants (i.e. not doing the homework) and face the consequences warn her 1st

Ok! great, that's a relief.

It's just that my DH is French and he says that by this age he was doing his homework by himself with no input or reminders or any say whatsoever from his parents. He just got on with it.

We feel that if we left DD1 to get on with it, she just wouldn't. (Letting her face the consequences of that is not a bad idea.)

She is generally a slow worker, teachers have pointed that out and she is prone to day-dreaming. But we also don't think she is struggling with the content. Just motivation and concentration.

DH is all for withdrawal of all screen time as he thinks it is detrimental to concentration. But perhaps the smarter idea is to use screen time as a motivator.

The homework does tend towards the boring. Well, it's France :)
Poetry to be learnt by heart, lots of conjugations, quite boring sums ( such as 24x 54 etc. rather than the "look around your house and see how many right angles you can see" type homework). And the books! The books are so demotivating. Let's just say, if there was a Bechdel test for children's books, I am not sure any of the books so far would pass. DD companies that all the protagonists are boys (they are) and all the subject matter seems quite alien (a little boy encounters a dragon / a pirate story called Captain Cruel etc.).

LeMousquetaire
Yes, she is enrolled in an English programme on Weds, so she gets homework from there, too. So in volume, I suppose she does have a lot.

Greythorne:

Can I just ask whether your child speaks English or French at home.

Friends who are bi-lingual have said that starting school with little or no language skills in a second language is exhausting. It may well be that by the end of the school day your child is simply worn out.

If language isn't the issue - then consider other problems:

writing skills (handwriting/ grammar/ planning)
maths skills (doesn't get the concept/ insecure understanding)
reading skills (doesn't follow the plot/ has difficulty sounding out words)

Usually when my girls (now Y7 and Y5) were struggling with homework (even though we had very little from the school) - it was down to the fact that they hadn't quite mastered the skills to do the work (writing/ planning/ organisation/ comprehension of instructions) or were weak at the skill the work involved (reading/ calculation/ writing).

The remedy - in either case (skills to do the homework/ skills in that particular task - reading/ maths/ writing) - is perseverence & support.

If you are just leaving your DD to it and not helping - or pressuring her to hurry up (as you suggest she works snail-pace) - this may make doing homework more stressful.

My advice is work out when in the course of the afternoon/ evening your DC is at their best. For us - a snack right after school along with homework works. I also have a policy of no tv/ video games until homework is complete. I tend to discuss the assignment, what is required/ what they will do/ planning ideas with them and then disappear off and make a snack whilst they make a start. I also check through work (in part because our primary merly ticked that homework was complete and never corrected any homework - and yes we experimented with gobbledy good sentences & wrong maths answers to confirm suspicions).

Finally - remember there are all sorts of great websites out there to support core skills.

High recommend Woodlands Junior School Resources: resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/ - entirely free and links to video games/ worksheets/ websites to support work in a huge range of topics. Maths Zone is particularly useful!

HTH

Pastsellbydate
Thanks for that useful post.

At home, the majority language is English and both the girls prefer English generally. They did start maternelle with little spoken French (although comprehension was ok, as DH speaks French to them and he is rigorous in that, never slips in English.) but, that was some years ago. This is DD1s 6th years of school (3 years so nursery and 2 years of primary, so entering her 6th year) and she is almost although not quite at parity with her monolingual peers. Some vocabulary is lacking, for example. But frankly I don't think that is the root of the problem :)

Great tips.

One thing that surprises me is that there has been no apparent cross over of skills from her English school to the French. Let me explain. She has 3 extra hours of tuition a week, versus her a French peers, thanks to the (academically rigorous) English programme. So, she is having 3 extra hours of handwriting practice, punctuation practice, concentration, listening skills etc etc. and I would have hoped that this would pay a dividend in some way, so, handwriting would be getting an extra boost, concentration improved etc? but I really don't see this at all. Ok, so punctuation, spelling, reading is different but overall, she is benefiting from extra tuition in a small class size.....and yet remains snail-like.

I agree with the resources you have linked to (and a is for that) but I am not sure how much more homework we can squeeze in to build core skills! She has about 30 mins. French homework every night, guitar practice (her choice), English and French reading, English homework (perhaps an hour or two per week).

Maybe I need to tap into my inner Tiger Mom.

I would also take what your DH says about himself with a pinch of salt.
How much do you really remember about yourself at age 7?
He possibly may be exaggerating just what a wonderful scholar he was!

Ha ask your mil OP about DH & his homework

I currently have DS1 at the table complaining about homework & doing it slowly as a protest I think :)

That is a lot of homework and she is still little. Try to break it down in small chunk scattered: gouter, 5 min maths, play, 5 min reading, 5min guitar (if it is a treat), 5 min english reading, prepare meal, 5 min writing, TV, 5 min rote learning and another 5 min in the morning during breakfast.

Let all the other english homework for the week end.

Are you talking to her in English while supporting her with the french homework? That is really confusing, speak to her in french or let your DH do the french homework I know I tried the other way around with DD1

Your DH might not be lying, at 7 (french school in the 70s) I just did the homework because the teacher asks for it terrified of my parents reaction if I did set a foot wrong and of being punished at school, plus I really liked the teacher, and sometimes when I really didn't want to do it I just didn't. But your DD is from another generation... Things have changed hopefully for the better!

That sounds like a huge amount of work, and very dull work at that, for a child her age. Plus maybe the extra tuition is adding to her tiredness? I feel exhausted just reading about it. Does she get much time to play or just relax?

I think using screen time as a motivator is a good idea. But I would also look for some exciting books for her so that she doesn't start to associate all reading with the boring school stuff. How about Harry Potter? That would have the advantage of being available in both French and English for reading practice.

For a 7 year old, I would recommend "Fantomette", "Le Club des 5" (1st original "famous 5" stories plus Blyton allowed a french author to continue the series so may be 20 more books), "le petit Nicolas"... Or BDs: Asterix, les Stroumphs, Marsupilami, titoff (sp?)... Let her loose in the local bibliotheque municipale.

I agree with LeMouquetaire - that's quite a lot for a 7 year old - so breaking it down in to manageable spurts (10 - 20 minutes max) is probably better:

our solutions were these:

reading was done last thing at night (for us after bath & before bed) - we also would move on to read something else if school reading was 'boring'/ 'same book as last week'/ not DDs cup of tea - we just wrote in the reading diary that DD1 is reading well in X, but at the moment prefers to read Y - so we read that. At the end of the day schools just want kids reading regularly - what they read isn't that important.

music practice - was moved to the morning. Whilst I was getting breakfast cleared away and getting things together for school/ work - DD2 practices her daily 30 minutes on violin. We did check with neighbours if 8 - 8:30 was a problem - fortunately they all prefer morning practice to evening practice (which can be heard through tv shows at quiet points).

small chunks - if you have 3 pieces of homework - maths/ writing task/ art project - see if you can divide things up & use the one she really wants to do as the carrot. (e.g. let's get writing & maths out of the way, and then you can spend all afternoon making your poster/ model/ whatever...). DD2 has responded very well to this.

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I can see the speed of the homework is the issue here - so my advice is consider a timer. If making it a race makes it more interesting - consider setting a time per question - so on a math's paper with 10 questions - say I'm giving you 1 minute per question - if you get them all done I'll let you have a treat/ watch tv/ go out and play/ etc....

Writing can be slow going - with DD2 we actually went and got handwriting work books because the school didn't formally teach cursive (joined up) writing but expected Y3 pupils to just suddenly do it. DD2 had beautiful print but went all to pieces with cursive and was getting really stressed because she was spending more time worrying about forming the words than doing the task. 3 workbooks later - and now at a school where penmanship is given time - she's not got any problems - but at the time this was a real 'block' to getting work done.

HTH