Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Flip

1 2

Original poster

Why do some parents do their children's homework for them?

42 replies

willali · 29/09/2008 19:46

I know it goes on but a really blatant example today - waiting to collect DC from after school club, mother and son also waiting (presumably for a sibling)sitting on bench / table in playground with books open. Earwigging revealed it to be a comprehension homework and mother was DICTATING answers which he was duly writing down

It makes me mad that these children who will hand in perfect homework will get all the plaudits (housepoints etc) and my DC whose work is all his own but unaided will miss out.

Please tell me these people will get found out in the end. I SO want to avoid the "if you can't beat them.." brigade..

OP posts:

Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Remotew · 30/09/2008 18:43

snorkle, I agree after all who said that we should leave our childrens education to the state, we should also put our input into it. No argument imo.

nooka · 30/09/2008 18:46

II'm like RubberDuck on this one. I would love to have nothing to do with homework at all. It would be great to just say go into your room and don't come out until it's finished. Fab. But ds would write a load of rubbish just to get it out of the way. He often doesn't read the questions properly, and he doesn't really care about getting the answers wrong. So it is a fairly pointless exercise if I don't sit on him at least a little bit. dd on the other hand really wants to be told exactly what to do, and would happily take dictation, especially for things like comprehension, which she doesn't really understand the point of. I find getting her to do what she is expected is very hard work, and quite frustrating. But clearly the teacher hasn't managed to explain it well enough, or it hasn't sunk in, so I have to sit over her too. There have been times when I have given in and just told her what to write, and I do think that is pointless, but then given the choice of an hour of trying to cajole her to do it properly or five minutes of dictation, sometimes I choose the latter.

We don't have housepoints, but ds has been punished for not handing in his homework, and at their new school parents get rung up if it isn't all done. They are eight and nine, with plenty of time to learn how to work on their own ahead of them before exams start.

Oh and as for craft and art projects. Why!!!!! Ds refuses to do them, or only does them after a lot of argument and stress because as he says he is no good at art. He is right. He doesn't enjoy it, and his end results are not good. Every project had some make this or draw that element, and yes we did end up doing a few of them ourselves, just to get the bloody stuff over and done with. However as neither dh or I have any talent either, no prizes have been won. Slightly embarrassingly ds refused to let dd do his last arty thing because "the teacher would notice". She is clearly better than us .

I really cannot see why such homework is set at all. In their new school art is done at school, with a trained teacher a dedicated room and no homework. Great! Even ds is now more enthusiastic.

hellywobs · 30/09/2008 19:17

It seems to me that schools expect it at primary level. I am school governor and when I said that my parents didn't help me (secondary level, because they weren't Physics experts or whatever subject it was) the school librarian was very sneery (she is also a governor).

squilly · 01/10/2008 09:43

I think that helping your kids is part of what homework is about too, isn't it? It's a form of back-up to the teaching process - supplemental help.

Kids don't get much (if any with some of the class sizes) chance of one on one help in the classroom, but with the homework, they can have someone to guide them.

I think that leaving your kids to get on with it and get things wrong just reinforces the failure/lack of confidence. Explaining to kids how the work is done, going through problem areas, surely that's what supporting your kids is all about?

DD, 7, was struggling like mad yesterday with 33 x 3. We went through it over and over, approaching it in different ways. We wouldn't give her the answer, we just told her different ways of getting there. She struggled.

After her evening meal she suddenly told us the answer and how she'd done it. That's what homework is important for imo.

Original poster

willali · 01/10/2008 12:36

What an interesting debate!!

Yes I do answer questions when asked, however it is for method only and not so as to give the answer. It is a very fine line I admit and yes it is frustrating and upsetting sometimes to let him get on with it even when younow it is going to be wrong. I refuse to be swayed by what goes on in other peoples' houses..

Yes there will be situations where all the work is wrong but I reiterate that my view is that the teacher needs to know where there has been a misunderstanding / lack of knowledge. There is also the issue mentioned elsewhere that I opften do not know how a topic has been taught (esp maths) and explaining it a different way can only create more confusion in the long run.

There will be a time when my kowledge will not be sufficient so why get into the habit of sitting together to do homework and create an expectation that will not be able to be met in the future.

Finally what do you do if there are other children in the house - time spent with one is time not spent with another which is unfair especially where age differemces mean that there is a different burden. My son gets at least 1hour a night prep - that's one hour out of very few in which to do all the other after school stuff like cooking the dinner if we still want a reasonable bed time.

Horses for courses and all that but I will stick to my guns - "get on with it yourself"!!

OP posts:

angelstar · 01/10/2008 14:53

I sit with my yr2 and yr3 chilfren while they do their homework. If I didn't help the read it they wouldn't know what to do. I also will tell them how to correctly spell a word as I fell it helps them to learn how some words are spelt.

tigermoth · 01/10/2008 22:34

I think a bit of parental guidance is fine - I do this myself with my sons. I can't see a problem with it as it's supporting the teaching.

I admit I occasionally guide a lot but if so, I also write a note to the teacher on the homework page. I explain ds found it hard to do this piece of work independently so I helped him with the answers, and please could the teacher go over the concept again with him. Hopefully that covers all bases!

cutekids · 02/10/2008 10:07

i'm with Nooka and Rubberduck on this.(i could easily have written exactly what both of them have said!) at the end of the day,i think we're expected to help them.my son gets on fine at school-or so i believe!-but adamantly refuses to do his homework without me "helping" him! He throws a wobbler before he's even looked at it sometimes!!!As far as any "arty" homework goes,his big sister offers to do it all the time-she is very arty anyway-because she can't bear to listen to his tantrums!!!

mazzystar · 02/10/2008 10:16

surely schools jut need to be clear on what they expect. primary level at least.
ie - its fine to do this together
or please let them doit on their own
obv some kids won't get any support or encouragement from parents at all
a note from parents indicating when they have been involved seems sensible.

OrmIrian · 02/10/2008 10:29

Depends on what you mean by help. Dictating answers - no. Making sure they understand the question, helping with maths (DD struggles here), and the odd spelling (yes I know that's what a dictionary for but having to look up every other word makes a difficult task much longer), nagging endlessly until it's done, then I will confess. In fact DS#1's project in Yr5 was about 50/50 his and my work - there was no way he was ready to tackle something like that. I know I wasn't the only parent either .

For some children hw looks like a mountain to be climbed and they need a little assistance to get onto the foothills. I do much less than I did when DS#1 was younger - I was over-involved to a huuuge extent then and it did no-one any good.

When you are the parent who has to take a sobbing child into school the next morning because he hasn't done his hw, it tends to put things in a different light.

DS#1 now in secondary has to organise his own hw - he takes the rap if it's not done. The 2 in primary will still get a little help as long as they need it.

LadyPenelope · 02/10/2008 10:40

I'm also in the camp of supporting their learning with homework and to do that I I sit at the table with DD who is 7 while she does it. She asks me questions as she goes and I encourage her. It takes about an hour to do it each week and it's more fun for her if I'm close by (mumsnetting - ) I don't think homework is intended as a test ... it's another opportunity for them to practise something they are doing at school.

When she needs some help I'll ask her questions, give her examples etc to help her work it out. If she spells something wrong, I'll ask her to look at it again and she'll either look it up in the dictionary or I'll help her work out the spelling.

Also I find sitting with her while she does it gives me a good sense of what she understands and what they are working on. So when they did money last year I found out it hadn't quite clicked for her and we did a bit of practice to help it stick.

NotCod · 02/10/2008 10:42

because ds1 is up to ears in 11plus stuff

OrmIrian · 02/10/2008 10:42

And I voted to ban hw for 4-11s btw. I hate it and the DCs hate it. Their school lives would be so much happier without it.

cutekids · 02/10/2008 10:44

me too!!!

LadyPenelope · 02/10/2008 10:45

Just remembered that I did help quite a bit when she was given the first piece of research to do on the internet - researching her favourite famous person. She was 6 at the time so I assume school expected us to help.

Admit I steered her away from an obvious modern celebrity (think it was Hannah Montana that she wanted to do!) to a famous person from history. I came up with some famous historical people in areas she's interested in and told her a bit about them - ballet dancers, musicians, artists and then showed her how to use google, print stuff out, read it with her and helped her summarise the points in the own words.

I didn't do it for her but she would not have been able to do it all without me. But I reckoned it was mostly about her learning the process and a bit about the person rather than it being all done by her.

On the way she did learn about Leonardo Da Vinci which I reckon is more educational than writing about Hannah Montana even if it is in all her own words!

rubyloopy · 03/10/2008 10:17

Message withdrawn

pigleto · 03/10/2008 10:21

My ds gets livid if I give him the answers while he is doing homework. I can't resist sometimes though, I am such a know-it-all. Maybe it was a one off and they were going out and the homework needed to be done quickly. I think I would rather dictate the homework than have the child get into trouble because I had overprogrammed the weekend.

Flip

1 2