So do you rewrite your dc's homework ?!

[LIZS]

Maybe not quite, but a couple of things dc have had to do recently have made me wonder about how much parental "input" is expected or justifiable in "homework".

For example dd was asked to submit a poem for a competiton last week which she had largely written by herself in a club by the time she came home with the task. It was fine, but I could have spent time with her going through line by line and refining it - and am sure other parents did. In the past other kids' work has had fancy structure such as with initial letters of lines reading the subject downwards, layout of a rather more sophisticated nature than a 7yr old might naturally produce alone, dvd presentations etc . I think teachers largely see through it this but will anyone admit to having done so for their dc !

i never do this. ever. poss i am v mean as certainly a lot of parents at the dcs school seem to.

at easter hat competition head actually said to me quietly how nice it was that my kids had very obviously made their own (as was the aim of the comp) as oppose to the designer bonnets being paraded. ok, my dcs looked quite poo compared to these creations but i would far far rather they did it themselves, how are they suppose to learn otherwise?

plus i am far too lazy busy

erm, no

I never help with homework "afterwards". If they struggle starting their homework, or ask for some help in planning it or whatever, I'm happy to offer some assistance (though this is fairly rare tbh). But I don't go through and check/amend it afterwards.

I try and help on a more general level (ie telling DS1 age 7 not to split wo
rds )

Surely if you help with h/w you're not doing the child any favours in the long term?

(Although do agree with mayor that you have to be prepared to let your DC's creations look a bit rubbish compared to the others!)

obviously that should have read grin not gin
freudian slip mebbe?!

Nope. I have been known to act as a scribe to ds who has a slight disability - writing a lot hurts his wrists. But I would absolutely put down what he said, and if it's spelling then he has to do it on his own.

I don't rewrite DS1's homework, but I do help him with it. For example, if he came home with the project of writing a poem, I'd help him structure his thoughts and organise his ideas prior to writing them down. Then I'd leave him to complete the assignment on his own. I don't think I'm doing him a disservice by doing this - I am not coming up with ideas or writing the poem, just facilitating him in a project which he has little previous experience doing.

Dd1 does all her own work. I will help point her in the direction of the right answer, but she does all the work herself.

Goodness, definitely not. We can always tell when parents have done homework for children - especially embarassing for parents of Y1 children when they have done it incorrectly!
The aim is for parents to give verbal assistance, or play the game with them if that is what the homework is, but def. have the child do it - warts and all!

AH the Easter Bonnet competition! Mayornaze How well I remember that when my DDs were in infant school!

Fortunately the works of art involving children wearing intricately woven nests containing hand knitted chickes and eggs decorated in the fashion of Faberge were dismissed by the sensible teachers at their school and DDs home made effort actually won one year.

I never change homework but I do read it through and encourage the DDs to correct spellings and punctuation in a different coloured pen so the teachers can see what the original was like.

I don't see the point of assisting too much otherwise the teachers can't guage whether or not the child could cope with hw at that level. I tend to be involved at the beginning to make sure DS1 knows what he is doing. I also remind him to check if any letters or numbers are backwards (suspected mild dyslexia).

DS1's school have now issued strict guidelines on the amount of parental input allowed in harvest boxes, easter thingies etc. as some were clearly untouched by a child's hand

I find this really hard as dd is a desperate perfectionist, and hassles me mercilessly to tell her whether she has spelt things right. She always writes things out on scrap first and then copies them - her choice, she can't bear to write straight on the sheet in case its wrong. We have many arguments over my refusing on the grounds that her teacher wants to know whether she can spell a word, not whether I can!

I don't redo anything. I have sometimes written a "translation" below so that the teacher can tell what DS was going on about - his ideas are often far ahead of his spelling/handwriting.

Today he was supposed to write instructions and chose to explain quite a complicated origami pattern. I changed nothing, but encouraged him to staple on an example of the finished model - so the teacher can know what he actually meant.

I did make an Easter bonnet once . In my defence, we had one day's notice and we were extremely busy on that one day so I had to make it when DS was in bed. I thought it was better he had A hat than nothing at all - he would have been devastated to be without. I would have been MORTIFIED if he had won something though.

interesting replies ! It is the only child and pfb's whose parents seem particularly competitive. What irks me are the number of times what is evidently not a solo effort does get rewarded although now they are older it does appear to be less and more often classwork is praised.

I think I'm a bit of a perfectionist so have to resist any urges to prompt and correct, tempting though it might be. It is also frustrating when you know how much better the work could have been had you gone through it one to one, brainstorming ideas and vocab, as might be the case with tutor .

oh fgs, mine's an only, we are normal you know

If I dont stand over my son and keep the scheduler myself he would be in a real state he is 12. We keep saying its your homework not our problem but always relent and sit with him throughout otherwise he is happy to leave it at one line answers. Expect I will have to bite the bullet soon and let him get some detention hits perhaps then he will focus more

no I don't

but was annoyed by teacher writing 'did you do this all on your own' on ds's homework as if implying we must have helped him!

I meant of those in her class, subsequent children don't seem to receive the same level of input.

No. Never helped with DCs beyond letting them read to me.
If DS1 struggled to understand a homework I would write that in his contact book so that the teacher knew that he had not simply ignored it.
When he did it badly it meant he needed more help or he needed to be punished. The school are the people to do both of those things and if they need my imput re discipline then they let me know and i deal with it.