Ds has poor concentration, so his paed has just suggested I pay him to do his homework and then he can save up for an xbox

[MrsMorgan]

Ds was pretty non comittal until he heard the word xbox.

Basically the idea is, that if he does his homework without fuss, and concentrates properly then he gets 10p. Although generally, I do not agree with paying children to do their homework, I am willing to try it.

I am waiting though until ds realises that 10p a week is not going to get him an xbox for a very very long time, because then all hell will break loose and he will think I have folled him.

we do homework in the morning - straight after breakfast but only for about ten mins. as our ds concentrates better after a good night's sleep. I appreciate time is short in the morn but he does get up early

Absolutelyagree with you Lisa. Am onto DS3 now 8 and neither 1 nor 2 were up to homework after school until secondary level. morning if you can fit it into the routine is so much less stressful. mine does spellings or tables or whatever at the kitchen table while i do the lunchbox. I don't believe its anything to do with a problem with concentration, they've been at school all day the last thing they want to do when they get home is sit down and do more....

I don't know how kids in the private system who seem to get so much more homework cope.....

DS1 in Yr2 has possible dyslexia and gets a bit wound up about homework. I break it up into smaller chunks. If he has 10 sentences to write we do 2 or 3 a night. Reading gets done in the morning. We have magnetic letters to practice spellings on the fridge. We also swap between tasks i.e. one section of the maths, then some sentences, followed by recorder practice etc to break things up.
I explain to him why the homework is important. How is your DS1's confidence? I find mine has quite poor confidence because he finds reading a challenge so he gets stroppy over homework because he finds it harder work than most kids just to read the words.

I am a bit about bribery for homework. At some point even that won't work and then the problem may be much worse.

Does he come home and do homework right away?

I find that DD is better if I let her run around the garden and get rid of some excess energy first. Or we go for a walk/swimming/to park.

Thanks again for all of the advice, I am going to read through the thread again in a mo.
I spoke to ds when he got home, and we agreed that he would save for something more obtainable like a star wars figure.

However, his first attempt this evening of doing his literacy homework and after 3 warnings he ended up with no money. He fidgetted so much that he fell off the chair, broke his pencil by stabbing the wall,generally just didn't listen and kept asking me if we were finnished yet.

This homework was not hard, as he had already done the basis of it, in the workshop I did with him last week. All he had to do was read back through the ideas sheet and then copy the ideas into sentences.

He has agreed to try harder next time, so we will see.

Custy - I have to say that this would be my normal tactic because as far as I am concerned it is non negotiable, but with ds that just won't work.

I'm very very about paying for homework. I teach this age group. I would never in a million years suggest this strategy for any child.

I agree star, it wouldn't be the way I would go about it at all, but I am prepared to try it so that they can't say I didn't tbh.

The more I watch him the more I think it is a case of him not being able to sit still and concentrate and not him just not wanting to.

But you're not going to be able to figure out if it's just him not wanting to even if he does get paid for it.
The problem is, that if you do try it out, then is he going to expect money for doing homework or other things he doesn't want to do in the future?

Well that was one of the reasons that I wasn't sure about it, but tbh from tonights performance, I can't see it working anyway.

You know it really winds me up that small kids are made to feel like they are failing because they can't concentrate. It's a really common "problem".
Both my brothers suffered from it - my Mum despaired but flash forward one is an Operations Director for a Multi-National Company and the other runs his own, very successful business.
I notice with my own ds that he is more switched on this Year (year 2) but that is down to him being ready. For the past two years I've been made to feel enormous anxiety from teachers who complained at every turn that his concentration was rubbish - I think it just irritated the hell of them, I'm sure it's hard to teach someone who would really rather be anywhere else but their classroom - and that's what he did, he went elsewhere in his head.
Oh to live in a country where boys could start school at aged 7.

Has anyone got anything to say about too much tv=lack of concentration? Dd's teachers have mentioned this as apossible reason for dd's poor concentration levels.

I know that TV makes my children into zombies. I also know that not being able to concentrate for long on something you don't want to do is pretty typical of humans generally, never mind 7 year old boys.

Why do we need to pathologize quite normal child behaviour? It's a rare child who says "Oh wonderful, homework! Mummy, can I get on with it straight away - I love learning lists of spelling words!"

All I can say is that we restricted TV, computer games, radio noise, our house is quiet - we did everything possble to help ds's concentration levels but he just wasn't ready - there are no quick fixes and going on about it really doesn't help, it just makes parents anxious.

Ah yes, the "your child just won't sit still and focus" complaint!!! I got that over and over and over again. Funnily enough, he's perfectly able to sit still and concentrate when he's reading a good book or listening to me read a good book or at family meals where we have interesting conversations, or when my father is talking about science to him, or when my mother is teaching him how to cook. I just felt like telling the teachers, "well maybe if your lesson was a little more interesting or a little more complex, he wouldn't be bored and start fidgeting."

Speaking from the POV of a teacher here, (my own is just a year old and I haven't had the joy of being a parent of a school aged child yet!)
I have had conferences with parents who ask repeatedly, "but does s/he sit and listen nicely? Is s/he focused? Can s/he concentrate?" I'm thinking, well, at this age, they all "sit" and "focus" for an appropriate amount of time for this age level. One parent came to me so worried that her DS didn't focus enough at home so he must not be focused at school. I don't see any problem tbh...
disclaimer: I'm not teaching in a British school. Kids aren't expected to sit and concentrate for too long.

I think this might be a short term fix that causes a long term problem. I would be asking the paed for suggestions on improving concentration without offering brigbes. As they get older children need to get into the habit of doing homework for themselves/their interest rather than for you or for a reward. If you are starting this road at 7 what are you going to be offering when he gets to 14/15?

Ds is seeing a community paed later this week because of concentration/listening issues so it will be interesting to see what they say.

brigbes? think I mean 'bribes'!

Also a bit about the suggestion. However if the homework is only supposed to take 15 minutes then that is the maximum I'd make him do, completed or not. Hwoever the teacher should be giving him work that is achieveable for him in the specified time or he will feel constantly defeated.

Can you use an eggtimer so he gets used to how long it feels to work for that length of time. Do 3 5 minute bursts to start with if it helps, and make sure he gets to drink water and move around in between. For every 5 minutes he works he gets 5 minutes on ds after dinner.

ds is dyspraxic and cannot sit still, he will swivel on a chair or get easily distracted partly because his body gets tired easily having to focus on sitting still etc. There are sensory techniques to fool the body into sitting still with less effort, a rubbery cushion (ie Move n Sit) or having blue tak or a squeezy ball to fiddle with in his non- pencil hand while he works for example. If he can sit more comfortably it will help his posture and that in turn will help his handwriting. A writing slope may help too (Ikea do a cheap one). Maybe school has access to such resources ?

Is bribery so different from the much-vaunted star chart approach, which also means you end up earning a treat?

Haven't used it much myself, but my parents did bribe me with an offer of a recording of Carmen if I read the novel in French (thus making me the only child in the school who learnt the passe simple before the present tense). It did not mean that they had to bribe me to do everything else in life: they were perfectly capable of making it clear that this was a one off. (though I believe I have an outstanding offer on Faust, if I ever get round to brushing up my German...)

I never believed much in those slippery slope/binding a rod for your own back ideas: it becomes a slippery slope if you let it, not because it has to; by the time he is 15 he may well be doing his homework for his own sake

dd had to be hounded with threats to do her at age 7- at age 13 she does it because she wants to go to university

But as seeker said, the original idea of 10 p to buy an Xbox was bad, as it was basically cheating him: star wars figure sounds better.

I'm just thinking of the boys I heard on the train in the summer who had been offered between £100 and £500 per GCSE by their parents!

I don't like star charts either. I agree, cory, that you can use a reward as a one-off, but paying consistently for homework even if it's just for a few weeks... not so sure it's worth that.