not doing year 7 homework

[lu9months]

My ds is at a selective secondary and is meant to have an hours homework a night, however he often says he has nothing, and when he does, he only spends 10-15 mins on it. The school say he needs to put more effort in , but he seems to think he's fine. He gets cross if I nag him, but I'm worried he isn't achieving what he could, or realising what's involved. Any thoughts on how to help him ? I don't want to keep falling out with him.

unbearably rather.

thanks for that.
You do sound smug though - who knows your daughter might have been like that anyway?

urbancupcake At what point do you allow your children to take responsiblity for quality assurance? Is being spoonfed to get high GCSEs really in the child's interest.

Surely a parents' responsiblity is to feed, clothe and house the child. A secondary school child should be provided with a warm, well lit and clean place to do their homework. The rest is up to them.

When you have more than one child you realise that prehaps nature has a greater role than what you do as a parent.

Is being spoonfed to get high GCSEs really in the child's interest
I do not think so, after her GCSEs DD is planning to go on to an access to a trade course at a residential FE college, and i will not be anywhere near. What then?
besides my 32 old brother who was helicoptered right thro to getting a masters now lives like a troll in his parent's basement.....

....and he was very 'bright'

@reallytired: Please refer to earlier posts where I stated year 7 was a lot more hands on and now mid way year 8 the need to be so is much less. The reason why is simply because dd's self checking has improved immensely and I suspect, that is because a work ethic has been established. I think someone else mentioned that by year 9 they become more self sufficient and need you less. In answer to your question therefore, with regard to at what what point do you let go? I suspect only nature can answer that as probably different for each child.

@Nigella: How can you say I sound smug when one of my posts clearly stated the same does not apply to Art, DT and music? In fact, despite my and dd's music teacher's pleading she refused to continue with playing the violin in secondary and in true helicopter style I allowed her to drop it. Why? As there was simply no point having her do something if she wasn't enjoying it. Moreover, I have another post on here where I'm asking for advice on French as her scores had dropped from a consistent ten out of ten to three or four weeks of seven's out of ten. Once again, I suspect it makes me a helicopter parent to notice the drop and to see what I can implement at home to get her grades back up again. MN's sent a few links and advice which I will take on board. That's how I know about CGP books, from advice on this site and it helped bucket loads. Was dd already like that? Goes back to nature versus nurture I guess which is another argument for another day. Earlier post also mentioned that I spend as much time on outside activities as I do education to keep it fun and balanced but I guess for some (not you) it's more exciting to ignore those parts.

oh I am sure we all just do our best and what we think is right at the time, cupcake. my daughter is so far from academic that I will just be delighted when she gains a few GCSEs and gets a college place and apprenticeship.

@reallytired: the other thing to mention, if you're just signing off work as, 'done,' how on earth do you know that teachers standards?

I remember my sister saying in the school she first went to she was an A student. She then transferred to another school where all of a sudden she started getting B's and C's. When she asked the teacher why, they said it was because of her poor grammar. Now don't quote me on this, but I remember reading something that said up until recently grammar did not feature as part of the marking system and because of that, it wasn't particularly necessary for teachers to be that great at it themselves. I could have this wrong, but just remember reading something about it around a year ago. If your child therefore, has a teacher who was prepared to let it drop, how would you know as a parent that it may be something you have to support the child with separately?

I was more hands on when ds was in year 3 and I have gradually tried to back off with homework as he went up primary. Last year ds was quite good about doing homework.

This year I think ds has decided to let his hair down after the pressure of year 6 SATs. Much to my horror it seems that he has decided to take a year off doing any work in year 7.

Dd is in reception in an inadequate school. I feel that supporting her with her education is a greater priority. I don't trust the school to teach her how to read or basic numeracy.

@Nigella: I hear that. I was defo the more creative and so is her dad. The downside with the school system I think is that it doesn't celebrate the creatives as much as the academics. Not quite sure where my dd get's it from. My sister perhaps, not sure.

"@reallytired: the other thing to mention, if you're just signing off work as, 'done,' how on earth do you know that teachers standards"

I don't sign the work off. I haven't seen ds' homework diary in weeks. When I do, its always blank.

Ds goes to school and its up to the teacher to make the requirements of the task clear in the lessons. If ds has not understood something then the teacher will find out when he has not got the homework right. Getting a homework completely wrong can be a constructive experience if the teacher gives good feedback. Learing from mistakes is an important part of education.

@reallytired: I was always really concerned about the transition from primary to secondary, from a few topics each week to three times as much a day. Prior to state school though dd was at a private where they were used to getting homework everyday. This changed to twice a week at the state. And so I kept up the daily homework with her, even if it was just a small amount like 10/15 mins a day, so it wouldn't come as a huge shock. It wasn't too difficult to implement either as her school was useless at SAT's prep or anything else for that matter, therefore she wasn't burnt out.

I think your ds is just taking a bit of time out especially if he was more on it before, it's clearly in him and maybe he's just mentally exhausted. I've heard they don't lose much in the first year anyway. With regard to your dd and her reading and numeracy, don't blame you to take the bull by the horns. I used to volunteer and help out with the reading sessions in my dd's primary school. It was heartbreaking to see the massive difference in ability in the same class. I'm no expert but often wondered if the difference was those who read at home versus those just reliant on the teacher. I really don't know, but the gap was huge and really sad at times.

But hey, like Nigella said, we're all doing the best we can with the resources we have.

"I don't sign the work off. I haven't seen ds' homework diary in weeks. When I do, its always blank."

How comes??? Parents have to sign off for each subject daily in our school or child gets a detention.

"Getting a homework completely wrong can be a constructive experience if the teacher gives good feedback. Learing from mistakes is an important part of education."

Couldn't agree more. Had that with french. There were a few weeks of scores dropping and so I looked into what I could do to help support the situation. Sometimes a teacher's teaching method may not be conducive with your child's learning method.

Your child may be a kinesthetic leaner for example and may go blank with having a teacher just droning on and on about a subject at the front of the class. Maybe that teacher is auditory and they themselves learn better that way whereas your child, may learn better with experiments, or be more visual and need pictures. No, if my child is struggling in something, I will try and find another way of getting them to understand the same thing. Which is why I adore CGP books, they're fun and take a lighthearted approach to maths. A teacher has sometimes over 30 children to teach, and so how can you always be sure (although dd's current teachers are great) that they like you, will take the time give the individual attention your child may need?

I support my Y7 child quite a lot with organisation and homework time management and I sometimes insist that he redoes stuff that otherwise he would be a bit lazy with - using a ruler for lines, checking spellings etc., having a go at any optional extension questions and so on (not just ignoring them because they're optional and he wants to get straight back to a game!). We have to sign homework diaries regularly too here.

One reason I do this is that I want the school's baseline judgement of his academic ability as a new Y7 child to be based on the actual work he does, not to have his natural abilities obscured by problems caused, at this stage, only by bad organisation and forgetfulness. In time I will pull back more from guiding him with the organisational stuff but at first it's appropriate that he has a bit of help.

Chucking a child into the deep end of the organisational (and motivational) swimming pool and hoping that they'll just learn to swim might work well for some kids but won't work for all. Some of them will just sink if it's done that way, and just need the letting go to happen at a more gradual pace. I think perhaps it's parents of the kids who swim in that situation who sometimes sneer at other people and call any kind of help greater than they themselves give 'helicopter parenting'.

urbancupcake....good point about the type of learner. You know I don't know what kind of learner my DS is and I have done a level 3 TA qualification in order to be able to help my children more

And although you are making some good points, your posts are coming over a teeny bit smug tbf. Not all children love learning like your DD and I wonder if you would be quite so upbeat when dealing with a suspected AS summer born DS! My DD is the polar opposite of DS1 and has to be told to have the night off from learning; she was rooting through the scrap paper box and bringing home work from older year groups and telling us it was her homework fgs! And DS2 is somewhere in the middle (autumn born so ahead of the game by all accounts)

Is your DD at private or state school as I think that's where the difference lies? We have to be aware of the homework, help where we can and sign in their planner once a week to say we taking cognisance of the home/school agreement; but we don't sign off each individual piece of work. This is at a high achieving, over subscribed state comp.

Parents have to sign off for each subject daily in our school or child gets a detention.

Wow, that must be some private/elite school thing. We sign off once a week just once for everything, merely to say that we have "seen" the planner, not that we are supposed to do anything with whatever info is in there. I simply don't have it in me to try to make them have a work ethic.

"my dd is tops in school, loves education to the Max and is adored by all her teachers"

wow, cool, mine too. Only she signs the planner for me. I have nothing to do with her homework really.

If schools had well-designed online homework diaries that were easy to log into, printable and accurate this would really help. And at our comprehensive I give my kids more homework than the school does!

Iought your help sounds perfect, and will help DS to hold his own. Lots of other parents will be doing the same.

Mine signs too lljkk, she thinks having to get a signature is patronising, and I agree. We have had this system for four years. It only works because she is conscientious though.

The school has an online homework system called Edmodo. All the teachers upload the homework and when it has to be done by. Parents have their own login and can check what needs to be done and what messages have been sent to their child.

Can I just say thankyou for this discussion. Good to know I'm not the only one wishing I could take refuge in the garden shed, but knowing I have to somehow help them learn how to be independent and want to do their best when it clearly doesn't come naturally.