How much supervision is "normal" to give to Yr 8 (DS) re homework?

[Blewitt]

Ds Year 8 is completely hopeless with his homework. I don't think he would do any if I didn't look online and tell him exactly what he has to do every night. He has no idea mentally of what he might have due and more or less all of them seem to take him by surprise. He says he didn't get the sheet, he can't remember doing anything in class associated with what is set etc. What he does do is pretty poor but he seems to get away with it and I'm not about to start doing it for him. I just want to know if this is typical of a Yr 8 boy and will he at any point start to take responsibility himself? I could just do nothing and let him get into trouble and have detentions but they don't really seem to bother him. When I have left him to self manage, nothing gets done.

Would setting him up on a routine help ? Give him a fixed time for homework and play (games/tv/friends), and a special time each day to update you on whatever happens at school ?

Some child who may not work well with ad hoc instructions or are generally careless may work better when given a timetable/schedule with some sticks and carrots.

Sounds similar to my Yr 8 boy. Although he does remember being given sheets/set tasks etc. If I didn't say to him he wouldn't bother doing any of it! I usually say to him "right 6pm lets do the maths HW" etc. He'll do it and Ill be hovering around in the kitchen near him to make sure he does it. He does the bare minimum too!
We have told him he needs to pick up his work come Yr 9 and he has agreed.

no idea what is 'normal', but in my case...

DS1 did everything with no input from me. He hated even discussing homework with me, and always seemed to get everything done on time. Very occasionally he got super stressed if he miscalculated how much time he had and had to rush.

DS2 would tend to put his head in the sand and hope that homework would magically disappear if he didn't think about it. But all I had to do was ask him every few days what he had to do to make sure that he remembered to make a plan. And occasionally help with homework if he was feeling confused. I never actually looked up what homework there was. We'd have a major melt down about once every 6 weeks when he'd completely forget about something until the night before, but he always got stuff done by the deadline.

My DDs are not 'normal', here is my experience:

DD1.
For 3-4 years she would come home, take her bag upstairs, get changed, come back down. I would say 'do you have any homework?' She would reply 'I don't know' and went upstairs to check her planner.
She needed help with anything that wasn't completely straightforward until at least y10, but at least would do it willingly Turns out she has dyspraxia.

DD2 - Comes home, knows pretty accurately what homework she has been set and when it is due. Seems to need at least 24hrs to psyche herself up to doing a piece of h/w. Can do many home-works quite well independently now in y9 (big improvement from y7/8) provided I have 'set it up' for her, but 'research' type needs a lot of help. Generally reluctant to do h/w and leaves it until the w/e if possible. This is partly character and partly because she has SpLD and finds school very tiring.

A routine I am sure would help, it is tricky though for us as evenings are all different and sometimes I am home later than I would like him to start doing it. DH just asks him what he has and he always says nothing so when I get home I have to get him going on it. He refuses to do anything in advance of the night before as he says he needs the pressure of having to hand it in the next day to actually be able to do it at all! My DD is the complete opposite (thank goodness, I could not cope if they were both like this!). He says he will buck up in Yr 9, when he starts GCSE options but I don't actually think he will, homework just doesn't seem to have registered as a part of life for him, as soon as I mention it he goes off in a huff, moans that he goes to school to learn etc etc. I dread bringing it up!
Appreciate there is no normal but just getting a feel if this is what others deal with I suppose!

My DD is yr7 and requires minimal supervision. I'm not sure that's normal either!
I'd err on prompting him to check his own planner rather than you do it for him. He should be doing that himself. Do you have to sign it off weekly?

Ds1 is Y8. He still needs a bit of a prompt to check what homework he has due and to plan / pace bigger pieces. I rarely get involved in the quality, although I do still insists he drafts bigger pieces of writing and allows himself 2 days to work on them. I also help test him when he's been revising.

My year 8 ds is exactly the same. I’m always envious of parents with similar age children that are so much more motivated just to get on with it and those parents never have to get involved at all!

My younger two children in primary school are showing potential to be more independent I think. Especially my youngest. She’s v hardworking and self motivated, so I’m hoping I’ll only have to go through this once!

DD1 is Y10, does it now but still needs a bit of prompting, but all good now. I certainly never help or supervise, and I guess she must complete it to an acceptable standard. Started Y7 being forgetful, or even ignoring the work she could not face (like presentation to class), when we got emails from the teachers we started supervising completion a bit. But the endless discussion of WHY it's needed, and how pointless it is still continues. She has ASD and quite bad short-term memory so if it's not written down she'll struggle to recall any details. This year is the first year that it's all set online so I can actually check it, and not have to rely on a few notes in her planner.

DD2 is only Y6, usually does the hw on the day is it set (only two pieces a week for them, and usually a week to complete it). However I am not allowed to ever see or read it, although we do occasionally discuss the work she has to complete.

Minimal supervision here too for a few years and he's now in Y9. He has fairly good study habits so far but next year will require a fair bit more work. I know how lucky this is from previous experience .

Thanks for responses, seems like this can be expected for some kids this age still and hopefully he will start to take some responsibility before he leaves school!. At least with GCSE subjects he will have an interest in some of work hopefully which might help! No more art analyses to be done for example.

DD is in Y7 and we found this works best:

We have a huge monthly wall calendar where DD puts which homework is due when, she stehen ticks off when she finished it.

It means she can see what is left undone when she adds more stuff on and learnd fast that it helps doing it when set, not the night before it is due together with 3 other pieces.

We also have to sign her planner and double check that homework is done and ticked off as in some cases she has pieces due in 10 days time (2 weeks timetable and different teacher per subject).

I do check research and essay pieces as DD got Into the habit of doing just the minimum she got away with. Talking about what has to be included or why things can be written more clearly helped her also understanding things better.

I don't know what's normal or not, but we don't interfere at all with the homework of out Y8 DS. His school doesn't have any online resources or any communication with parents, so I couldn't help him even if I wanted 🤣

Thankfully, ds's school use an online portal so you can see what is due and when, plus often the teachers attach the worksheet/ revision guide etc.
DS needs nagging to check it, and left to his own devices would leave it all till the night before, but now has to do everything as it comes in. We check his homework as he is inclined to do the very minimum

We’ve chosen not to get too involved as I think at this age it’s important to learn to deal with this yourself. Structure time, have a homework timetable, do a weekly plan etc are all things that has to be learnt during these years, or they’ll struggle once they’re older and don’t have the tools.

If they fail now. The worst they can get is detention, but it doesn’t really matter. Later on, if they don’t know how to study - a lot more is at stake.

DS1 makes a plan every Sunday of which subjects to focus on each day, then every day after school he double checks it against the homework given that day. He’s done the same for years. Sometimes he’s tired and he opts for chill time instead, and then he either doesn’t do that homework or he catches up later. Either way, it’s up to him.

DS2 is younger but copying his brother and we’ve backed off there too.

It seems to work. They both get top grades, and of course we help if they ask. But it’s always up to them to ask.

The school doesn’t like the parents helping too much, hence all homework is only communicated to the children.

If it's all online, and he doesn't have a planner that he writes things down in, then I think reluctant's calendar idea, or something similar, would be useful for him. You can look at that day's new HW online with him, add it to the calendar, and he can see what needs to be done next. Might make it a bit more concrete for him?

Why can't these children organise their own homework? I did and so did my children and grandchildren. Are the younger generation too dependent on their parents to organise their lives?

I found that the swap from virtually no homework in primary to homework every day for every subject is a huge step and in the beginning lots of children struggle to learn to organise themselves. There is no problem with helping setting up a system which works for each child. Not all are born organisers, I only know of one but she has inherited the OCD from her mum and can only cope with a huge organisational set up.

We are already scaling down a lot, DD learned to deal with it, the system we came up with seems to be working.

eddie Well, lucky you.

I was well able to organise myself, I am a naturally organised person.
Some kids, especially those who didn't get much homework at primary, need help scaffolding and learning what is required.

As it turns out my DD1 has dyspraxia, which in her case also means she can't organise her way out of a paper bag. She is post-school now and can just about manage for day-to-day stuff but still gets screwed by anything unusual.

Ditto, Timestwo.
DS is in year 8 and perfectly able to organise himself, his belongings, his homework, revision etc. We also know that if he slacks off and gets into trouble at school, he's able to understand it's cause and effect.

DD, on the other hand, just doesn't have the ability, even in year 10, to manage her studies without support. It's not a lack of backbone or moral fibre, nor is she a shirker or a snowflake, and neither are we helicopter parents. She has ADHD, with executive functioning issues.
Asking why these children can't organise their own homework is the same as asking why someone in a wheelchair can't get up out of it and walk.

I wasn't commenting on children who have organisational problems. It's just that some parents seem to feel that they must manage every aspect of their children's lives.

My parents didn't involve themselves with my homework at all, other than my mother occasionally asking whether I had any.
Did it make me independent? Possibly, although I don't think the idea that leaving children to sink or swim automatically and magically means they can find the where with all to swim.
Has it made me leave my own children to it? No, because my lasting impression of my parents non-involvement is that they weren't interested/couldn't be bothered to support me.

Not sure what is normal, but my DS is year 8 and has minimal input from me. He has the online homework thing that others have mentioned.

DS was like this in year 8. I would ask if he had homework and he would say no. I would then check his online homework ( luckily parents have access and I have an app on my phone for it) and thee was often something he had missed.
He wasn't doing to deliberately at all as he would do it if I reminded him without much trouble. He does have a diagnosis of ASD/ ADHD.

He is in year 9 now and just since Christmas, DH and I are less involved. He seems to now be doing his homework without much prompting and usually has done all he needs to when we occasionally check. His needs mean that he has a spare 4hrs a week in school though as he misses a couple of lessons that he was not coping with so quite a bit gets done then which is great.

This sounds exactly like my Y8 DS. So yes, I check online and chivvy him along, don't allow him to leave it till the last minute etc. What I tend NOT to do is read what he's done - don't know whether I should or not. If I did, I'm sure it would mean me offering 'helpful suggestions', critiquing his spelling, grammar etc and undoubtedly causing major kerfuffle. And I tend to think the teachers need to know if he's not got the point, or can't do this particular thing. But I do worry that I should do more checking.
Eddiemairswife - I clearly remember my mum writing my first essay at secondary school more than 40 years ago because I'd never had to do it at primary and didn't know where to start. I was OK at school in the end but sometimes it's important to give a lot of support just to get the ball rolling.