No matter how boring your child finds their homework, it’s important. Homework teaches children much more than just the concept they’re working on. It helps them hone their time management skills, carefully think about what they’re studying, improve their bond with parents, and teaches them the importance of consistency in life.
But all of these benefits will go down the drain if your child isn’t motivated enough and considers homework as just another chore.
So in this article, we’ll discuss how you, as a parent, can motivate your child to take their homework seriously. This is important if you want your child to reap the benefits of homework!
1. Be on your child’s team.
A lot of parents put the entire burden of homework on their child. They consider homework as their child’s “job”, which is an easy way to make children feel stressed out about it. If homework causes anxiety in your child, they’ll do everything they can to avoid it. And even if they get down to it, they’ll do it half-heartedly, reducing its effectiveness.
So the first step when trying to motivate your child to do their homework is to make them realize that you are on their team (and that they don’t have to do it alone).
Whenever you ask your child to do their homework, say “Let’s complete homework” instead of “Go do your homework”. If your child receives negative feedback on an assignment, say “We will do better next time” instead of something like “You can do better.”
Once your child realizes that you’re ready to hold their hand through their assignments, it’s going to be very easy to implement the rest of the ideas in this article.
However, it’s important not to do your child’s homework for them (which is another mistake many parents make). Remember, one goal of homework is to encourage your child to think — if you do their homework for them, they won’t learn and grow. So make sure you’re there to guide, motivate, and facilitate them only.
Going great lengths to solve your child’s problems (homework and others) is not good for their confidence too. Here’s a useful post by Child Mind Institute on raising confident kids.
2. Teach your child to create a timetable.
Organization is the key to academic success. And timetables are one of the easiest ways to stay organized when it comes to homework. Distractions are a major reason why it’s so difficult to get some children to complete their homework. So if you can teach your child to set boundaries between play and academics, they’ll find it much easier to find the time and motivation for homework.
You can begin by creating a timetable for them. But make sure to consider their opinion when doing so, otherwise they won’t really follow it. Some kids like to study in the afternoon; others prefer the quiet hours of the night. The timetable you create should align with your child’s preferences.
At first, it will take a lot of reminders and requests to ensure your child follows the timetable. But once they realize the power of timetables, they’ll start creating it for themselves.
This will not only help them with homework now, but it will also set them up for success in their professional careers later, where organization is key. It helps if you have the habit of staying organized and creating schedules, which your child can pick up. Check out these organizational tools to stay on top of things.
3. Make sure your child has the right content to work with.
Not having access to the right homework materials might be one reason why your child has abandoned it. So it’s important to ensure they have access to the material required for an assignment.
You must keep in mind that teachers generally explain the requirements for an assignment before handing it out. If your child tells you otherwise, it’s probably not true. You can confirm this by checking out the school’s LMS, as more and more schools now publish reading lists and reference material online.
If a school doesn’t publish this information online, you can encourage your child to ask their teachers about where they can find relevant material.
Once you get this information, you can check out your local library for the required material. But if you can’t afford to spend hours wading through titles after titles at the library, you can check out these online libraries for kids.
For more information about finding the right content for homework, check out this blog post by Cluey Learning.
4. Don’t use homework as punishment.
It’s not uncommon to hear parents yell “Go do your homework!” when they’re angry at their kids. If you want your child to stay motivated about homework, you must stay away from this behavior. Because at a subconscious level, it makes children think their homework is some kind of a punishment. If your child starts believing that, you can forget about motivating them to do their homework.
You must also not use “no homework” as a reward, which sends the same message at a subconscious level — that homework is somehow a punishment.
If you want to motivate your child to do their homework, you must ensure they think of it as a fun, beneficial, and educational activity, not a punishment.
5. Ensure your child doesn’t have learning difficulties.
If your child has a learning disorder, it’s going to be very hard to motivate them to do their homework (because it’s tricky for them, they’re not misbehaving).
One of the most important learning disorders you should be aware of is specific learning disorder, where a child fails to acquire age-appropriate academic skills (such as reading, spelling, writing, or mathematical reasoning). It’s relatively common — up to 5-15% of the American school-age population is thought to have it.
Two common types of specific learning disorders are dyslexia — where a child faces difficulty in processing words and understanding written text — and dyscalculia — where a child struggles with math.
Specific learning disorder (SLD) is difficult to pick up because the child doesn’t struggle in all other areas of learning. If your child struggles with homework related to one particular subject (for e.g. math or English language), they may have SLD.
Keep in mind that SLD is a medical diagnosis and requires treatment. Children with the disorder need individualized learning programs and regular school psychology consultations. You can find more about specific learning disorder here.
6. Ensure your child takes breaks.
Studying for hours at a time kills both motivation and energy. If your child has the habit of studying for long periods without breaks, this might be one reason why their homework motivation is dwindling as they progress through the year.
So make sure to teach your child the importance of taking breaks. While break frequency and length is different for everyone, some people recommend taking a break after every 30 minutes of work. It’s a good idea to teach your child the use of a timer to time the breaks, otherwise they could turn into long, unchecked periods of procrastination.
7. Encourage an overall healthy lifestyle.
You can do all you want but your child won’t feel motivated to do their homework unless they’re healthy physically and mentally.
So you must ensure they have an overall healthy lifestyle — which doesn’t have to be expensive — if you want them to excel academically. Encourage your child to:
- Manage stress effectively
- Exercise regularly
- Eat a balanced, healthy diet
- Participate in extracurricular activities
- Play a sports
- Regulate their emotions properly