10 Ways Parents Can Help Their Children With Homework

In a country where many of the parents have to work over the 40 hours, is hard to imagine what they are doing when kids come back from school, and nobody more than a relative or a nanny is there to offer help. Homework is valuable and the involvement by parents can either have a positive or a negative impact in the process of learning.

Pediatrician Vicent Ianelli, has an article about how parents may help with homework in a positive manner. These are the 10 Steps of How to Deal With Homework for Kids attending Elementary school:

1. Help children with time management: Establish a set time each day for doing homework. Don't allow your child to leave his assignments until just before bedtime. Try to use weekend morning or afternoon for working on big projects.

2. Be positive about homework: Speak to your child how important school is. The attitude you transmit about homework will be what your kid acquires.

3. While child does homework, you too have to do it: Goal is show your child that the skills they are learning are related to things you do as an adult. So, if your child is writing, you write too.

4. If help is asked, provide guidance, no answers: Let your child do his walk. Too much help teaches your kid that when the going gets rough, someone will do the homework for him/her.

5. If teacher asks for involvement, do it: Show the teacher you are interested in your family education. It also shows to your child that school and home are a team.

6. Stay away when the homework is meant to be done by your child alone: Homework is set to develop independent, lifelong learning skills. Those positive effects will be prevented if too much parent involvement is detected.

7. Establish differences between hard and easy homework: Once he learns how to differentiate hard from easy. Make him do the hard work first. So, he can be most alert when facing challenging activities. Easy material will seem to go fast when fatigue begins to set in.

8. Watch for signs of failure or fatigue: There are situations when your child fatigues quickly and becomes an act of cruelty for some. Let her take short breaks is you see she is not keeping her mind on the assignment.

9. Reward progress in homework: Working hard and successfully completing an assignment should be rewarded. Celebrate such success with pizza, a walk, any trip, etc. Reinforce positive effort.

10. Stay informed. Keep in touch with your child's teacher. Nowadays is easily to drop an e-mail and ask about your child. Some school now allow parents to check your child progress online such as PowerSchool. Make sure you know the purpose of homework and the class rules and contracts.

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