School is back in full swing. For some, the three most daunting words to a young kid can be “Back to School”. Summertime is over and parents have more to manage on a daily basis, juggling work schedules, sports for the kids, and daily household responsibilities.
Helping your child have a successful school year is a top priority for all parents, and the homework load that students have can be overwhelming to both parents and children at times. In today’s world, children need to build time management skills while maintaining a balance between homework, activities, sports, screen time, playing games and rest.
Here are the top tips to help your kid master their homework assignments. This is shared with the aim that you won’t have to end their Fortnite dances or take their iPad away to make them finish their homework. Ideally, they will have the self-discipline to do it themselves 🙂
Set Up a Productive Comfortable Environment
Create a quiet space for him or her to get their work done as efficiently as possible. It can be an office space or set up in their room wherever the least amount of distractions will be. Make sure they have everything that they will need to finish assignments like pencils, markers, tape, glue, paper, etc. Keep all of the supplies necessary for finishing their homework assignments close by.
You want to have everything they might need within arms reach to complete their work as efficiently as possible. The last thing you want is for them to wander away from their assignments looking for supplies like a pencil. Having everything right there in front of them can help them to concentrate and stay focused on the assignment at hand.
Keep Distractions to a Minimum
Everybody gets distracted from time to time, especially in today’s day and age. There are plenty of things that can distract your kid from getting his or her assignments done. Do your best to keep the distractions to a minimum by:
- Keeping the TV off
- Keep music at a low level
- Getting all the legos and toys out of the room
- Trying to keep pets out of the room
- No phones or iPads (unless they are using it to work on homework)
The fewer distractions that are in the room, the more time they will have to focus on their homework.
Help Your Child See the Importance of Their Homework
Every child asks the same question to themselves when they are doing their homework. “When am I going to use this in real life?”
When nobody is able to answer that question for them, your child can lose interest and or possibly confidence. This leads to students failing to finish assignments, as they don’t see the importance in them. Show your kids how important the subjects of Math, English, Science, and History are and how they are applied in real-life scenarios.
Show your child that math is important, because it is in everything that you do and it teaches kids to have the tools to solve problems. English or Language Arts is important because it gives children the ability to deliver comprehensible messages to one another.
Try to help your child realize how important it is to learn History by showing them the consequences of what happens when we don’t learn from history and it repeats itself.
And lastly, Science homework is crucial because it teaches kids how to do research and make their own observations.
Make Sure Your Child Does Their Own Work
You may think that you are doing your child a favor by doing his or her homework for them, but in actuality, you are doing them harm by doing this. You can work with them on the problems just as long as you are not the only one doing it.
It’s best to work on example problems that are similar to the questions they will see on the homework or tests. This way, your kid will be prepared to complete their homework and test problems all on their own. Homework is there to teach students discipline and responsibility.
Check On Your Kid
Stay on top of your child’s progress with all homework assignments and due dates. Keep asking them when things are due, so they don’t have any late work. This will also help them develop a good work ethic.
Attend your student’s parent-teacher conferences and meet-the-teacher nights so you know the teacher’s expectations of your student and this will give you a good idea of what your kid will need to accomplish.
Make the effort to know the due dates of homework assignments, the dates of tests, and due dates of projects. Knowing this helps to ensure that those assignments get done on time. Nobody is perfect and your kid is bound to forget about an assignment, so make sure to stay on top of that to help guide them
Compliment Their Work, Achievements, and Efforts
Encourage your children to do good work, so they have good studying and learning habits ingrained in them at a young age. When your son or daughter gets a good grade, make sure to communicate how proud you are of them.
They may not realize how big a deal those achievements are, and it’s important to build confidence, self-worth, and happiness at an early age.
Allow Small Break Times
Sometimes you won’t be able to help your kid with a certain assignment and there is nothing wrong with that at all. A tutor can be great for helping your child learn specific subjects that they may be struggling on, or that may not be communicated so clearly by the teacher.
Additionally, a tutor can help change things up a bit, as sometimes there is a better communication style that suits your child better.
Have Your Kid’s Do Their Homework as Early as Possible
If you were to ask somebody what is their top weakness, they would probably tell you that it is procrastination. Do not allow your kid to say that they will do a homework assignment later.
The more your kid pushes off getting his or her homework done, the less likely they are to finish it on time. This is why it is crucial to have your kids get their work done as soon as possible, and that way they can play and do whatever it is that they want to do after they have completed their homework assignments.
This will teach them to do things in the proper order.
The Takeaway
The top skills that all successful people have in common are organization, prioritizing tasks, perseverance, and having a strong work ethic. Make sure that they learn to prioritize their time so that they do their homework and study for tests before they would play video games, hang out with friends, or get their chores done.
Teach them that as long as they keep trying their best at the tasks that they are working towards, nothing will be able to stop them. Lastly, if you do all of this, you will be implanting the most important skill of them all and that is a work ethic. They will become someone who puts their nose to the grindstone, pushes hard, and gets things done.
