Re: Facts About Parents Helping With Homework
Mirthe Luria
Parental involvement with homework impacts students in a positive way. One of the most important reasons for parental involvement is that it helps alleviate stress and anxiety if the students are facing challenges with specific skills or topics. Parents have experience and expertise with a variety of subject matter and life experiences to help increase relevance. Parents help their children understand content and make it more meaningful, while also helping them understand things more clearly.
A few other great examples of how to involve parents in homework are conducting experiments, assignments, or project-based learning activities that parents play an active role in. Interviewing parents is a fantastic way to be directly involved in homework and allows the project to be enjoyable. Parents are honored to be interviewed, and these activities create a bond between parents and children. Students will remember these assignments for the rest of their lives.
Parents helping students with homework has a multitude of benefits. Parental involvement and engagement have lifelong benefits and creates a pathway for success. Parents provide autonomy and support, while modeling successful homework study habits.
Homework can have many benefits for young children. It can improve remembering and understanding of schoolwork. Homework can help students develop study skills that will be of value even after they leave school. It can teach them that learning takes place anywhere, not just in the classroom. Homework can benefit children in more general ways as well. It can foster positive character traits such as independence and responsibility. Homework can teach children how to manage time. Homework, if not properly assigned and monitored, can also have negative effects on children. Educators and parents worry that students will grow bored if they are required to spend too much time on schoolwork. Homework can prevent children from taking part in leisure-time and community activities that also teach important life skills. Homework can lead to undesirable character traits if it promotes cheating, either through the copying of assignments or help with homework that goes beyond tutoring.
The kitchen or dining room table is a popular workspace for younger children; they may feel more comfortable being near you, and you can provide encouragement and assistance. Older kids might prefer to retreat to their rooms, but check in periodically and review the homework when it's completed.
If kids need a computer for schoolwork, try to set it up in a common space, not in a bedroom, so you can discourage playing video games, chatting with or emailing friends, or surfing the Internet for fun during study time. Also consider parental controls, available through your Internet service provider (ISP), and software that blocks and filters any inappropriate material. Find out which sites your kids' teachers recommend and bookmark them for easy access.
When it comes to homework, be there to offer support and guidance, answer questions, help interpret assignment instructions, and review the completed work. But resist the urge to provide the right answers or complete assignments.
Focus on helping kids develop the problem-solving skills they'll need to get through this assignment and any others, and offer your encouragement as they do. They'll develop confidence and a love of learning from doing it themselves.
In some cases, kids simply need to learn and practice better study habits. Be sure your kids are writing down assignments correctly and encourage them to keep a daily homework notebook, which can help both kids and parents know exactly what assignments are due and when. If a particular assignment is giving your child more trouble than others, send a note to the teacher pointing out the difficulties.
But when a kid consistently has a hard time understanding or completing homework, broader issues (such as learning disabilities, ADHD, or vision or hearing difficulties) might be interfering with academic progress.
First, research finds that homework is associated with higher scores on academic standardized tests for middle and high school students, but not elementary school students. A recent experimental study in Romania found some benefit for a small amount of writing homework in elementary students but not math homework. Yet, interestingly, this positive impact only occurred when students were given a moderate amount of homework (about 20 minutes on average).
Research suggests that homework should not exceed 1.5 to 2.5 hours per night for high school students and no more than one hour per night for middle school students. Homework for elementary school students should be minimal and assigned with the aim of building self-regulation and independent work skills. Any more than this and homework may no longer have a positive impact.
Research finds that homework provides some academic benefit for middle and high school students but is less beneficial for elementary school students. Research suggests that homework should be none or minimal for elementary students, less than one hour per night for middle school students, and less than 1.5 to 2.5 hours for high school students.
Cara Goodwin, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, a mother of three and the founder of Parenting Translator, a nonprofit newsletter that turns scientific research into information that is accurate, relevant and useful for parents.
Daniel Hamlin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The basis for claims that parental help with homework can be bad for students comes from research examining national surveys. These studies find that frequent homework help from parents is associated with lower test scores.
But this finding does not necessarily mean that moms and dads do harm when they help with homework. When children are struggling in school, parents may step in to help more often. That is, frequent homework help from parents might not be the cause of problems, but rather, coincide with them.
In addition, one common concern is that only affluent and highly educated parents have the time and resources to help their children with homework regularly. We find little evidence to support this presumption. On national surveys, low-income and minority families report helping their children with homework frequently. And this was also true in our study.
It is important to point out that our study looked at the frequency of homework help from parents. However, evidence suggests that the quality of homework help also matters. Parents can make a difference through warm encouragement and a positive outlook and by communicating high expectations to children.
The effectiveness of homework help also seems to increase when parents foster independent learning behaviors. When helping with homework, parents should avoid trying to control the process and should also resist the temptation to complete assignments for their kids. Instead, they should let their children figure out answers on their own while offering helpful hints and positive feedback as needed.
Teaching kids to use a Body Double offers a life-long strategy for all aspects of their lives, not just help with homework. For example, I've often encouraged my kids to invite friends over when they are cleaning their rooms. Rather than holding that social time hostage, I use it to productive advantage. Sometimes their friends help, and others act as DJ or local entertainment. Either way, they are helping to take an unpleasant task and turn it into something better.
ImpactADHD has expanded and is now named ImpactParents, providing affordable behavior management training (Behavior Therapy) for parents and educators worldwide, online and on the phone -- a first-line recommended treatment for kids with ADHD and related challenges of Executive Function.
Kenneth Goldberg, the author of the 2012 book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers, sees another negative consequence of parental involvement with homework: more behavioral problems in school.
Because schools penalize students for not doing homework, he writes in the April 2014 issue of District Administration, parents often take it upon themselves to monitor whether their child completes their assignments.
Many parents, too, agree that their involvement will make a positive difference. In a recent study conducted by the US Department of Education, 90% of parents reported that they set aside a place at home for their child to do homework, and 85% reported that they checked to see that homework had been completed.
The researchers found that homework assignments in which students are expected to memorize facts, and the parent is expected to teach school skills, provide less meaningful opportunities for parent and student interaction in the learning process.
In contrast, homework assignments in which students choose a project that requires in-depth investigation, thought and some creative license enable meaningful parent participation. Parents can play supportive roles in discussing the project with their child, which is more enjoyable both for the child and parent.
For example, students may demonstrate math skills; share ideas and obtain reactions to written work; conduct surveys or interviews; gather parents' memories and experiences; apply school skills to real life; or work with parents or other family partners in new ways.
The strategies that parents use may vary depending on their beliefs about child-rearing and broader cultural values. Yet these different parent involvement strategies appear to have distinct effects on student achievement.
In another study, parent involvement in homework was reported by students to have a detrimental effect if the parent tried to help without a request from the child or was perceived as intrusive or controlling by the child.
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