Homework Headaches: How to Prevent Them
By Teresa Higginbotham
TightwadTess.com

With every school year parents wait for the inevitable night when their child confesses they've missed an assignment, forgotten an assignment, or lost an assignment. Children, just like adults, are expected to keep track of a certain amount of paperwork. 

With some kids this is not a problem but with others.... What are some ways to help your child manage and complete their homework load? It's easier than you think!

Communication is the most important factor. 
Talk to your child--What homework do you have tonight?
Talk to your child's teacher--Do you put out a list of assignments 
expected in WRITING for my child to bring home to me?
Talk to your child's friends and their parents--Just when is that 
science project due again? 

If you have child who does not always communicate their assignment load, then keeping your ear to the ground may be a good idea. Along with  communication comes visibility. If you want your child to do better in school then be there yourself. If you work full time this may seem like impossibility. You don't have to redo the library bulletin board once a week and head the PTA, but you can come have lunch with your child on your lunch break and you can attend PTA meetings, school fairs on weekends, band concerts, football games...whatever your child is involved in and would love to see you attending.

If you have the time to help in a classroom or library then that's wonderful too and you have a great opportunity some parents don't get. The point is if your child knows you are interested in his or her school then their interest level in it will rise too. 

Organization
The best school tool you can buy your child is a three ring binder. If they want spirals then get the kind with the holes punch in so they can put them in their binder. You also need to buy a small three-hole punch they carry in their binder. If you can't find one of those then just get them a single hole punch. 

Sit down with your child on the first night of school and help them organize handouts. Get dividers for each subject and put the class handouts in each section. Talk to them about the process they need to go through every time they get an assignment, take notes, or receive a handout in a class. If they are too embarrassed to punch holes in a handout during a class (ah, teenagers) then get the kind of dividers that have pockets in them. They can stick the handout in the pockets and punch holes in them at home. 

Every night before your child starts homework, help them to file papers and straighten out anything that was jammed in there during the rush of the school day. The same way your child's teacher teaches them about their subject area you can teach your child about organization. Teaching them how to keep track of things will free you from keeping track of them!

Set Time Limits, Rewards and Punishments
When should you check for homework with your child? Of course this could vary from child to child and from subject to subject. Some kids will tell you all about it...others won't. Asking every evening is good habit to get into. Your child expects that question and there's only so long they can say, nope don't have any. If they don't have any homework for entire week it's time to communicate with a teacher or another parent. 

I used to teach middle school and senior high students and my kids had homework at least once a week and many times much more than if we were reading a novel. If you find you have a child who is just not doing the work and not telling you about it, then you need to have a conference with the teacher or teachers and set up a homework checking system. One simple way to do this is to have your child write down each subject on a piece of paper and then the assignment he or she received that day. If there was truly no homework then they write "No Homework". 

This is the key--The teacher must then sign the child's assignment page. If the teacher knows you are doing this system then they will look for this sheet to come at them once a day. If the child is doing the recording of the assignment then there is really no extra workload on the teacher and it's a simple checking in for you. I've seen this system work well with some students who had a pretty bad track record in the homework area. It also seemed help the kids to come up to my desk once a day and show me--"Look I'm doing my job and I can be successful at keeping track of my work." 

If your child always tells you-"I did my homework at school, on the bus, while waiting to be picked up etc." and then they don't show it to you this may be something you want to check on. They need to understand you want to see the completed product even if they didn't do it in front of you. If they come back with "Don't you trust me?" You can tell them you just want to make sure they did the homework correctly. Which you do. The trust issue is different with every child and you certainly want to trust them but with some kids its harder than others.

If you have identified your child is having trouble keeping up with homework; first of all it's not the worst thing in the world. Everyone goes through this to some degree. You might want to set up some rewards or punishments for good and negligent behavior. If your child brings home and completes their homework for a week you can reward them with a trip to get ice-cream, an extra hour of TV, playing a board game together, something meaningful but not bank breaking. 

If your child works well with long term rewards you can make a chart of how many week s they keep up with their homework and then reward them with a video game, movie, trip to an amusement park, or whatever motivates them. I know some people don't believe in rewarding their children but why do you work hard? Do you work for the sheer thrill of it? Maybe, but you are looking forward to that paycheck every month. 

Even if it's a pat on the back, make sure your child knows that what they are doing is a great thing--because it is! The lack of reward for not getting a handle on homework can also serve as the punishment. If that doesn't seem to matter to them then instead of playing a board game with your child, spend even more time with them doing homework related activities--reading, working through each math problem with them, re-teaching the grammar they can't figure out. Don't punish them with isolating yourself from them--they need you sitting right there with them even more now. 

Homework doesn't have to turn into a headache for you or your child. With 
some teachers, keeping up with it can be tough but agree to work on it as a 
team (you, the child, and the teacher) and you'll get through it! 

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