In order to break the destructive cycle of Deliverance from Homework Help Hell, one has to focus on the emotional dynamics that drive homework difficulties between parents and children rather than on the intellectual content of the homework itself. When this happens there are often dramatic improvements in the apparent academic skills and performance.

Unfortunately, many children experience intense emotional arousal around academic performance, such that  they're not able to demonstrate the skills that they actually have. This causes misdirected efforts by parents to try to increase their child’s academic skills rather than reducing the obstacles to performance of those skills.

I am not suggesting that parents should make homework the child’s responsibility and not put contingencies on homework performance. Reinforcement and punishment contingencies are often essential. What I am suggesting is that if prompting, nagging, anger, reminding or contingencies are used in a way that causeemotional arousal, they are likely to backfire.

In contrast, once the emotions have been extinguished, many children increase several grade levels in reading or math ability in just a few hours, with no specific training in reading or math skills. This is not due to any increase in their actual skills. Rather, it is due to their increased ability to access the skills they already have.

Homework Action plan

It is important to have a quiet place set aside that has a a minimum of distraction, that is used only to complete homework. That reduces the chaos and emotional arousal. The kitchen table is far too much of a family traffic to be useful for homework. Likewise, other distractions such as TV, radio, computers should all be off.