Deliverance from Homework Help Hell

Steps to solve homework problems

adhd - Homework problems and solutions

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Homework Action plan

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.

Often parents have unsuccessfully tried many traditional approaches to getting homework done, including tutoring, individual assistance by parents, reward and punishment systems, and time out. Because of parents own history of intense emotional involvement in the homework process, staying out of the battle may be very difficult.

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.

It has to remain the child's homework, not the parent's homework. This is essential because learning a pattern of completing tasks independently and in a quality fashion is more important than whether any one assignment is done. Parents must stay out of the detail of how homework is actually performed. Rather, they need a calm, cool focus and with a minimum of words. The focus needs to be on when, and where the homework is done, as well as on the quality of the completed homework, not your child's effort.

Unfortunately, such strategies can be hard to implement properly because of the history of negative parent and child emotional conflict around homework. And, the “devil is in the details” of how such strategies are implemented. "Almost" or "usually" doing it right seldom works.

After a destructive emotional feedback loop between parent and child has been in place for a while, it can be very difficult to stop it without systematically extinguishing the whole emotionally arousing chain of events that drive homework hell. Many times it is necessary to extinguish both the child’s negative emotions toward the home and school work, as well and the negative feelings that both parent and child have toward homework itself.

Article is in the following categories:

ADHD and Homework

ADHD

behavior problems.

CAER Therapy

ADHD

school problems and homework problems

ADHD