Help! My Child Hates Homework: 9 Tips to Make Your After School Routine More Peaceful

“It feels like a never-ending battle.”

If you are the parent to a school aged child, you’ve probably been there: your child comes home from school, throws their backpack down, and wants to hang out with their friends, play in their room, get on their screens, etc. But you have to say the dreaded words, “Have you done your homework yet?”

          Or maybe you’ve got a great after school routine set up, but 10 minutes into doing homework at the kitchen table, your child has pulled a disappearing act or roped you into being their after school tutor, when you have your own set of to-do’s to keep the house and family running.

          Homework can be one of the greatest sources of frustrations for any family with children in school. Many schools have gone as far as to get rid of homework altogether or at least protect one day a week as a “Homework Free Day” in order to try to create some calm and connection time for children and caregivers. Despite this, it’s almost inevitable that somewhere in their academic career your child will have homework, whether it’s studying for a test, completing a project, or extra skill practice. To help you manage the stress and conflict that can come from the homework wars, we’ve got 9 tips to help you and child get that homework done so you can enjoy more after school time for fun, family and relaxing.

Why do kids fight doing their homework?

          Ask any kid or teen if they enjoy doing homework and almost 100% will tell you no. This is not because kids or teens are lazy, lack self-discipline, or any other moral failure. If we think of things from a physiological perspective, most students wake up earlier than their internal clock needs, running on less sleep than recommended and then must go straight into a day of school and extracurricular activities. Their day is structured from start to finish with very little control of what happens throughout. It’s no wonder when they come home from school, the last thing they want to do is more work! Even adults struggle when asked to complete work outside of business hours, and we have fully formed brains and nervous systems. For a child or teen, the skills needed to manage this extra work such as, time-management, delayed gratification, motivation, perseverance, and the ability to regulate and take care of their needs, are all still being developed. This is why parents and caregivers often must step in and help their child across the homework finish line. 

Given this information, we suggest working with your child from a perspective of teaching them the skills needed, while allowing time for decompression and taking care of their needs, so they are better able to regulate their emotions while doing homework. Remember you are planting seeds and laying groundwork for your child to eventually manage their own after school schedule, so you may not need to do these tips forever, but just until you can pass the reigns to your child.

1.                 Take care of needs before starting homework. Offer or give your child independence to choose a snack, drink, and comfortable place to be their homework area. Some children do well with down time before homework, but others it can become a battle to get them to return to task and it’s easier just to “do the worst first.” Try out different combinations to see what works for your family.

2.                 Create a homework routine. You can either create on your own or work with your child to build a homework routine that stays as consistent as possible. When there are days with after school activities, create an alternate option for those days, but keep it consistent. If your child is a visual learner, you can have them decorate or make a sign with their routine. (I.e., Snack, Go to Homework Spot, Spelling Words, Math, Read, Mom and Dad check homework, etc.)
 Older children might enjoy creating a visual schedule on Canva or another graphic design app.

3.                 Set up an ideal homework environment. This can look different for all families. Some kids are tired of sitting at desks all day and laying on the floor feels better for them, some need the structure of sitting at a table. Some kids like to listen to calming music, and some need silence. Create an environment with few distractions but that works with your child’s sensory needs.

4.                 Take breaks. After being at school all day, it can be helpful to let kids have small breaks while doing their homework. You can set a timer or ask your child to get to a certain problem or page in their homework and then let them have a 5–10-minute brain break, again using a timer to keep them on task. If you find your child struggles to return to task, you might go longer between breaks or just offer one.

5.                 Break down larger tasks into smaller ones. You can create or teach your older child to create a checklist of homework to do. You can also teach your child to chunk their work. If your child has a worksheet with 20 problems, you can have them do the first 10 and check back with you. Or do the first 10 and get a drink of water. They can also use a sheet of paper to cover up problems they are not working on to concentrate on just the tasks at hand.
 Another example: If your child is working on a big project, you can create smaller tasks to work on each day. If your child is older, work with them to come up with these ideas so they can take over independence project.

6.                 Offer incentives. At the end of the day, we all sometimes need a little bit of extra motivation. If your child is really struggling with homework completion sometimes the thought of a reward like extra playtime, a short screentime show, getting to go outside for a bit, reading a chapter of a book together, using a special toy, etc. can be motivating enough to push through homework.

7.                 Talk with your child about homework. In the same line of thought, if your child continues to struggle with homework, at a calm time such as before bed or during a meal, talk with them about why homework feels so hard. Are they tired? Bored? The work is hard? Enlist them in finding ways to solve those problems, even younger children can come up with solutions and feel empowered by being part of the answer.

8.                 Everyone takes a deep breath! For parents and kids, being at school or work all day can drain us physically and emotionally. Having to do more work and get through a bedtime routine can be stressful for everyone. Take lots of breaths together and use the coping skills that work for your family to manage stress.

9. Get help from a mental health professional: If you are trying all the above tips and you’re still finding your child or teen having meltdowns after school or engaging in battles with you, it can be helpful to speak to a licensed professional counselor like the ones at Reflect Therapy. Either through coaching with you, the parent, or individual therapy with your child, a therapist can help you both build skills to handle the stress of the day to day demands of school, life, and homework.

At the end of the day when the whole family is tired, hungry, and drained, doing homework can feel like pulling teeth for both parents and kids. By utilizing some of these tips you can begin to create a calmer and more pleasant homework experience for you and your child. If you find yourself still struggling, the therapists at Reflect Therapy are here to help and offer a free 15-minute consultation.