What to Do When Your Child Refuses to Do Homework?
Many parents will experience at one time or another that their child refuses to do their homework. It can be a boring topic, some difficult equations or for example a challenging assignment to be written in science. If you as a parent do not have the knowledge about the topic to help, it can be especially challenging to motivate the child to do homework. Here are 6 tips for when your child does not want to do their homework!
Create a Positive Learning Environment
As a parent, creating a homework-friendly environment for your child should be a priority. To do so, it is important to have a positive attitude towards your child’s homework. A parent’s attitude towards homework affects the child’s experience when doing it. Therefore, being upset, angry, or mad rarely contributes to any progress.
Help Your Child Make Routines
Having regular routines connected to the homework situation can be valuable. The routines could involve setting up a period designated for homework and limiting screen time during this period. Regular study periods can help avoid the well-known scenario where doing homework every day seems to be a surprise. Having a regular and quiet area to do homework can be helpful in minimising distractions. This will undoubtedly help the homework process by maximizing concentration.
Feeling of Accomplishment
If your child thinks homework is boring, finding out why could be important. Is the homework too hard, or perhaps too easy? The problem could also only apply to certain subjects. Knowing these things could be smart in terms of planning which subject, to begin with. The feeling of accomplishment is very important for motivation. Therefore, the selection of which homework should be carefully considered. By doing this, you will get a better overview of your child’s knowledge of different subjects. This is important because homework is meant for practicing what you already learned in school. However, practicing something you have not learned or understood yet is hard. Therefore, using our chat where you can speak with a tutor, and get answers to short tasks could be a great habit when doing homework. The chat is completely free, and it is open 24/7.
Emphasize Effort before Achievement
It is important to emphasize effort before achievement to improve motivation – especially when giving feedback to the child. Subsequently, the child will understand that effort is important, and the work effort will most likely improve as well.
Have Fun!
Having fun is the best contributing factor in terms of motivation. Problems regarding homework are often connected to the fact that the child is bored when doing it. If your child thinks homework is boring, it can be difficult to get them motivated to do it. Therefore, it can be smart to find new ways of acquiring the same knowledge. We at House of Math offer several math games, such as the Math Vault, Bootcamp and the Multiplication Game, which makes math much more fun. This is a different way of acquiring knowledge, but it can be just as effective as regular homework.
Tutor
If you want an additional boost in motivation, a tutor can be of great help. A tutor is a supporter that contributes to motivation and the desire to learn, as well as providing technical help. We at House of Math offer several great tutors which can help children and youth. Do you want to try it? This can be an additional boost for a limited time to regain motivation. It is motivating to succeed, and with additional practice this becomes reality. Furthermore, this will help to fill knowledge holes, in addition to getting a new view of learning over a longer period. If necessary,
a tutor can therefore give technical help in addition to increased motivation. Read more about our tutor arrangement here.