How do I get him to do his homework???!!!

Well, I’m no expert but… here’s what I think.

- You don’t say whether he is on medication or not, but if he is, try to have homework time coincide with a time that the medicine is in effect. Ours is on Concerta which seems to run out by the end of school, but he gets one tablet of Ritalin at 4 pm so that he will have the medication in his system when he does homework in the afternoon/early evening. (And if we wait past 7:30, homework is complete disaster just like you describe.)

- Is he really unwilling? Or unable to focus? Ours is sooooo distractible after the medication wears off (sometimes I want to clobber him). He truly can’t keep himself on task… but he is clearly willing. I had to stop assuming he was being distractible on purpose and stopped verbally punishing him for it. He’s not being distractible to irritate me (although that is the typical outcome!); he just truly can’t focus.

- You have to keep everything about homework positive. Chip in ideas, find tasks you can do to speed up the process (I hate those stupid Internet searches— give me a worksheet anyday. If he does it, it’s one hour of searching and endless links to distraction - if I do it, it’s just a 10 minute task), give him clues, locate the pertinent paragraph where the answer to the question is located, etc. Don’t criticize his ideas or cast judgment on his failure to stay focused [so hard to do]. Try to get him back into thinking that working on homework together can be fun.

- Let him do it his way. Ours wanted to do his homework laying down on the floor on his back holding a clipboard up in the air. Or twirling around in a swivel chair. I just wanted to scream and superglue him to a chair in a traditional seated position. But you know what? He couldn’t stay focused in that position either and then we had to deal with him being mad. They just aren’t traditional learners and you have to let them find their own way.

- See if having music in the background helps. I’ve also heard that chewing gum can help redirect their fidgeting energy (although at our house that remains unproven).

- Consider setting an amount of time that you think is reasonable for working on a particular topic. Say 30 minutes. (I’ve used the national PTA recommendation of 5 minutes per grade level per topic — 5 min x 6th grade = 30 min. per topic) If he’s worked on math for 30 minutes and he’s still not done, write at the end of his paper “Worked 30 minutes” and call it day. An extra 30+ minutes aren’t buying him any additional learning and they are only putting him a negative frame of mind about learning. If you have an understanding teacher, you can arrange this with them in advance. We didn’t have one. I just put my foot down and said this is the way it’s going to be. Too bad about grades. She finally came around and bought into my “positive learning experience” plan. (‘Course ours had LDs too so I might have had more ammunition.)

- And last, forget about grades. The grades he gets in 6th grade just doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of life. Go after love of learning instead. If he learns to love learning, the grades will eventually come around.

Best wishes.

My daughter with ADD, who’s entering the 8th grade, has also had a terrible problem with homework, yet there was never anything she couldn’t do. And when I pushed, it just seemed that it would take her hours to do what should have taken only minutes. This created many battles between us, resulting in her just not telling me when she had homework (occassionally sharing, so as to avoid high suspicion from me.) She’d get mostly A’s and B’s on all her tests, but C’s and D’s on her report cards. I then learned that the reason for her poor grades was that she was not completing either homework or classwork assignments, all of which counted toward her final grade. Her teachers were supposed to supply me with regular progress reports so I could see what work was not completed, but they usually would forget. And, of course, my daughter wouldn’t remember to remind them. Finally, after feeling so frustrated, I took her to a psychologist who said the answer was simple: immediate rewards for every 15 mins of homework. My daughter and I together had to compile a long list of possible rewards (i.e., $1.00, 15 mins of TV, 15 mins outside, etc.). I’ve just begun implementing this so I can’t call it a success yet, but I can say it looks promising. Perhaps it’s worth a shot.

If you ask him why he won’t do his homework what does he say? ADHD my be an excuse. If he gives you some BS answer come down on him with both feet. Sometimes kids are just defiant. The other option is to let him fail and suffer the consequences. Ther should also be sanctions put on him for not doing his homework. Kick his ass!

Mamm;

Try to find out what areas the kid is not very strong in, like get an evaluation and ask what you can do to overlook the deficits try alternatives. Other than that, I will let you know something: When I was your son’s age, I was tormented by some kids at school, and I had little help from the teachers in stopping this !”” So, I just gave up and decided “what’s the use”“… It took me a while to get over the syndrome, but I was also not a good student as defined by the school. Let your son have a blocked out time to blow off, then sit him down and break the work into little steps a bit at a time… Then, he may not feel so stressed when doing homework.

Dear Andrew’s Mom,

I home school and have to deal with this all day long. This is my second year and have learned a lot along the way. My son is in second grade. Even though he can tell time I purchased a visual timer. With the visual timer he has some concrete idea of how long he has to work. I work in ten to fifteen minute blocks - no longer. My child cannot sustain attention any longer. And I tie a successful 10 or 15 minute session with a reward. If his session is not productive - no reward. For every session we take a 15 minute break, sometimes 20 minutes. Some days are great and we move along. Other days are horrible and we get little done. But that means no TV after school. One thing I know for sure, you must be consistent. Over the summer we home schooled but on a much more relaxed basis. Not a good idea. Create a time- same time every evening for homework. These children need to know what comes next in their lives. Their internal clock is off and knowing what is ahead helps then to organize their thinking. Good luck!!

I finally realized that I would have to spend one on one time with my son to get homework done. If he can do it in ten minutes, I’d invest those ten minutes and read the newspaper while sitting right next to him.

There are many possible reasons why any 6th grader resists homework but if with somebody on him, he can do it in ten minutes -those ten minutes of your time might save hours of hassle.

Good luck.