Welcome to speed Round Sunday on the Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share a
mini episode from our past for your weekend listening pleasure. We'll be back tomorrow
with a brand new episode. We're going to talk about homework help and maybe
your kids get jealous if you're helping the other one with homework or something.
I don't know. Mine would say mine would be happy to be left alone.
But yeah, so that's what I would think into So school is starting
now, we don't have too much homework yet, but for our speed Round,
I wanted to talk about how much do you or did you help with
your kids homework and ask if you have some advice for me on making things
easier this school year. It's my high schooler pretty much takes care of herself,
but my younger one I sometimes do have to step in. So yeah,
but it's it's really tough, you know, drawing the line. Like
sometimes with him, you know, maybe he knows things, but he he
struggles to actually write them down. Oh yeah, so you know, is
it appropriate to write things for him even if he's dictating, you know,
things like that, like, yeah, I've written a note to a teacher
before and said like, I swear he did these math problems, but I
just wrote them down. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's legitimate.
Yeah yeah, I think you're And does he type? Yeah, he
can, and he'll be doing I'm sure more and more on the They have
school issued chromebooks, so he will, I'm sure be doing more and more
with that this year. So yeah. I remember at one point my son
was I may have talked about this before. He was having to write like
his spelling words. You just write his spelling words ten times, and he
knew the spelling just fine, but writing something ten you know, writing ten
words ten times each was just excruciating because you know, his fine motor was
so delayed. So I said to the teacher, look, he knows the
spelling, does he really have to write it at ten times? And so
we wound up with like one time or three times or something like that,
and she was happy to adjust it, and then he could do his homework,
you know, without me having to do it for him. So sometimes
it's especially if the thing that's being done is not really the lesson. You
know, writing numbers is not really what math is about. It's understanding the
concepts and being able to spell the word is what's spelling is about, it's
not being able to write it. That's a different subject. And if they're
combining them, then yes that's a problem. But if not, then see
if you could focus in on the thing that's really the issue, not the
most convenient way that they've packaged it. Yeah, math is hard in terms
of writing. I know, we use to have to use graph graph paper.
We would have to set up the math problems on graph papers so that
he could write into the boxes and instead of just loose on a piece of
paper, it would just go all over the place, right, Yeah,
exactly, And I thought it was great. The last time we talked to
Megan, she pointed out Megan Corridon, our occupational therapist. She pointed out,
there's a website where you can print graph paper and all different size of
graphs that is very nice, not of graphs of boxes, which I thought
was really cool. You can also yourself make your own Microsoft word, I
think, is what I did. Yeah, but that website is easier.
But yeah, that's good. The different sized boxes is good to depending on
how how exact your child writes. You can make it big enough for small
enough and then you just write the problems on there and then they can do
the math right. But I always helped way too much with homework. It
is one of those parents. But you know it's legitimately when it's legitimately hard
for your kid. I mean, I feel like, if your kid is
able, let them do their homework, if they do it right, if
they do it, let them do it. The teacher needs to know if
they can understand it or not, but if they just completely can't do it,
And certainly in bad inclusion classrooms, this happens a lot where you know
the lesson has not been adapted and you get this thing and you know your
kid can't do it, so you have to help to some degree and do
it to some degree, just say you're right. I do the opposite of
you, Catherine. I dictate to them. But sometimes that's all there is,
you know, you just well. I feel like this is particularly relevant
to us again right now because my daughter is going through a huge change in
her workloads. It's got a really heavy courseload this year, and she's just
struggling to keep her head abuff water. Basically because apparently some teachers think that
the more homework the better and which is necessarily okay. So I actually went
in for a meeting this morning with her teachers at seven am, so I'm
dragging a bit, and we talked about ways to support her with her homework
because I'm literally having to sit down at the table with her again and I
haven't done that since elementary school. But I'm literally having to sit there and
help her get through the piles of homework that she has. And yeah,
so we were kind of coming up with different ways of getting it done,
and you know, some are more formal than others, but yeah, asking
for the reduction in the amount of homework, asking for an extension sometimes helps
showing it in a different way, like you know, so for example,
in Christmas English class, I remember way back when she'd have to read a
chapter a night or something. Right, Well, she not a reader.
Yeah, I mean she can read, but she just hates reading and it's
just it's painful. Yeah, I mean she she's a kind of kid that
will finish a chapter in a year. One of those. So we just
got audio books for her, yes, and it was much better, and
the teacher, we told the teacher about it, and so, yeah,
it's just kind of finding ways to facilitate, yeah, getting it done.
It's really nice that we live in an Asian audio books now, because I
remember when my daughter was little, I had to just like read, I
had to read her assignments into a tape recorder so that then she had listened
to them, and that was that was difficult if I had anything else to
do, or once they she got older and the passages got longer. Yea,
but the listening is definitely that was definitely the way to go with her
too. But we didn't have something prerecorded to us. That's very nice.
Yeah, So I don't know. I thought we were those days were done
for us, but obviously not. Yeah. Well I hope that's not an
indicator of what's coming from me high schooler, but it's very well it could
happen. So yeah, well, a lot of the time, if you
do like what you did, Nicole, and go in and let the teacher
know that it's not that you don't want them to have homework. It's not
that you don't respect the homework, just that you want to find a way
to make the homework work for your kid. Sometimes that works. It depends
on the teacher, of course, And I mean you're a teacher, so
I know you know how to put it and what to say. But I
think a lot of parents just come in and say, my kid doesn't do
homework, or I'm not going to do she's not gonna do this homework or
whatever. And you know, I think homework has value. I like seeing
what they're doing in the classroom. But sometimes you just have to say,
well, now, this is not going to be anything other than just a
misery. Yeah, you can negotiate, Yeah, I think make this a
positive learning experience in some way. Yeah, and just I mean, you're
not asking for them to not do it. But as long as the child
is meeting the standards and learning the standards, then there shouldn't be an issue
in terms of negotiating what works for your child, because, like, let's
face it in honesty, how often do we get a project land on our
desk at three thirty in the afternoon and it's to the next day, right,
Like, I don't know if that happens, yeah, sorry, as
soon as possible, terry before the end of business day if I'm light.
Yeah, So I don't know it. Just I think the key the takeaway
is talking to your communicating with your child's teach years is huge. Yeah,
it's a long way to well, I'm I'm hot because I feel like with
my son, each year has gotten a little easier. Just a team matures.
It's Yeah, it's helping a lot, so