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Welcome to speed Round Sunday on the
Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share a

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mini episode from our past for your
weekend listening pleasure. We'll be back tomorrow

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with a brand new episode. We're
going to talk about homework help and maybe

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your kids get jealous if you're helping
the other one with homework or something.

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I don't know. Mine would say
mine would be happy to be left alone.

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But yeah, so that's what I
would think into So school is starting

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now, we don't have too much
homework yet, but for our speed Round,

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I wanted to talk about how much
do you or did you help with

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your kids homework and ask if you
have some advice for me on making things

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easier this school year. It's my
high schooler pretty much takes care of herself,

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but my younger one I sometimes do
have to step in. So yeah,

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but it's it's really tough, you
know, drawing the line. Like

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sometimes with him, you know,
maybe he knows things, but he he

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struggles to actually write them down.
Oh yeah, so you know, is

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it appropriate to write things for him
even if he's dictating, you know,

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things like that, like, yeah, I've written a note to a teacher

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before and said like, I swear
he did these math problems, but I

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just wrote them down. Yeah,
yeah, I mean I think that's legitimate.

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Yeah yeah, I think you're And
does he type? Yeah, he

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can, and he'll be doing I'm
sure more and more on the They have

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school issued chromebooks, so he will, I'm sure be doing more and more

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with that this year. So yeah. I remember at one point my son

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was I may have talked about this
before. He was having to write like

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his spelling words. You just write
his spelling words ten times, and he

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knew the spelling just fine, but
writing something ten you know, writing ten

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words ten times each was just excruciating
because you know, his fine motor was

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so delayed. So I said to
the teacher, look, he knows the

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spelling, does he really have to
write it at ten times? And so

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we wound up with like one time
or three times or something like that,

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and she was happy to adjust it, and then he could do his homework,

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you know, without me having to
do it for him. So sometimes

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it's especially if the thing that's being
done is not really the lesson. You

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know, writing numbers is not really
what math is about. It's understanding the

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concepts and being able to spell the
word is what's spelling is about, it's

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not being able to write it.
That's a different subject. And if they're

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combining them, then yes that's a
problem. But if not, then see

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if you could focus in on the
thing that's really the issue, not the

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most convenient way that they've packaged it. Yeah, math is hard in terms

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of writing. I know, we
use to have to use graph graph paper.

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We would have to set up the
math problems on graph papers so that

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he could write into the boxes and
instead of just loose on a piece of

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paper, it would just go all
over the place, right, Yeah,

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exactly, And I thought it was
great. The last time we talked to

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Megan, she pointed out Megan Corridon, our occupational therapist. She pointed out,

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there's a website where you can print
graph paper and all different size of

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graphs that is very nice, not
of graphs of boxes, which I thought

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was really cool. You can also
yourself make your own Microsoft word, I

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think, is what I did.
Yeah, but that website is easier.

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But yeah, that's good. The
different sized boxes is good to depending on

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how how exact your child writes.
You can make it big enough for small

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enough and then you just write the
problems on there and then they can do

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the math right. But I always
helped way too much with homework. It

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is one of those parents. But
you know it's legitimately when it's legitimately hard

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for your kid. I mean,
I feel like, if your kid is

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able, let them do their homework, if they do it right, if

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they do it, let them do
it. The teacher needs to know if

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they can understand it or not,
but if they just completely can't do it,

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And certainly in bad inclusion classrooms,
this happens a lot where you know

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the lesson has not been adapted and
you get this thing and you know your

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kid can't do it, so you
have to help to some degree and do

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it to some degree, just say
you're right. I do the opposite of

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you, Catherine. I dictate to
them. But sometimes that's all there is,

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you know, you just well.
I feel like this is particularly relevant

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to us again right now because my
daughter is going through a huge change in

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her workloads. It's got a really
heavy courseload this year, and she's just

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struggling to keep her head abuff water. Basically because apparently some teachers think that

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the more homework the better and which
is necessarily okay. So I actually went

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in for a meeting this morning with
her teachers at seven am, so I'm

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dragging a bit, and we talked
about ways to support her with her homework

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because I'm literally having to sit down
at the table with her again and I

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haven't done that since elementary school.
But I'm literally having to sit there and

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help her get through the piles of
homework that she has. And yeah,

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so we were kind of coming up
with different ways of getting it done,

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and you know, some are more
formal than others, but yeah, asking

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for the reduction in the amount of
homework, asking for an extension sometimes helps

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showing it in a different way,
like you know, so for example,

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in Christmas English class, I remember
way back when she'd have to read a

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chapter a night or something. Right, Well, she not a reader.

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Yeah, I mean she can read, but she just hates reading and it's

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just it's painful. Yeah, I
mean she she's a kind of kid that

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will finish a chapter in a year. One of those. So we just

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got audio books for her, yes, and it was much better, and

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the teacher, we told the teacher
about it, and so, yeah,

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it's just kind of finding ways to
facilitate, yeah, getting it done.

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It's really nice that we live in
an Asian audio books now, because I

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remember when my daughter was little,
I had to just like read, I

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had to read her assignments into a
tape recorder so that then she had listened

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to them, and that was that
was difficult if I had anything else to

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do, or once they she got
older and the passages got longer. Yea,

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but the listening is definitely that was
definitely the way to go with her

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too. But we didn't have something
prerecorded to us. That's very nice.

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Yeah, So I don't know.
I thought we were those days were done

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for us, but obviously not.
Yeah. Well I hope that's not an

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indicator of what's coming from me high
schooler, but it's very well it could

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happen. So yeah, well,
a lot of the time, if you

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do like what you did, Nicole, and go in and let the teacher

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know that it's not that you don't
want them to have homework. It's not

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that you don't respect the homework,
just that you want to find a way

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to make the homework work for your
kid. Sometimes that works. It depends

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on the teacher, of course,
And I mean you're a teacher, so

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I know you know how to put
it and what to say. But I

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think a lot of parents just come
in and say, my kid doesn't do

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homework, or I'm not going to
do she's not gonna do this homework or

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whatever. And you know, I
think homework has value. I like seeing

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what they're doing in the classroom.
But sometimes you just have to say,

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well, now, this is not
going to be anything other than just a

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misery. Yeah, you can negotiate, Yeah, I think make this a

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positive learning experience in some way.
Yeah, and just I mean, you're

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not asking for them to not do
it. But as long as the child

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is meeting the standards and learning the
standards, then there shouldn't be an issue

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in terms of negotiating what works for
your child, because, like, let's

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face it in honesty, how often
do we get a project land on our

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desk at three thirty in the afternoon
and it's to the next day, right,

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Like, I don't know if that
happens, yeah, sorry, as

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soon as possible, terry before the
end of business day if I'm light.

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Yeah, So I don't know it. Just I think the key the takeaway

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is talking to your communicating with your
child's teach years is huge. Yeah,

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it's a long way to well,
I'm I'm hot because I feel like with

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my son, each year has gotten
a little easier. Just a team matures.

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It's Yeah, it's helping a lot, so