Beating homework blues

THE key to "how to teach" is being aware of the influence of self-esteem on children's educational progress and ensuring that all teaching interactions with children are ones which elevate their self-esteem.

Another critical factor is ensuring at all times that children experience only positive associations with learning. This involves making sure that every effort is seen as an attainment, seeing mistakes and failures purely as further opportunities for learning, putting the emphasis constantly on effort and not on performance and remaining calm and encouraging when children experience learning difficulties.

At the same time, parents must not allow children to slide out of educational responsibilities but in doing so they must avoid getting trapped into conflict with them. Maintaining empathic interest in their educational growth guarantees children's commitment to learning. Too many parents let children get on with the business of schooling and forget that children need their parents to notice what they do on an everyday basis. Absence of parental interest in children's learning frequently leads to apathy and loss of motivation to learn.

Setting up fixed study areas in the home is a further important factor. You need to be sure that such areas are as free of distraction as possible and in no way near the television or other sources of entertainment. When studying, it is also best that children are separated from each other. Be sure to visit the children during their study times and offer help, support, encouragement and "treats".

If asked for help avoid the temptation to do things for your children; good teaching means aiding and guiding children in a step-by-step way to do things for themselves. Doing things for them deprives children of learning to do things for themselves and keeps them helpless.

You need to be firm with your children from an early age with regard to being orderly and tidy as these behaviours will transfer to their school responsibilities. Do not accept sloppy or careless work from children. Let them know firmly and calmly that acceptance for such irresponsible efforts would mean not loving them and not caring for their future. After all, an acceptance of such sloppy work implies that you (as the parent) are not loving or respecting them fully or properly as a unique person with limitless potential.

Parents need to help their children cope with the frustration that can arise when things go wrong, or when they have difficulty in grasping a concept. If your child is feeling frustrated, help him or her to let go of the task for a while, do something calming (for example, go to the kitchen and have a soft drink, do a relaxation exercise) and then get the child to complete some other learning task that has been assigned. After the latter is completed, encourage and support the child to return to the earlier frustrating activity and help and guide him or her through the learning task.

A sense of humour lightens the whole process and also keeps the child more in touch with reality. The essential learning experience for the child is to realise that tension, frustration, anxiety and temper block the learning process and it is useless to continue until they have become calm and relaxes again.

Homework can be a major source of conflict between parents and children. The amount of homework assigned to children needs to be carefully monitored. A general guideline is that from ages five to eight years children should only get a maximum of one hour's homework, from eight to 15 years two hours should be the maximum and from 15 to 18 years three hours should be the maximum.

SOME children may of course dilly-dally when doing homework and then complain about the amount of time it takes. When in doubt, check with the child's teacher how long homework should take. Teachers need to estimate homework time according to the learning rate of the majority of the class rather than the rate of those who learn more quickly.

When children are doing their homework, let them know that help is available and be sure to look in on them; giving words of praise and encouragement and perhaps a "treat". When homework is completed, it is important that one of the parents checks the child's effort, praises the attainment achieved and points out where the next effort needs to be focused.

Where there has been genuine and sincere effort, even though the child may have got something wrong, put the emphasis on what he or she has attained and let the teacher shape up the next effort needed within the classroom.

Do not get a child to repeat homework just because some mistake has been made. This is very punishing for children and homework now begins to have negative associations. It is, of course, a different situation if mistakes occur because the effort made was rushed, careless and sloppy.

Finally, following homework, the best reward is always affirmation and praise but children may also be rewarded with a favoured activity. This practice leads to children having positive associations with homework.

In carrying out the above suggestions regarding homework it is import ant that predicability and consistency are maintained. If a parent or other childminder cannot be patient and calm with children's homework efforts and the mistakes they make, it is best that that person is not involved in helping with homework.

Where children are consistently attempting to avoid homework and studying or are over-diligent and even scrupulous, these needed to be recognised as signs of avoidance and compensation and as revelations of self-esteem difficulties. Attention to the child's self-esteem is then a priority.