Homework time requires considerable parental involvement, especially during a child’s first years of school. Over time, your child will become more autonomous, but until then, your help is essential. Here are a few strategies to better structure your child’s after-school work.
During homework time, your presence is essential for several reasons. Every time you ask your child about their assignment or answer one of their questions, you’re doing the following:
To support your child during homework time, you simply need to be present and attentive. You can do this in all kinds of ways:
Your child might not want to do their homework because they’re tired, bored, itching to go play, discouraged by the scope of the task—the list goes on. To make assignments and lesson review more enjoyable, why not turn them into fun family activities? For example, you could ask your child to do the following:
Supporting your child also means teaching them that mistakes are a normal part of learning, and that everyone makes them—even you! The goal isn’t to be perfect, but rather to learn from their mistakes and try again. Here are some ways to help your child deal with failure:
To find out more about the different ways you can help your child learn from failure, check out our article on bouncing back from academic failure.
While it’s important to help your child with their schoolwork when they’re young, you also need to teach them how to be autonomous. Every child builds autonomy at their own pace, but eventually, it allows them to do the following:
Writing : Viviane Asselin
Scientific review : Mathieu Labine-Daigneault, resource teacher
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Rewriting : The Alloprof Parents’ team