Stop Homework

Rosie Scrib­ble, a free­lance writer in the U.K. who spe­cial­izes in men­tal health issues and blogs about life with her 6 year old, wrote a won­der­ful piece about why she doesn’t make her daugh­ter do home­work. Many of the com­menters also wrote that they didn’t make their chil­dren do home­work, either. Now, if they could all inspire their friends and their friends’ friends, etc., home­work for young chil­dren would no longer exist (after all, most ele­men­tary school chil­dren require some kind of parental involve­ment to get their home­work done).

I Have Banned My Child from Doing Home­work
by Rosie Scribble

Some­times I get a bit hot under the col­lar, stamp my foot and decide that what­ever I have been told to do — I’m not doing it.

Then I won­der why my six-year-old daugh­ter does the same.

How­ever today, once again, I have decided there are a few things that our lit­tle fam­ily will not be doing, for one day at least.

Here’s the list:

I.J. [my daugh­ter] will not be doing any home­work
I.J. will not be watch­ing News­round
I.J. will not be look­ing at her school read­ing book
I will not be dis­cussing key­words and spellings with I.J.
I will not be test­ing her on her addi­tion and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion
I will not be help­ing her to prac­tise her alpha­bet
We will not be doing any­thing related in any way to edu­ca­tion
We shall only be doing fun things
Why?

Because a mother knows when her child is under stress, when she has had enough and is over-tired and over-sensitive, when being asked to watch the news will only add to her cur­rent anx­i­eties, when num­ber work at school is get­ting her down to the point where she can’t sleep at night, when the pres­sure to prac­tise her read­ing every night is get­ting her down, when it is all becom­ing too much.

A mother knows when her child needs a night off, a break from it all, and when a dose of fun takes pri­or­ity over homework.

So here’s what we will do instead:

We’ll close the cur­tains, turn off the lights and turn the front room into a cin­ema
We’ll watch a brand new DVD, pos­si­bly Cloudy with a chance of Meat­balls as rec­om­mended by A Mod­ern Mother
We’ll eat party food fol­lowed by choco­late cake
We’ll cud­dle up on the sofa
We’ll shut out the rest of the world
We’ll for­get about school
We’ll for­get about every­thing else
We’ll have some fun
And I’ll hope for a calmer more relaxed child tomorrow.

(Read the post and the accom­pa­ny­ing com­ments here.)

Posted in category Moms (and Dads) on a Mission on February 4, 2010 at 7:00 am
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