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.
Stop Homework 
I’m in grade 11 and i believe that homework is really important for getting good grades and succeeding. Who cares if it takes you all night to finish, that’s life get over it. Plus even if you stop homework in your house your child will still get introuble and possibly get a detention for your actions.
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I’m a 6th grader and I’ll admit that homework is a problem that no kid likes, but must deal with it to get the concept or study. You can’t run into the fantasy world like its a marathon. Sorry.
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Children almost work on homework and school as much as an adult does, in fact, 30 or so minutes more usually. Why aren’t they paid if they go through so much in one day???? I know why, but I’m just saying.
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how bout yall shut up and do your homework! its not that hard wha wha have some responsibility! ooh chocolate cake! am all fat watching tv! jeez guys come on!! you can do homework if ya set ur mind to it
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my 8 year old was kept in through play with two of her classmates and made to sit in silence outside the head teachers office for twenty minutes for not completing her homework. I am an ADD parent and struggle to stay at most routine tasks. this includes my daughter’s homework, if i can find her bag and homework sheets. some may say she should take responsibility for this herself but when you live with a parent like me it’s easier said than done and she is still a young child. she’ll have a lifetime of responsibility to look forward to. before homework was being set my daughter would come home from school and play schools and the work she covered was amazing. now she is demotivated and disinterested alongside learning that non-compliance is punishable. homework is not a legal requirement. my daughter does not need to do homework to establish a good work ethic. i can support her through her life experiences to do that. my relationship with my daughter is too precious to become a battlefield over homework. i stand my ground on discipline for the things that are far more important in life .
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This is a good point yet your listing everything a child needs without care. A child needs to know and practice her multiplication yet only when under extreme stress she should not do it. Your just saying that you want your daughter to fail in school and her GSCE’s children must work hard and so should you to get her more keen on doing homework. Its just not right that shes not learning and she may want to learn some stuff.
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Johnathan, you make a great case for homework. Never mind that I didn’t understand most of what you’re trying to convey. Perhaps you could use a little homework? Or maybe not. The proof is in the pudding.
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Hi, i know how homework is helping for growth of brain and its ability . But getting paid for each homework is at the same time more handy and people usually have this .
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Homework is a Fucking Piece of Shit
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Homework destroys people’s life’s
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I have so much homework by the time I finish it all I have to eat dinner take a shower and go to bed. Homework is the worst part of school and I can’t stand it, sometimes I think not to do it, but of course homework effects your grade in such a way you have to do it or fail the class.
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From age seven to ten I received what I was told should take me half an hour to forty minutes a night. It always took at least an hour and a half. It made me cry. It made me hate homework. It made me hate school. Did I learn from it? No. Does it help me now? No. Is my time management better because of it? No. When I finally moved schools in year six, they gave us between 30 minutes and an hour of homework each night. The girls told me that the year before they had received about two hours a week. It was an adjustment for them, but it wasn’t too much and we all managed just fine.
I turn fifteen tomorrow and have started my 10 GCSE subjects. I receive about an hour to an hour and a half of each subject a week. It’s a lot, (personally, I think it’s too much and there should be more time for independent thinking and learning, but I suppose the curriculum/no curriculum argument is a matter for a different time) but we are all old enough to cope, and to understand why we must do it. I spend Friday nights and all of Saturday or Sunday doing homework when I have essays to write. Sometimes it takes me only half a day. I get straight As. But so do people who received 15 minutes of homework a night aged eight.
Too much homework when you’re young is completely ridiculous. Children should be able to enjoy themselves and learn for the sake of learning: because it’s fun and interesting, not because they have to.
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Also, I’d like to add to my message above that I think we can all agree that Finland has one of the best education systems in the world. It’s state run and no one has homework. So to all those that say homework is necessary, I say this: HOMEWORK IS ONLY NECESSARY BECAUSE OUR SOCIETY HAS MADE IT SO.
It doesn’t have to exist. It is not the be all and end all of learning.
Just a thought.
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my 8 year old was kept in through play with two of her classmates and made to sit in silence outside the head teachers office for twenty minutes for not completing her homework. I am an ADD parent and struggle to stay at most routine tasks. this includes my daughter’s homework, if i can find her bag and homework sheets. some may say she should take responsibility for this herself but when you live with a parent like me it’s easier said than done and she is still a young child. she’ll have a lifetime of responsibility to look forward to. before homework was being set my daughter would come home from school and play schools and the work she covered was amazing. now she is demotivated and disinterested alongside learning that non-compliance is punishable. homework is not a legal requirement. my daughter does not need to do homework to establish a good work ethic. i can support her through her life experiences to do that. my relationship with my daughter is too precious to become a battlefield over homework. i stand my ground on discipline for the things that are far more important in life .
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I am 11 years old and nearly every night I stay up to at least 11 pm doing homework because I find the teachers scary if you don’t do homework. I do kumon and I find having to put the time is putting me under pressure because of doing English and maths. A lot of kids have and are doing kumon but I struggle to get homework done. Fore and example doing a 2 minute speech that had to be complete in 1 day took me more then 4 hours( I don”t know if i am dumb but I always try my best)
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I’ve got a daughter and the thing is that she always wants to do homework. Whenever we watch a family movie, her face always shows a little unease and anxiety, because homework’s on her mind. I yell at her and say no you have to watch, or the other option is going to sleep-and it was 3pm in the afternoon. I felt stupid saying that. And i know she has a massive test coming up but i just want her to relax. She also blames me when she doesn’t get good results at school because she tries so hard but her efforts are ruined by my yellings. Its reasonable that she needs to do her homework, shes 16. But sometimes I feel she may blow off her head when we get 5 mins into the movie…
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I understand you don’t want your kid to be stressed. But really? Some homework is important for your child to understand the topic and be able to do it. Don’t you want your kid to know how to read? Add? Subtract? I understand some homework can be excessive. But you need to prepare her. Teach her how to get home, finish her homework and then be able to do anything she wants. You’ll need to prepare her for middle school, because homework is very important. Teachers aren’t gonna let you just “Not do your homework” because you’re stressed. Been there, done that. Oh and this is coming from a 12 year old, I don’t like homework, but it helps me understand the lesson and have practice. Thanks bye
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I am a child and I think that is a very good idea love Youtube Sarah
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I am 16 years old and if I were to be banned from doing homework by my parents I would be failing school completely. I can understand that homework was completely useless in primary school, but in high school it is a whole new thing. You fall behind if you don’t do homework. You cannot go through highschool without working at home to get ahead in your subjects especially math B (2nd hardest math). I hope you guys will not be banning your kids from homework in highschool, because your a terrible useless parent if you do and you should take all blame for them failing at school. Even though my dad doesn’t force me to do it I know I have to do my homework and he always makes sure he reminds me the importance of it, but anyways if you are going to ban your kids from highschool homework just think back and remember how much of an appauling, useless, ignorant parent you are and actually try give your kids a better future.
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I do not believe that a parents should have the ability to profess what a child’s interests are. If your daughter/son enjoys schooling, and aspires to be a brighter, more intelligent human being, let them. Do not chain their ankles and tell them that it is out of the norm. Same can be said for the latter.
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I really don’t know what all the fuss is about! My 7 and 5 year old don’t get homework but I have started doing 15 mins each with them after school (snack first) using the KS1 and KS2 booklets you get from WH Smith – they love it! They love learning and they love the exercises – they are simply a reiteration of what they are doing in class so in a way they are showing me what they are actually doing at school. It helps me to see where their strengths and weaknesses lie and I think as a parent that can only be a good thing. How else can you help them out? Teachers can only do so much. For me it is a lovely 15 mins of bonding with my child then we have time to play, hang out, watch telly – whatever they want to do before supper. I feel that 15 mins a day is a small price to pay for helping develop their discipline – how else will they be able to apply themselves when they come to high school homework if they have never seen any before? I grew up with parents that didn’t give a damn what I did and it was a painful lesson for me to work out how the world ticks. I put myself through university and spent 2 years failing every subjuect until the penny dropped – quite simply – NO PAIN, NO GAIN. Education got me out of a council estate so there is no way I am going to let me children suffer through that on their own. Once more I say – 15 mins per day is a small price to pay.
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Okay, my 13 year old loved this, and begged me to do this for her,but I refused. As much as I dislike homework, this isn’t gonna help. Plus is your daughter 6???? She doesn’t have to worry about anything!
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I’m 15, and to be really honest, I actually like doing homework. I used to do all my work while watching TV when I was 10, but it’s less stressful then.
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I am a 16 year old 10th grade student, and school has actually become a problem in all aspects of my life, private or social. Halfway through semester 1 in year 10 a social event (that I would rather not say of what it is) caused me to fall into depression. It wasn’t until the second 2 week long set of holidays came that something in my head just snapped and I was completely past it, it was a very, very long 2 and a half months of my life. It felt fantastic to have finally crawled out of the whole I was in, however, almost immediately after the 3rd semester started it started to come back, not the memories and feelings of the event stated before, but the general feelings of being depressed. I have little to some annoyance about the fact of having to go to school, but it is usually fine when I know what I’m doing in class. The main source of the problem is out if school work ie. assignments/homework, and being the start of the final school week, I began to feel happy again, knowing that I could finally switch off and do my thing for 2 weeks, but on Tuesday, 6 days after submitting a geography assignment, the class receives another assignment, due on the Friday of the 2nd week of the 4th semester and I am struggling to maintain focus on this task. School has actually become a source of depression for me, and my unpopular opinion (which I myself have’nt found a way to explain) about the current education system doesn’t help, and it hurts to know that I would be so much happier and stress free without major tasks being stacked upon me, but knowing that I can’t change this and knowing that it won’t be changed hurts even more. With school being such a problem triggering depression I don’t know how much longer I will be able to go on for, also knowing that it’s only going to get even more difficult in years 11 and 12. I can’t speak to either parents about this any more because of my futile attempts to explain myself and blatant rejection of my opinion and way of thinking. All I want is to be happy and free with what I am doing, but with our modern society that is no longer possible in my position.
Another opinion of mine is that different children have different ways of learning and can handle different amounts of work, most people arguing either for and against the statement have forgotten this. If your child isn’t doing well in school or is struggling to get work done, don’t just repeatedly tell them that they aren’t doing good enough and that every other student receives the same amount of work, ask them to try and tell you what they are feeling and why they are struggling and try to understand what they are saying instead of dismissing it.
And seriously, don’t try to bend my words to attempt to form an argument against what I have just spoken about (in both paragraphs), it is simply my view and explanation of my opinion, there is no need to be condescending towards someone’s opinion and/or experiences.
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Dear LetMeBeFree,
I hope you can find someone to talk to about how you are feeling. I know you said you can’t talk to your parents, but maybe another adult–a favorite teacher, a counselor, someone who helped you through your bout of depression, a hotline? You are not alone in your feelings and you should not have to try to handle them alone, either. If you are having trouble finding resources or help, please email me and I will see whether I can help you find someone in your area you can talk with. I can be reached at
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sara@stophomework.com
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>Sara Bennett
I cannot seem to reach any other words than thank you for everything you have just said, means surprisingly more than you would think to receive words of such a nature.
So I simply say, thank you.
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LetMeBeFree,
Just remember that there are always people around who are willing to help. You just have to keep on reaching out until you find them. Take good care!
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So this post right here teaches us all how to make our kids iresponsible. When your kids will get to highschool and say “Ma’, I failed that test because I didn’t learn, it was my day of relaxation”, or
“Hey dad, I got an F on the last test because it was my relaxation day”.
In my opinion, whoever thinks this is good for their children should not have children.
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Also, learning the alphabet, reading and math should be done in a fun way, so that the kid relaxes while he does his homework, not make him think that homework is his job, he has time to do his job later in life, not in preschool.
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One thing: Time management. Learn it and you won’t feel a need to complain about homework. It’s NOT that hard and in many cases, is absolutely necessary to reinforce a skill or concept. I’m surprised so many parents are acting so immature. Most of you describe quite minimal homework assigned to your children…
I’m actually surprised you’re so involved in your child’s school life. My parents were pretty hands off, but I’ve always gained straight A’s since first grade.
I’m a high school student by the way. There are flaws in the system, but your notion is ridiculous.
As a child, I would have a meltdown if my mom told me I wasn’t allowed to do my homework. Grades are and were important to me, not in an unhealthy way but in the way in which I actually care about my future.
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I hate homework myself I`m a kid in secondary school my mum and I argue because I don`t want to do my home work i want to be a kid and have fun!
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/is-it-time-we-banished-homework-8586836.html
look at the website it shows investigation over 75 years on homework.
and did you know we do more homework than the japanese infact england and america are top of world for amount of homework yet not top of the world for education so i dont really think homework does help with education. and there have been more than 60 investigations done into homewrok and most come out with a weak link between homework and an increas in grades
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what about when your child is older and has a job. All you’re teaching them is that they don’t have to do their extra work at home. well they’ll then get used to it. do you think their boss WONT fire them! seriously do you expect them to pay them for doing NOTHING!
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I seriously do NOT know what you are trying to persuade us parents to do…oh wait i do and i say ITS WRONG!
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Are you stupid? No homework allowed, really? How is your kid going to survive middle school, high school, and college? Oh no, it’s okay to just do whatever you want “because it’s stressful.” Life is stressful that doesn’t mean you just go off and sit around watching TV and shirk any stressful responsibility. It sounds like maybe she has too much homework, but your solution is just another problem.
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I agree honesty, and I am a child myself, so I intend to stop homework entirely. So join me and say NO HOMEWORK!!!!!!
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I agree entirely with KittenCrusader, so let’s band up and complain to teachers everywhere!!!!
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I hate homework because I don’t like do it. It is stupid and no one likes doing it. JOIN me and say NO HOMEWORK!!!!
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Maybe if we just reduced himework time instead of get rid of it entirely? Maybe about 5-10 minutes a class? That way you will have an easily balanced schedule. You can relax and have fun, but you also do some work… I’m also going to say that if you read the post it says “for one day at least” not all the time!
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I agree with that Anonymus. 5-10 minutes of work is pretty good. I would also like to say homework teaches kids time management and that homework isn’t all that bad. It’s only really bad when a teacher grades it or when it takes more than 2 1/2 hours. Just putting that out there
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Also, just because you don’t want to do homework isn’t a good reason. You’d be an awful lawyer. You do a lot of things you don’t like to do in life. I had to put my dog to sleep because she had rocky mountain fever because of a stupid tick, and you think HOMEWORK is a big deal? You think I wanted to see my dog die in my arms? Idiots
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So you’re saying you don’t mind if you’re child’s grades come back in Fs? Or that they won’t be able to get a job because their bosses don’t pay them to sit at home doing nothing? Homework isn’t bad, just take it one peice at a time, because I do homework and I watch news, and I’m under no stres whatsoever.
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I say that this homework thing should just go away. When I do homework, im so bored and never get it done until hours after. I asked my teachers why do we have homework. They say Because you need to remember it. So you think we’re dumb, teachers? You think we can’t remember something you piledrive into our brains for the boring 6 hours we’re in school? Please, give me a break. If I remember the subject fine, I shouldn’t have homework. We should ban this wretched thing. This is not living, Its surviing. Eat, sleep, do homework. The same thing! We need some fun. Homework is not good. Just no. I can’t say it enough. Just stop.
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To add on to my message above, I forgot what place, but they get paid over 500 dollars for doing homework. Ima search up that place. If this homework doesn’t get banned, im gonna move there and get paid for doing that horrible Shit.
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You spelled the word practice wrong on both occasions that you used it. Hah. That is probably the most retarded thing I have ever heard xD not making your kid do homework. I’m almost 16 and I wish I had someone to make me do my homework since I have 5 F’s because of it. I love learning but have a terrible work ethic because nobody made me do anything. Ever. I am failing yet I excel in each subject and test in the top 10% of the school. I’m probably going to be living in a shack the rest of my life because I’d rather stare at a wall than do anything at all. I wish someone made me do my homework. Terrible mother you are xD
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I wish my mum would do this… I can’t sleep at night because of homework and it doesn’t help that the teachers don’t tell us what we can do to achieve higher. Or just anything at all about our homework. we just have to do it. and i’m just so stressed… The links our teachers say to look at are useless, or have something relevant, but unhelpful. I HATE MY HOMEWORK AND IT IS JUST IMPOSSIBLE TO DO!!!!!
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Sounds great but not realistic. Of course, homework is sometimes too much and not necessary. And children deserve a happy childhood undoubtedly. But doing homework is a process to let people know how to cope with problems, to carry their own responsibility! If you dont insist that HW should be finished, your kid may become not respnsible and may therefore think that not doing HW is not a big deal and this will result in bad grades and bad grades may mean bad future. You may be the person that spoil your children’s future!
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I am a student in 7th grade in middle school & in an advanced course which means I have loads of homework. Also, I’m a dancer and dance an average of 2-4 hours a day, which sometimes goes very late leaving not much time for me to do my homework. Yes, I dislike homework but if I didn’t do it my grades would drop. I think you should have your child do their homework because once they get into middle/high school it will be even harder for them to deal with homework. I do get under a lot of stress from my homework, especially on weekends or holiday breaks because I have so much and want to have fun. I don’t have time to go to the mall or hang out with my family/friends but this doesn’t mean I should stop doing my homework which will lead to be doing bad on test, and my grades will slowly drop which could lead to me getting kicked out of the program I am in.
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Doing homework is like frigging annoying, and nobody likes it unless your played.:-)
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