Hi! I'm new here & have an 8y/o who does GREAT in school BUT.... homework time is such a battle!!! (That's putting it mildly!) He was diagnosed adhd last year, was on med but what a pain in the --- that was just trying to get him to take it. Needless to say I took him off of it. If anyone has ANY suggestions I would truely appriciate it. Reward systems don't work, I've tried most variations-- earn something,, take something etc... please help me.

My very 1st post has had NO responses:( . Doesn't anyone care?:(

We're off for 2 wks but he has alot of un finished stuff to do over break. I can't even think about what a battle it's gonna be.....:(

post response here or in my other thread "... ideas for help w/ homework..." or something like that. Its in this forum.

oh its "tips for homework"

What kind of homework is it?

general run of the mill 2nd grade stuff. when he does it he's done in 15-20 min. but he's got to argue for 45 before he'll start it-- & he says I' wasting his time!
he'll say things like-- this is stupid, I hate homework, etc....

We've tried different times of the day for it --right after school, after dinner. after school seems to work best ( somewhat less argueing).I feel bad about making him do right after school but I know what the cosequences are too if he doesn't.

I think part of the prob is that his dad doesn't make sure he does it, he'll ask him if he has any & F5 will say no, then I get home from work & ask if he did it , dad says " he told me he didn't have any""----do you see where this is going? I've told dad you have to make sure , check his backpack. it' s a vicious cycle!!!

Something that might help Dad is for your son to start learning to use an agenda. The teachers will help on their end to make sure the homework is written in the agenda. The parents' job is to check the agenda every day after school and sign off the homework. If there is no homework, the agenda still has to be signed off by teacher and parent.

Teacher sends home HW pack on fri & it's due back the following week. dads just copping out. all he has to do is look. when he does --he has the same prob I do... some of the typical HW is :
Mon-spelling, write words, look up definitions, or something like that
tues-journal writng
Wed-reading paper, pick the right word (verb, adj,...)
Thrus-math, this gives us the biggest hassle, have you heard of EXCEL? (they have a website) while I like the challenge, & I know he can do it, there something like 84 probs on each paper--look at the site & you'll understand. I've tried to break it up but thats a fight too. When he does it (after 45 min arguemnt) he gets it finished in like 20 min!

the website is Excelmath.com--he's in 2nd gr.

Treat after?
Big treat after a whole week of no problems?
I do bribery...

My very 1st post has had NO responses:( . Doesn't anyone care?:(

We're off for 2 wks but he has alot of un finished stuff to do over break. I can't even think about what a battle it's gonna be.....:(

post response here or in my other thread "... ideas for help w/ homework..." or something like that. Its in this forum.
I feel badly that you didn't get any responses the first time around. I was going to write and got distracted. :eek: No need to wonder where my son got his ADHD! :D

I have now combined your two posts so that everyone can read the first one, too, without having to look for it. I also see that you have been reading throughout this section and hope that you have found a couple of ideas.

I can only say that my son is exactly this way and continues to have trouble and he is now 14. What worked for us was a program run through the school that is mandatory if he doesn't have his homework done neatly and thoroughly. Supervised homework. Maybe you could check out in your area if something like this exists.

I know it was a great relief because we didn't have to be the "boo man" anymore and it has lessened the tension in our house immensely.

Not a lot of help, but maybe you could find something or talk to your school about starting such program.

Otherwise what worked the best for us was that he was not allowed any "play" with electronics (TV, Gameboy, Xbox) or meeting up with friends until the homework was done. On top of that it was a matter of letting him fall flat on his face and have to live with the consequenses from the school namely, flunking.

It's tough...you are not alone.

Kim

Yes it is!! And I know I'm not the only one, but somtimes I feel as if I am.
The teacher has "Homework Club" on Thrus before school. I just forget about it most of the time. His dad is home that day & that itself is a distraction,. Everything goes smoothly the other morns but not on thrus. I tell him that he messes up my routine ( what little I have any way).

Ps THANKS Kima for combining those !!

I can identify with your problem from 2 perspectives: I'm a second grade teacher and the parent of an ADHD second grader!!! As a teacher, my advice would be to talk to his teacher about your struggle. Maybe he can have modified assignments. But if the assignment itself or his slow working is not the issue, that would not help. What is the teacher's consequence for students who don't do homework? Maybe he might have to take the consequence a few times. In doing the homework I would advise a 15 minute work session, followed by a 15 minute break. I know ADHD kids need stimulating assignments, and I have always tried to incorporate it hat idea into my homework assignments for all of my students, mostly by offering choices. We go through a struggle at home with homework also. Same experience as yours- a 45 minute battle, for an assignment that takes 15 minutes once it is started. We have tried doing it after school, but these kids really need a little down, run off steam time. Now we do it at 5:30, while I am cooking dinner. Luckily, Cody does not have much homework this year. The only spelling assignment is to study. Last year he had a written spelling assignment every night- sentences, abc order, 3 times, etc. By the time we got through the battle, the last he was concentrating on is actually learnign the words. This year, because he does not have a written assignment, we practice them each night in unique ways- write them on a dry erase board, type them, make them with magnetic letters, write them with shaving cream in the tube, etc. He is much more open to those types of activites. Maybe you could ask your son's teacher if he could write his words in ABC order (or whatever the assignment is) with sidewlk chalk, and you could just write a note verifying that he did it. Try to find ways to make doing homework a game- how many problems can he do in 10 minutes etc. But definitely talk to the teacher. If getting him to do the work is a big struggle, he really isn't getting anything out of it by the time he settles down and works. Hope some of this helps!!!!!

Hi! I have a third grade daughter and we had lots of prblems getting through homework last year. It was also the year she was dx, so we were in the learning curve of knowing what to expect. Things that have evolved and now work for us.

1. Get to know the teacher in person and email. Get as much face time as you can and let them know how much you appreciate them and what they do. So far, her teachers really are in the profession for helping children and not just for the summers off. You also get a clearer teacher expectation of what is needed for acceptable for homework which is not always conveyed in the general notes home... I also found my daughter's expectation and consequences were more serious than the teacher's. The teacher offered to move the weekly Reading assignment(which was our hardest) from Thursday which also conflicted with the studying for a Spelling test and math homework due on Friday.
2. Get a digital timer that counts down and big enough your son can glance at and see. Tell him we are working on spelling for 15 minutes then we are taking a 10 or 15 minute break. I also challenge her during her study time. For example during spelling drills, I fast(which includes neatly) can you write this list of 10 words. Since ADD kids like to go fast, the joy is like a foot race. Before the race, it could take her 10 mintues to write the same list she can race at and do in 2 minutes. Again neatly as well.
3. Be very active during breaks from homework and you as the parent be very engaged with them during the break. It also gives you the chance to play with your child. Jump rope, jump on the trampoline, sing karaoke, dance as silly as possible... The sillier I have found I am during play, the more my daughter is ready to work because the break time can be more than reward enough. If you can do it, silly voices are good too.
4. Any homework that doesn't have to be done at a desk. Let your child, stand, so they can fidget if necessary. Can also be used as a motivation tool. If you complete your spelling under said expectation then we will sing a song and dance to learn multiplication facts...
5. Hold the kids accountable with consequences when needed. They respect and appreciate the rewards more.

Hope this will help you...

April

GRRR!! I wrote this long post & forgot to post it!!! **** IT!!!

Let me try that again...


We have tried most of the suggestions you both posted, I guess I just need to more consistant with them. :l Ihave almost daily contact w/ teacher, we live not even a 5 min walk from school, I can hear the bell during the day!! I have talked to her about my concerns, & she supports me 100% I love her!! She's been the best teacher he's ever had!!!


Funny you should say that he should take the consequences for undone HW-- that was the only O he got on his RC last week!! We do get it done but I just hate the battle to get it done!! Iknow . I know I need a miracle!! I'm just burnt!!

My son is exactly the same,unless its something creative,after 5 mins he just becomes a sulky little sir and wont do it,instead of battling with him,I try a little later and we have a few 5 min periods,its not so bad because he usually gets a week in which to do homework,if in the end he hasnt done it I will just say to him 'well your teacher isnt going to be very pleased is she?' and he finally finishes it.I find I think with kids like ours its best to try in small time scales instead of trying to get them to do it all at once,hope this helps. :)

Thanks for the support. I know that you understand.

If your son has and IEP or 504 plan under modifications write shorten homework assignments. Example instead of 20 problems your son would do 10.

Johna's reply of shortening the homework assignments in his IEP is exactly what we did for my adhd son, who is now 12 and in 6th grade middle school. (I still can't believe we have made it this far.)

I don't have many memories of his 1st 5 years of school due to how tramatic it was as far as homework and almost daily calls from school. I think I have purposely blocked them out. It was a nightmare.

My husband sounds exactly like yours. He got home earlier than me. I would call and ask if my son had any homework. My husband would say that my son said he didn't have any. I would get home and check is bookbag and it would be packed. By the time we ate and settled down for homework, my son's adhd medicine was out of his system. It would be a family feud. We'd all end up getting frustrated. Other times, he would have had a rough day and was ready to fall asleep right after dinner. I WILL NOT WAKE AN ADD/ADHD PERSON-EVER. It is so peaceful when he is sleeping. We all get along so well.

Anyway, after sending several notes to several teachers advising that I am spending way to much time nightly on his homework, finally it was suggested that his homework assignments be modified. This is in his IEP which is legally binding. Instead of his doing all the questions and answers, he'd only do the even ones. If he had several different assignments, he would do all he could up until a certain time, I would draw a line and sign off. Period. End of story. He got credit for doing his assignments.

Also, they quit criticizing his penmanship and that was a blessing because then he could do the assignment and not spend 99 percent of his time erasing. I told him to just do it and not erase anything if it's not perfect. He just had to get it done. This too was very helpful.

Prior to adjusting his IEP, we'd be up all night fighting over homework. He takes nighttime medicine (Clonidine) and when this kicks in, out goes the lights for him. In between homework, he has to take a bath. There is just not enough time in the night to do everything.

I am a believer that adhd kids need to run around and burn off the extra energy so doing his homework immediately after school is not an option for us. Whenever he got detention at school and had to stay in for recess, the school suffered too because he was even more hyper. If anything, he needs an extra recess.

One of the things that helped with spelling was flash cards. We would write all of the spelling words on different flash cards and I would ask him how to spell a word. Once he knew it, we would set the card asside. By the end we'd only have 4 or so words that he really needed to memorize. He took the flashcards to school with him so that the teachers knew he was really trying.

Another thing that helped was that I bought several of those math charts that are laminated. One side has multiplication and the other side has something else. We have these charts at home and at school.

I also bought several cheap calculators for at home and school. His IEP also shows that he can use a calculator. This has to be written into it. The teachers probably will not offer this.

The biggest challenge we had was that his homework assignment would say he had math, but there would be no math book to be found. Or he had Science, no book. Day after day. I would PURPOSELY right in his homework assignment book that there was once again no book and for them to please remind him what books are needed as it says in his IEP that they were supposed to do this. Week after week, still books didn't make it out of his desk to home. Finally someone suggested that I get an extra set of books for at home. WOW. As an ADHD Mom, Why didn't I think of that!! We started off 5th grade with an extra set of books at home just in case he forgot to bring them home. He did much better remembering books that year but if he didn't remember, we had the extra books just in case.

Since he is now in 6th grade, we had the option for the last class of each day to be in the resource room (kind of a study hall). There are only a handful of kids in there and he is able to do his homework with the resource teacher available to help. Rarely do we have any homework to do at home which means that the homework assigned to him can actually be done in the time a class lasts. If he were to be doing it at home, I am sure it would take hours.

This year I started something new and it is also working. Whenever a paper needs to be turned in at school, I put a big yellow post it note on the top of it, I write "turn in today" and have it dangling way above his binder so that there is no way he won't see it. I tell him to turn the paper into whatever teacher he finds. Just turn it in. We usually turn alot of it into the resource teacher because she knows what a challenge it is to be turning the stuff in. So far, so good.

Hope this helps...

OK. Let me say that our prob is not one of not being able to remember how to spell, figure math probs, etc... He has a photographic memory!!

Very seldom does he miss words on his sp test, or forget what he learned in science or other classes. Ours is a problem of just refusal to do what little he has to do.

Aside from math hw, most of it is very simple & takes all of 10-15 min. I don't know if you saw my post (somewhere here)but hs math hw is ususally an Excel page. (if you don't know what this is the web address is www.excelmath.com (http://www.excelmath.com))

although I do wish that his penmanship was neater I try not get on him as much about this. I figure it will get better w/ time!

Everyone, this is NOT just an ADD/ADHD problem! My third grader and I have these homework battles all the time and he is a very bright young man that does not have ADD! He is reading at a 5th grade level, and can get through 500 page books on his own and pass AR (Accelerated Reader) tests on them with 100%. BUT his handwriting is terrible (Boys) and getting him to do written work is like pulling teeth! My husband's phrase is "He crams 10 minutes of work into 2 hours of elapsed time". As far as I can tell, ALL kids this age have trouble with the idea of "you have to practice xxx a lot before you are good at it." And unfortunately, second, third, and fourth grade are the years full of mind numbing, boring, repitition: handwriting and cursive, addition and subtraction drills, 1 minute multipliication drills, and the worlds most BORING composition assignments ever. (wriite an opinion comparing two places you have visited; use spelling words from the list: bought, caught, brought, taught, ought, daughter, enough, laugh, cough) I don't know how you convince a ANY kid this age to "just buckle down and get the boring task done" much less one with attention problems!

YOU MEAN I HAVE 2-3 MORE YRS OF THIS!!!!!:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

Glad to know it isn't just an ADHDer problem... We're almost done with all the HW he had to finish over break.....YEAH:D I think he's begining to relize that if he gets it done in class he'll have more time at home to do what he wants to... God I hope so anyway!!!