Follow up on the use of The Homework Trap

Last week, I reported an example of success using the Homework Trap model. I just received an update that the child continues to do well, and that the parent has now identified the types of difficulties the child was having.

In my model, I advocate for time bound assignments and for parents to transition from acting as enforcers and, instead, becoming observers. Once you cap the time and dispel the belief that all homework must get done, you can stop and step back, and figure out what is happening with your child. As an observer, you can obtain information and share it with the teacher, with the goal of ultimately helping your child. As an enforcer, you get caught in an ongoing and inevitable, unproductive battle.

_{For more information on Dr. Goldberg's model, read other postings on this blog, visit his website, The Homework Trap, or read his book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.} 

Classroom Management

I came across an article on classroom management. It may help address the problem of excessive and untimed homework by helping teachers see that homework actually disrupts the classroom. I wrote a comment to the editors of the website that published this article. Here's what I wrote:

I read the article by Amy Pearson, How to Reduce Behavioral Problems in the ElementarySchool Classroom. I'm a psychologist, not an educator, and I defer to educators on issues of curricula and classroom management, but I am absolutely sure that a large number of behavioral problems are actually manufactured by teachers in their efforts to control environments outside the classroom, i.e. the home. Everything said in Ms. Pearson's article makes sense, but it makes sense largely because it involves strategies where the teacher has control. As soon as the teacher tries to establish requirements and standards outside her domain, she loses authority, which will ultimately translate into problematic behavior -- not for all, but for enough students that the class gets disrupted. Homework reform is the most important step the teacher can take to reduce those disruptions. And since homework does not garner research support in the elementary school and since teachers do not take courses in giving homework when they go to school, it's a complete win-win to modify homework practice.

_{For more information on Dr. Goldberg's model, read other postings on this blog, visit his website, The Homework Trap, or read his book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.} 

 

Parenting Style -- Does it Matter with Homework?

In today's New York Times, there is a debate over whether or not to include children in determining their punishments (Should Kids Pick Their Own Punishments?) Frankly, I would rather see kids pick their own punishments than to have teachers pick the punishments for in-the-home behaviors over the judgments of the parents. Here's the comment I submitted to the paper:

This discussion is entirely academic when we consider that the primary cause of child, behavioral problems is homework. As a psychologist of 35 years and a parent of 3 children, I can say, with confidence, that there is no issue that makes parents feel so helpless or impacts the family, more severely, than our practice of vesting in 30 or more homework-giving teachers (over 12 years of public education), the power to exert severe, life-impacting penalties on our children. Children who have trouble absorbing and retaining verbal instructions and who read or write slowly cannot do their work in a reasonable period of time. Yet, unlike the time-bound school day, the homework session is endless. This basic fact (individual differences between children and the parents’ lack of say in their own homes) drives behavioral problems to the point that the differences in parenting styles and beliefs discussed here are irrelevant to resolving problems. Without the behavioral engine being driven by homework demands, either of these approaches is equally good. www.thehomeworktrap.com.

 

_{For more information on Dr. Goldberg's model, read other postings on this blog, visit his website, The Homework Trap, or read his book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.} 

Time in or time out

I came across an article, written by an exacerbated parent, in the online Wall Street Journal. The parent was struggling with how to put limits on the use of electronic media in the service of having her children get their homework done. When I lecture on The Homework Trap, I often ask parents what they think is a good consequence for homework not done and, to a tee, the answer involves removing the types of devices the writer refers to here. I then point out that the hallmark of a “good consequence,” is one that it is one that works, and the way you know it works is that you do not have to use it again. Consequences that continue to be used teach avoidant behavior, not homework compliance.

So, I’m going to offer this mother, and parents everywhere, an alternative to efforts to limit time doing things that are fun, and that is to limit time on the homework. Most parents have no trouble getting their kids to go to school. Their children know when the school day starts, and they know when it stops. Adults know when they’re supposed to show up for their jobs. They know when they can go home. It’s the natural order of things that “work” and “chores” be planned and placed in containers. Fun, free-time, is yours to use. So rather than engage in repetitive and unproductive efforts to get your child to limit what he wants to do, place limits on what he has to do. Set up an at-home study hall. Call it quiet time. Join your child, not in completing the homework, but in maintaining the quiet norm. Read a book. Take care of some personal business. Use the time to finish things from your work that you did not have time to complete during the work day. Do it the space where your child works and be available to “help” the child only if needed and requested by the child. But make sure that when the homework/quiet session is over, it completely comes to a stop, whether or not all the work has been done.

You’ll find yourself being much more effective overseeing your child’s behavior and helping your child get more work done by resisting the temptation to place boundaries on things that are fun, and begin putting the boundaries on the “must-do’s,” like homework, the child faces at night.


For more information on Dr. Goldberg's model, read other postings on this blog, visit his website, The Homework Trap, or read his book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers. 

 

  

A Six Week Check

We are about 6 weeks into the school year and it is time to ask, “How are we doing?” Homework trapped children typically do well for the first three or so weeks of the year because, counter to common misperceptions, they are motivated to do well. It is a matter of what they can do more than what they want to do. By six weeks, it is likely that, if your child is homework trapped, the notes are coming home and you are engaged in a process of trying to get your child to catch up for where he or she has fallen behind. If so, this is the time to take action, and by that I mean to orient yourself to the psychological factors that cause common parent-teacher strategies to make matters worse, and consider alternatives to homework demands.

Here are some common characteristics you may find in your child if he or she is homework trapped:

•       My child won't complete his homework.

•       My child will endure almost any punishment rather than complete his homework.

•       Even when my child tries to do his homework, very little actually gets done.

•       My child refuses my help with homework assignments.

•       Homework assignments rarely make it from school to home.

•       Homework that is done rarely makes it from home to school.

•       Even if the homework gets to school, it's rarely handed in.

•       Other than homework, my child does fairly well at school.

•       When my child first started, he was eager and truly enjoyed school.

•       My child spends more than 10 min per grade per night on HW.

•       My child has very poor handwriting.

Here are some common characteristics you may find in yourself if you are homework trapped.

•       I think about my child's homework much of the time.

•       I talk about homework many times each night.

•       I shudder at the thought of asking my child if he has homework or if his homework has been done.

•       I speak with the teachers more than I want, and I never feel good when those meetings are done.

•       I've joined my child's teachers in constructing plans that never work to solve the homework problem.

•       Homework seems the most important issue in my child's life.

•       I've lost authority over my child in other areas that matter to me.

If this applies, here’s your homework:

Read The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers and Students right away, and open a dialogue with your child’s teachers based on these principles.

Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.

Stress, boredom, and homework problems

Education Week has an article, “Studies Link Student Boredom to Stress.”  This study highlights an issue that is central to my model, The Homework Trap. Kids who are homework trapped are misperceived as unmotivated (or bored). We overlook the fact that they are under a great deal of stress being asked to do work they cannot do, or at least cannot do within a reasonable amount of time. I call this process, The Myth of Motivation. If we take a serious look at the psychology behind homework noncompliance, we can see that standard approaches to force homework compliance increase stress, and more homework noncompliance and bad behaviors become natural and predictable responses to those efforts. In my book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers, I highlight how things we know from behavioral, developmental, and organizational psychology all point to the same conclusion, that ongoing homework pressure for homework trapped students does more harm than good. The Education Week article points to one aspect of that process.


Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

 

Implementing The Homework Trap -- Part 2

This is the second of a four-part series on implementing the concepts of the homework trap. Here, I will talk about what you can do as a parent, on your own, with or without the support of the school. My primary recommendation here is to establish clear time limits on homework. Consider making homework a family "quiet time/study hall," in which you engage in quiet activities at the same time your child does his or her homework, possibly in the same room, possibly nearby but accessible for help if needed. But the key is that the homework sessions comes to an end. In my experience, this increases rather than reduces the amount of homework that actually gets done and is far more pleasant and productive than to argue about homework through the night or to let it consume more time than you want it to take. I discuss this further in the accompanying video and I direct my readers to an article that came out last July, "How to Catch a Falling Son." This article gives a clear example of how the time-based rule helped one child in a three week period of time, shifting the course of his education from failure to success.



Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.

Implementing The Homework Trap

This is the first of four messages I plan to provide on implementing the principles of The Homework Trap. When I speak, I generally find that people agree with what I have to say up to the point of implementing these ideas. It is not uncommon to receive feedback that my ideas make sense, but how are we going to get teachers on board? Frankly, I have a lot of respect for teachers and confidence in their desire to learn (after all, they chose the field of education). I also understand how important it is, if teachers are to change, that the change makes sense to them.

Today's video introduces the concept of implementation. I will follow with three more blogs addressing what one can do:

In the home with or without change at school.
In cooperation with your child's teachers.
In the school-community at large.

Depending on what comes up in the news, there may be some intervening blog posts, but I expect that within a week or so, I will have covered each of these issues with a specific comment.




Visit The Homework Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

Wyndmoor Press now offers bulk rate discounts to parent, school, and community groups. We recommend Amazon for single copy purchases.

Good homework advice

Dr. Kenneth Barish has written an excellent article on homework on the Oxford University Press blog. Click here to read "The battle over homework."

I posted the following comment on the blog:

This is extremely good advice and coincides quite well with what I say in my book, The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers.

The point I want to emphasize the most is “Set aside a specified and limited time for homework.” It is as important to let the child STOP doing homework as it is to have the child start doing homework. This is a difficult step for parents to take since they fear that incomplete homework with garner poor grades.

But Dr. Barish is 100% right in his contention that children do not learn much through homework battles, and most children will do more in a time-bound homework session than they will accomplish battling over homework all night long.

The only other comment I have is that Dr. Barish quips that if homework were banned, education would suffer and he might be out of clients. I agree that we are creating huge numbers of behavioral problems through our homework policy and that the need for child psychologists would be less if we banned homework. The other side of the statement that education would suffer is not completely supported by the research on homswork.

Anyway, thank you, Dr. Barish, for an excellent article.


Visit The Homewor Trap website

Dr. Kenneth Goldberg, is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Teachers, and Students, published by Wyndmoor Press.

The Myth of Motivation -- 2

I saw an articlefrom Pakistan that suggests that “slow learning” is a leading cause of suicides, among youth. The article refers to students who cannot pass their high school matriculation exam.  Yesterday, I wrote about The Myth of Motivation. I find a lot of evidence that children who do poorly, particularly those who don’t get their homework done, care far more about doing well that the credit they receive.  One interesting observation I’ve made is that children with chronic homework problems usually appear highly motivated in September when they get to school. This is particularly true in middle school because they have four or five different major subject teachers. It gives these children a window of opportunity to “do well,” for at least a few weeks, since they can get all the work done for some teachers, even if it means doing none for the others. Quickly, the boom comes down, their parents are called in, and so much pressure bears down to get all the work done, that they end of doing nothing at all. Again, they are viewed an unmotivated. But watch that window. Typically, these kids are extremely excited about school.

My friend and colleague, Professor Jay Kuder, used to join me on presentations on the Homework Trap. He would use the example, in explaining the Myth of Motivation, of a kid who slammed his desk in frustration that he never won the Student of the Week Award which in this school meant being given the opportunity to have lunch with the principal. Hardly an unmotivated student. Yet, he could never win this award, not because he didn’t try hard in school, but because he was not capable of completing the homework assignment s, get recognition for his efforts, and eventually winning the award.

The article from Pakistan is very short and does not give details about why this is the case. But it is chilling to think that we think kids don’t care, but then see them taking their own lives when they fail to do well.






Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
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The Myth of Motivation

I came across what I consider to be an extraordinary claim that “According to the National Association of School Psychologists, ‘Most students understand a homework assignment and have the ability to perform the task but forget to bring home all of the materials required to complete it.’” The claim is in a news release that appears to have been generated by a commercial enterprise that manufactures and sells an organizational device, called a “Seat Sack,” so I understand this is not a professional piece but may be part of that company’s marketing approach. Nevertheless, I am interested in knowing the source for the statement. Is that true? Has the NASP really taken that position?

I raise the issue because several years ago Professor Jay Kuder and I presented a workshop at the annual convention of the NASP. In the presentation, we focused on the “Myth of Motivation,” and went on to explain how so-called “bad behaviors” were not the cause of homework non-compliance, but actually the result of unremitting homework pressure based on a failure to understand that the child cannot, rather than does not want to do the homework. I appreciated that the organizers of the convention gave us the opportunity to present our ideas.  We never expected that NASP would take a position one way or the other, but would rather serve as a professional forum where psychologists could share and debate different ideas.

Beyond the question of NASP’s positions on homework, I am further concerned if school psychologists as a group are not questioning the idea that children who don’t do their work really can do their work. In ways, school psychologists could be on the front line of efforts to protect and help homework-trapped children. The under-the-radar learning problems that I often refer to as contributing to homework noncompliance are typically found in the areas of working memory and processing speed. School psychologists routinely administer IQ tests in evaluating children who are having problems in school. The standard IQ test generates four composite scores, two of them being working memory and processing speed. One of my concerns and a point I make when I review records of children who are homework-trapped is that the implications of these findings (low scores on one or both of these scales) frequently get overlooked. Child study teams garner a wealth of information in their efforts to help children. Yet, they cannot help homework-trapped children if they hold onto the “myth of motivation.” They need to look at the data from a new perspective so they can see how behavioral problems are often learning problems in disguise. Otherwise, acting out becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, and the child moves down a path of greater behavioral disturbance. Ironically, the child may then move into a special education class or an alternative school where homework is not given at all. It’s a curious result that the child, who could have thrived in regular classes by being given homework relief, now gets the relief he needed all along, at the cost of being excluded from the regular classrooms.

I know that many people who follow my blog have children who are homework-trapped and have been evaluated by the child study team. If you are one of those parents, I recommend that you pass my comments on to the school psychologist on your child’s child study team. I don’t know if the claim cited at the beginning of this blog post truly reflects the position of NASP. If it does, it might be helpful for your child’s school psychologist to know there is another point of view. 





Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

Ending the Homework Battles

I found this article called “Ending the Homework Battle.” It reports on book by a psychologist, Drew Edwards, called “How to Handle the Hard-to-Handle Kid.” I have not read Dr. Edwards’ book and I assume that it goes beyond what is reported in this article.  I would be interested in knowing how much he considers the possibility that the child is not doing the work because he can’t do the work, can’t do all of the work, or can’t do enough of the work in a reasonable amount of time. If the child keeps getting zeros for work not done, the child and parent will inevitably run into a wall that they cannot get past.  I note that one of the points mentioned in the article is “Find a starting point.” I would like to add to that, “Find an end point.” I think bringing homework to a close, whether or not it is done, is one of the most important steps in resolving homework problems.






Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

Summer Homework

Edutopia is conducting a poll on the issue of assigning summer homework. The choices are yes, maybe, no, and none of the above. I chose none of the above and left a comment on edutopia. I share my thoughts in this video.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

Homework and Drugs

In today's New York Times, there is an article entitled, The Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill.  I think we can look at the problem raised here, along with other drug problems, as connected to homework policy. Here is the comment I made in The New York Times, along with a more extensive video, expanding on these points.


When I attended college in the late 1960s, amphetamines were being readily prescribed as diet pills, the way they are now being prescribed for ADHD. Nearly anyone could get them at the student health center. At finals, large numbers of students used those pills to help them stay up and pull all-nighters. I could not have imagined that happening at the high school level. We chose to go to college, and we entered with the knowledge that 16 hours of school was a full time load and that we would be expected to spend hours in the dorm or in the library, with our peers, continuing our work, and that would sometimes call for the all-nighter. Today, children attend school (mandatory education) over thirty hours a week, but are expected to come home and continue working (in a space they occupy with their parents, not their school peers), and manage hours of work. Are we surprised that they resort to pills to help get them through? I should also add that although there are some kids who are motivated and driven to do well and use uppers, there are other kids who are overwhelmed by the demands, are constantly criticized, get turned off to school, and are at greater risk of using other types of drugs.



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the website
Read book reviews of The Homework Trap
What is The Homework Trap?
A Roadmap to Success
504 plans

Homework and ADD

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk with a family: mom, dad, grandma, and 12 year old boy. The boy was well-mannered and seemed like a normal child. His mother told me that they had had ongoing problems with him at school. He did well in class, but did not get his homework done. His mother was called in by the school starting around third grade. She told the teachers that he had trouble focusing on the work and thought he might have ADD. The teacher scoffed, the demands kept coming in, and homework would go on all night long. In fourth and fifth grade, the same. Then in sixth grade, his teacher decided he had ADD and, based on that opinion, the school did a 180 and was now pushing hard for diagnosis and treatment. In effect, his teacher wanted this boy to take medication. She did not want to revise the requirements. The child did not seem hyperactive to me and his mother made the point that he had ADD, not ADHD. I shared my thoughts that homework time should be capped and that it is an error to conceptualize the problem just as the child not getting his work done. Rather, we should conceptualize the problem as the child is spending too much time on homework. Reduce the required time and the child is more likely to comply and more likely to actually get some work done. If this child is inattentive at school, he was certainly paying attention to what I was saying and eagerly and appropriately joined our conversation. He seemed very willing to work for an hour if he could then be free, and his parents seemed to think that would work for them as well. I don’t know if this child has ADD. I didn’t get the feeling that he did and it is an overly diagnosed condition these days, but, who knows? It would require more information than I had in this fairly casual context to know. But the point is that this was an average seeming family with competent parents, certainly capable of looking at their son and making decisions on his behalf, and if they are battling with him long into the night, not because they choose to but because they feel forced to, they cannot really help and guide their child. I mentioned to the parents that they should make the decision to cap the time. I shared with them the norm in education, an hour per night per grade, which could be used as a standard. I suggested that they make that decision, firmly and not subject to negotiation, and see what the teachers do. In my experience, even if they don’t agree with that decision, many teachers will modify their demands once the parents are clear this is the decision they have made. I also point out, that if their child truly had ADD, that could also be the basis for constructing a 504 plan. I cautioned them that the one problem with a 504 plan is that most schools are not yet aware of the model I promote, so 504 plans often include “more time,” not “less work.” The other issue with ADD, which did not seem appropriate for this particular family since this child’s “ADD” was either non-existent or mild in nature, is that children with true ADD or ADHD, need even lower time caps on homework than ordinary children need. I’ll explain that piece in a future blog post.
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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Student humiliated over homework problems

This incident took place in Arizona, but appears in a Kansas City article. I think of this as a tip-of-the-iceberg issue. I don't really fault the teacher who appears to have been trying to be playful with the students and things came out the wrong way. But there is a larger issue which is that children, everyday, are being faulted and humiliated over failing to get their homework done on the misguided assumption that they could do well, if they just tried. It is my experience that homework problems start as educational issues, get misperceived as behavioral problems with that misperception reinforcing the behavioral problems. The school gets mobilized because of the behavioral problems, and the child moves into a behavioral classroom where homework is no longer required. It is a destructive and roundabout way of giving children the homework relief they needed in the first place. These children get turned off to education when they could have thrived had the situation been better understood at the start. Here is my commentary on his particular news item:



Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

Visit the The Homework Trap website

Homework and Behavior

I would like to comment on the issue of homework and behavior.  In a conversation I once had, a member of a child study team told me that about half of all children she dealt with who had behavioral problems showed those problems, first, through homework noncompliance. That’s an extraordinary amount, one which in my mind, calls for homework reform, if not for the whole school, at least for those children who are homework-trapped. Think about it. Schools are there to teach. Behavioral management, although necessary, interrupts the primary mission of schools, to teach our children. Imagine the positive impact it would have on education for all, if there were ways to reduce homework-generated behavior management problems. Well, I think there are, and they come through the simple ideas I suggest in my model. I explain it further in the video clip below, and encourage all parents of homework-trapped children to pass this clip on to members of your child’s school staff.

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The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers
Dr. Kenneth Goldberg is a clinical psychologist with 35 years of professional experience in dealing with many different psychological issues. He is the author of The Homework Trap: How to Save the Sanity of Parents, Students and Teachers and currently works in his own private practice.

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