How Making Choices Can Help Your Child Have a Positive Feeling About Doing Homework
ByI know it may seem unlikely that your child could have a positive feeling about doing homework but there is a simple thing that can be done to move things in that direction. This does not mean that if your child hates reading and it is a tremendous struggle for him, he will suddenly love reading.
Here is a simple strategy you can use that will make any student feel better about doing homework. Notice the goal here is for the child to feel better. If you give your child some choice in exactly when and how things are done he will feel better about doing it than if all the terms are dictated and he has no choices. You can allow choice about what order he will do things in. (Of course everything has to get done and TV first is not on the list of choices unless he has demonstrated a high level of performance on work being done after TV. That particular choice does not work for most students because they are tired and a bit dulled by the TV watching and the homework usually suffers.) But he could choose whether to do a household chore before or after homework. He might choose an activity to do before doing homework or just take a brief break and knock out the homework in time for a favorite TV show.
You want the choices to be small things related to the homework so there is a feeling of having some control regarding the homework itself. The feeling of having some power and control over the homework will help diminish resistance to the task.
