The 2 Main Reasons Your Child Procrastiates on Homework
ByIt is important to look at the cause of your child’s procrastination on starting homework because each of the 2 primary causes has a very different type of solution.
First you have the student who procrastinates due to distractions. These can be after school activities, phone calls, texting, video games, TV or a host of other things they can do that are perceived as more fun than doing homework. This delay in starting homework is based on pleasure. “I’m having fun and I don’t want to stop what I’m doing!”
The solution for the distraction delay is in getting agreement with your student on which things will happen when. Then those agreements are written down. After that it gets easier to point to the clear fact that your student has run out of time in the fun time block and the homework time block is about to begin.
The second type of homework procrastination is based on distaste, fear or dread. The child has had negative experiences with his ability to get the work done in a reasonable amount of time with an acceptable level of effort (from his perspective.) This is an avoidance based delay and must be dealt with in a very different way.
If your child is procrastinating on homework in an effort to avoid feelings of “I’m not good enough” or “this is SO hard,” then you need a completely different approach to get the homework started on time.
This needs student support, encouragement and good tools and strategies to make the work easier and more manageable. These solutions will not be centered around time and scheduling.
If your student seems to have both reasons for procrastinating, look to see how much avoidance is present and work on solutions in that area first. You can also do quick simple scheduling too but be sure to find out as much as you can about what is making the homework unpleasant and feeling like frustration or failure. You will want to get tools and strategies right away to help him have an easier time with doing the homework.
