Homeworkin'

[moominmolly]

this article from mzrowan got me thinking about homework -- one of my favorite things to hate. The article details one father's attempts to do his 8th-grade daughter's homework every night for a week, and it gave me chills. 3 hours! a day!

Natalie has nightly homework, and she's in a phase of being interested in completing it, but when she stops being interested? I don't know what will happen.

Parents of older kids - how do you deal with homework? Is it too much? Everyone: WTF HOMEWORK?

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

What else is the kid doing that 8 or 9pm is when she first sits down to homework?

Oh, well, you know, the 857923 activities you have to be enrolled in to have any chance of getting into college.

This is a phenomenon I find baffling, but it's widespread -- lots of kids have afterschool activities many days of the week, and you add up the activities and the transit time and so forth and, yeah, they might not be home before dinner. This is particularly true if they go to private schools, which often require sports of everyone. But, of course, public or private, they might have sports, or drama, or band, or all the lessons and tutoring that their parents are POSITIVELY CERTAIN they must have. (Did I say "or"? I might have meant "and".)

I take my kid to a dance class once a week, because it is on the weekend and around the corner. I sign her up for some clubs that are at her school as part of the afterschool program, because hey, they're there! And mostly she gets to pick. Aside from that, if she wants to be overscheduled, she has to wait until she can transport herself. But obviously I didn't grow up in the Boston/NYC universe. (shhh, someday they will discover I don't care if my kid goes to the "right" college, and kick us out of private school)