End the Homework Battle

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At our Parent Information Meeting this week, a parent shared that her son spends 5 hours a night on what should be less than an hour of homework.

Another parent, whose son also seems to do nothing but homework after school said, “We just want him to have his life back!â€

When my son was 8, I distinctly remember him saying to me in exasperation, “You don’t know!  That’s not how my teacher says to do it!â€Â 

Even when there are no learning challenges, parents doing homework with their kids can be difficult.  There’s just too much emotion involved and kids know just what buttons to push.  Finding that balance between enough support and giving too much help is tough.

Add in dyslexia, ADHD, or other learning struggles and everything just got 100 times harder.

Students with learning challenges have to expend so much more mental effort than their peers all day long in school to do the job.  It can be mentally and physically exhausting.

Download “How to Win the Homework Battle” at the bottom of this post.

When we think about school, we think about reading, writing, math, and subject areas.  But there are whole sets of underlying learning/processing skills that support efficient, easy learning.

  • Sitting still in a chair
  • Paying attention and staying focused
  • Getting all the information when listening
  • Understanding and remembering what is read or heard
  • Coming up with logical responses
  • Organizing information on the page

These things need to be working automatically in order for the brain to be available to learn new information, but they don’t just happen because you’re old enough to go to school.  The ability to do these things automatically is the result of strong, specific underlying skills. The underlying skills are represented in the bottom three boxes of the Learning Continuum.

The Learning Continuum - Therapeutic Literacy Center

When the underlying skills are weak or inefficient, students may struggle with school and homework in spite of good intelligence.  Kids with learning challenges expend so much effort and energy trying to manage at school, that by the time they get home, they are often mentally exhausted.  They’re done!

And the homework battle begins.

The only way to really stop this cycle is to correct the problem…to identify and develop the underlying skills.  This IS possible!  For more information about how to WIN the homework battle download our free document.

Take action now before the school year ends! Come to a free parent night or schedule an individual consultation to learn more about what is causing your child to struggle and how you can help.

[tabs tab1=”Free Document” tab2=”Parent Night” tab3=”Consultation”]

[tab id=1]Download our free “How to Win the Homework Battle” document for a deeper understanding of how homework struggles and successes happen

[/tab] [tab id=2]Schedule a free Parent Night to gain valuable insights and information about your student’s education

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[tab id=3]Schedule a free Consultation to speak with our Executive Director about your student’s specific needs.

[/tab] [/tabs] [testimonial name=”Carolyn Kinnon” company=”Paisley’s Mom”]Paisley LOVES TLC, and has from her very first session!  She absolutely looks forward to each and every session, even getting up early on Saturday mornings, without complaint and eager to go.  Her favorite thing about TLC is the clinicians. Paisley loves TLC “because it feels like games, even though I know it isn’t, and it helps me with my response speed.”  From a parents perspective, it’s wonderful to see that my child is happy to be participating in this therapy.  Paisley’s ability to sound out and spell words was so difficult before TLC that she would fight tooth-and-nail to avoid writing, but now she willingly writes and types her homework assignments, and is improving in her ability to spell words that she wouldn’t even attempt before.  Most importantly, she’s able to get her thoughts out on paper without the agony she used to experience while trying to express herself.  Her confidence has increased, she tries when she used to give up, and she’s having successes in learning that we feared she might never experience – Hooray! We couldn’t feel more blessed and grateful to have found TLC![/testimonial] // ]]>