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Breakdown large assignments to avoid anxiety
September 16, 2008 12:00 PM Filed in: Elementary
School
My
son is having a hard time returning to school. Last
year he was in kindergarten and had homework. This
year, his homework has increased. Now when he sees a
full page of homework, he has a meltdown thinking it
will take him forever. He now brings home a math
sheet and a reading sheet as well as spelling for
Friday tests. My son did well last year but it took a
lot of tears and agony by the entire family. What can
I do?
|
Dear Dr. Fournier: My son is having a hard time returning to school. Last year he was in kindergarten and had homework. This year, his homework has increased. Now when he sees a full page of homework, he has a meltdown thinking it will take him forever. He now brings home a math sheet and a reading sheet as well as spelling for Friday tests. My son did well last year but it took a lot of tears and agony by the entire family. What can I do? |
The Assessment: Time seems to be the culprit.
Young children do not have a concept of time. So having a parent or teacher tell a child, “It won’t take you long,” or “It will only take 20 minutes,” is the same as speaking Greek with a Chinese accent. The child has no clue about measuring time and homework means loss of time since he doesn’t know yet how to measure how much he is losing.
In this case, it appears the fear of returning to school is about loss of his time because of increased homework that will take more from his playtime.
And each year it just becomes more and more work - more at school and more at home.
What To Do: The first time I picked up my son from school only to have him get in the car screaming and crying, I was shocked. I stopped the car for him to hysterically tell me his teacher had given him 100 math problems to do. I realized quickly that it was not the math so much as it was the concept of 100.
I couldn’t help but remember how much we celebrated the first time he counted to 100 because it was such a big number and task.
I agreed with him that this was a lot but that once home he could do ten problems at a time. After ten, he could take a break.
I asked how long he thought 10 problems would take. He said 100 minutes. I set the digital timer for 100 minutes and put in front of him with the rule he had to turn it off when he finished the ten problems. Four seconds later he turned it off. Now, he could rest. His next guess for the next 10 problems was 50 minutes, which ended up taking five four. Next, he wanted to try 20 problems and so he set the timer for 90 minutes. Before he knew it, he had finished the page and realized that 100 problems were done in less than 10 minutes.
He also realized that completing the entire assignment at once and not taking breaks gave him more play time after his homework was done.
On reading or spelling, I would fold the page to the amount he thought he could get done in the amount of time he wanted to set. As in math, he learned that getting it all done at once was faster than starting and stopping.
The lesson here is that young children do not know what they are capable of doing in one, two, five seconds or minutes or much less in an hour. One hundred is an enormous number for some children, and in their minds is equivalent to the rest of their life.
Use these methods – break up homework into “chunks” and use a small digital timer – to show your child he is capable of the work in a reasonable amount of time. This will relieve stress and agony within the entire family and will help your son to take control of homework without losing sleep because he is afraid of what will be asked of him next.
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