Should parents help their kids do their homework or not?

• Published date: 23 September 2021
• Author: Lizi Porat/Walla!
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

One issue that concerns many parents is homework.

Parents have a significant role in encouraging their children to do homework, study for exams and submit assignments. But this role is more about "what not to do." Let's talk about it once and for all: Should we help them with assignments or are we hurting them more than helping?

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Many parents feel helpless in the face of this great enemy called homework. As children advance from grade to grade, parents become lost in the maze of math exercises they've forgotten how to solve, and questions in history, geography and language. Add in the hopeless feelings of parents during COVID-19 - lessons not learned information, tools and skills not acquired, knowledge gaps that have opened up.

What to do?

Parents immediately enlist various private tutors to help their children stay in a good spot in the Israeli rat race.

"No choice" they say, all children are privately tutored - why should my child be left behind?

Why do children even do homework?

Children are given homework that aims to develop independent learning skills. Really, what happens is far from learning, and even further away from independence.

Recently, I was privileged to watch, as a parenting instructor who is also the mother of a teenager in high school, a situation that was very interesting to me. A large group of teens came to our house and saw the book (my daughter's summer reading assignment) on the table.

They piped up: "Wow, when did you start reading? I haven't even bought the book yet." "I bought the book two weeks ago, and put it in a drawer." "I actually tried to read, I sat on the couch for two hours and fell asleep. I got to page two."

I smiled to myself as I thought about what their parents would have said if they had heard this chatter.

Let's face it, no matter what we do, they won't read any books this summer, and yet I think they'll learn a lot just for the sake of it: a lesson in dealing with an unwanted reality.

And so, there will be someone who'll read the summary, and succeed in creating the impression that he read the entire book, another will use personal magic and make a parent read it and give over the plot. Some will say that he forgot what he read sometime at the beginning of the summer, and a few students will read and maybe even enjoy the book. Either way, it won't matter what we parents...