education

This book describes the daily/nightly family homework ordeal that traps so many of us. It promises remedies in non-technical, easy to read words. And it delivers on its promise with usable plans and examples in a variety of real life success stories.

Whether we parents were told wrong, as Rosemond blames modern "Parenting Experts," or whether we heard wrong, certainly parenting has become a bigger, more difficult deal, with parents believing more involvement makes us better parents while giving our kids more self-esteem. But this is not working. "Involvement" becomes interference, helping becomes confronting, their homework becomes our homework, their failure becomes our failure- so we will become more involved to avoid failure, because we want to be Good Parents. And so, homework becomes an exhausting no-win battlefield of wills littered with intellectual and emotional casualties. The answer is to back off and give homework responsibilities back to our kids, along with the rewards (pride, self-confidence, experience and privileges) and the consequences (failure, redemption, wisdom and denied privileges) of taking ownership of their own schoolwork. Stop hovering, checking, correcting, signing, protecting, threatening, pleading, promising, dictating, bribing and exasperating in the name of homework. (What is that saying about teaching a pig to talk, or was it to sing? It's a waste of your time and it only annoys the pig?!) Even more importantly, if you change these old ways of all-consuming conflict, you will stop neglecting yourself, your health, your marriage, and your family.

I'm using the book to set up a framework of goals, privileges and consequences for our 10-1/2 year-old fifth grader. The book doesn't cover some specifics in his case, such as trusting him for the 3-1/2 hours he is home alone after school, so we'll have to work out some things as we go along. But already, immediately, I've had two important revelations. First, I've never written down consequences before. I always thought I disciplined using consequences, but now I realize I only talked about them, made them up as we went along, changed them, threatened with them, held them inside and then blew them out of proportion. Until now I've never sat down with our son and his teacher, negotiated, and agreed to attainable goals and consistent consequences. Second, I didn't realize how entrenched I was in parenting by micro-managing until I tried these changes. As much as I agreed with these changes, I still had great difficulty not following our son around the house and not asking, "Did you finish... don't forget to... have you done... when are you going to...?" Even though I smugly read the book and approved of all the back-to-basics techniques, I still had trouble breaking my old habits, supporting these changes in task ownership, and trusting the motivational power of fair, consistent consequences. We shall see... The potential is exciting, and already there has been an immediate lowering of tension. I no longer take bad behavior or schoolwork personally, I don't get furious, and the consequences are established and accepted. It's a start- a flexible, negotiable start.

Among my favorite quotes from this book:

"...if the child fails to do his homework, no one should get upset but the child, and no one should be inconvenienced but the child."

"Kids are smart, but teenagers are clever."

"It is a simple statement of accountability that proposes that parents should never agonize over a child's behavior if the child is perfectly capable of agonizing over it himself."

"It's about coaching from the sidelines, as opposed to getting swept up in the action on the field."

Read, enjoy, learn, implement, then learn more!

(submitted by Larry Borshard)

Thanks to this book, I am out of the homework business and my kids are responsible for their own homework. Follow these simple steps and your child will complete his homework on time with no fuss. Better grades are an added bonus. Get out of the homework business. It's not your job, it's your child's!!!

Before I read this book, I planned and spent my afternoons and evenings around my daughter's elementary school homework, keeping me from having time with the rest of my family. I spend countless hours asking her study questions, definitions, and checking her work. I hovered to make sure she "got it right". I used the Internet to brush up on concepts and topics that SHE was to be learning. Now I realize that by taking control of her homework, I was not allowing her to be responsible for it; I was sending the message that she couldn't handle the responsiblity on her own. Boy was I wrong! Now, although her grades are not perfect, they are HERS alone and she has earned them. Talk about boosting self-esteem! And I am now free to spend time with my family instead of re-learing mode, median and range! Thank you Mr. Rosemond!