Helping children do homework means helping them to get alone to the answers they are looking for and stimulate them to find their own way and their ways to benefit from the study
Our children have i Duties to doand, very important point, they must do them. I am always amazed in the face of those parents who candidly admit they have spent the evening to end, complete, correct works schools of various kinds. If the tasks have a sense, it is to help consolidate learning, stimulate self -discipline and responsibility, and thecontinuous intervention of parents From this point of view it has multiple disadvantages: prevents you from benefiting from the proposed exercises, to verify their skills and develop learning from errors, to test one’s commitment and accept the effort of repetitiveness or time dedicated to study.
Clearly if their children need help, this, within the limits of the possible, must be given, but it is wrong to replace: rather you have to help them get to the answers alone who are looking for and stimulating them to find their own way and their ways to benefit from the study.
Many parents are worried by quantity or from the difficulty of the tasks that children havebut it is difficult to establish the “right load”, it depends a lot on age and school time. Certainly children don’t have to spend the entire afternoon and the weekend to do exercises and study, but not even a Watch TV (or in front of a screen of any nature). And in any case, in case of doubt, it is good to talk about it directly with the teachers and not to explain reserves and comments in front of their children: set up an action on the school on the school educational cohesion It is essential not to be with bigger problems.
Rules and organization
It is important accept the reality of the tasks At home and the need for personal commitment they require. Of course, it is struggling! Ours is a society of the image, completely immediately, and the boys and children who were born inside this society and this culture can only find difficult to approach books, the writing and light pages, the texts to be studied. I believe that today the school system is not so much, but rather the book as learning medium: more images, less words, less habit of reading, less study.
But the task of the parents is precisely to legitimize theimportance of commitmentof the effort to devote oneself to exercises and repetitions, to help establish a good relationship with the time that must be dedicated to school work. How to do it? Need Rules and organization. And then a role of monitoring and control that, especially in the early school years, it is good that the mother carries out: many research has shown that, rather of the father, to whom a verification task must be reserved, it is the mother who promotes the school successwhen the boy or girl perceive that the mother expects him or she commit themselves.
First of all, especially in those cases where theTime of homework It has now been transformed into a battle moment, the lectures, the screams, the blackmail, the promises of prizes and the threats of punishment must be suspended. There voltage, there psychological pressuretriggers dynamics of refusal, contrast or dependence on external factors on which the parents themselves are then struggling to go out. Often we fix ourselves on the motivation, thinking that the problem is basically that. But it’s a mistakewhy how can a parent enter into the merits of such a complex aspect, which acts on a psychic level, and which is determined by many and different factors?
Generally the problem is not the school motivationbecause most of children, girls, boys and girls go to school likes: you are with peers, learns develop, interact and relate to it, become a group. The problem arises at home in the time that he gets out of the narrow school one, and therefore we must help his children face that difficult and tiring moment, identifying domestic rules which can transform it into a quiet time and also, why not, pleasant.
Practical advice
Based on my experience, I think the Fundamental rules to better organize the school studywhich then means organizing a lifestyle, are these:
- Established clearly, and with the largest even shared, a fixed time to devote to homework and studywhich is not immediately after school but not even immediately before or after dinner. Leave them a time of relaxation and leisureplay about twenty minutes with the little ones following their rules, allow time to recover from the school effort. THE Movement games in companypossibly in the open air, they are very important: they are good for the body and psyche, they help to download the tensions accumulated at school, and recharge the energies that can then be profitably dedicated to new school works. But then identify one precise ritual that it is effective in introducing your children in a time when they still require commitment and attention;
- Favor the calm And create an environment useful for concentration. Television must be offconfusion and distractions must be prevented or limited. Children, today as today, have a lot of entertainment within the home and the elements that lead them to distract themselves There are many: it is difficult to be careful of what you are doing if in the meantime the brother plays alongside; And the multitaskingwhich works if it activates opposite brain areas, not if you read or write, the computer is enlightened, the cell phone rings and the music rolles up for the house;
- Avoid correct and criticize. Corrections must be made at school and it is important to reinforce successes and gratify the commitment. It is necessary to keep in mind that Learning is based on error and children and teenagers must be able to make mistakes and be in a position to notice e learn independently from the mistakes they make. They must also be able to say: “I can’t, I need help” without fearing the adult reaction and without opposite, the difficulty being subtracted;
- invite companions and friends to do their homework. Often the community study has lived as ineffective if not risky for individual learning, but there is nothing more incorrect. The latest neuroscientific discoveries, in particular the study on mirror neurons, have highlighted the fundamental role of mutual activation and imitation in promoting and stimulating learning processes. So, Let them study together;
- edited the hours of sleep. It is practically impossible for a child and a boy to engage in study and school work if he sleeps seven, or worse six hours per night. The time of night rest is strategically fundamental to encourage concentration and success in tasks. A life without rules or that grants evening or night outputs with friends does not coincide with that of the student;
- Stimulate reading from an early age and safeguard the love for books in the largest: Do not distract them while reading a book, favor the personal approach to reading, propose texts and topics suitable for age but stimulating.
It should never be forgotten that The children go to school, not the parents. But this does not remove the possibility of creating the right organizational frame that allows you to live school as a shared challenge.
