Saturday 20 September 2014

The Twelve Labours of Homework Time

"We all you YOU can do your child's year 3 maths questions, or write a story about a caveman," said the teacher at the recent parents' talk at school. "We want to know if THEY can."

Sensible words of course, but oh, how hard when you're standing over your child as they struggle with a homework question. The rational me knows that you mustn't help them, it's for their own good, the teacher needs to know that they can cope with the work.

But the mother  in me, and the journalist in me, desperately wants to copy-edit their English homework, come up with creative ideas for their project, and help them do the very best they can. And there's another voice whispering in my ear: the one that says: "I bet all the other mothers are helping too, so if I don't help, my child will end up with the worst project in the class."

I can't stand to see smudgy writing, bad spelling and little errors such as full stops left off the end of sentences, and it takes a Heraculean effort for me to hold back from correcting such mistakes, or at least hinting to the child that they need to read through the work again.

I could, of course, book them into after-school club every night and leave them to do their own homework on their own, without hovering nearby with my 5pm mug of tea. The rationale is you then cast a cursory, relaxed glance over the work to check they've done it before signing the homework book (at our school, the children get reprimanded if the book doesn't get signed by a parent). But does this really happen? Or do such parents still agonise over messy work and wrong answers? (Funny anecdote time: a Mum I know told me recently that one evening she noticed her child had written, for a geography assignment on a "place I've visited", all about Mount Everest. "And he'd written it all in pen, so I couldn't even ask him to rewrite it!").

Then there is the homework that clearly they can't do on their own - the assignments that involve, for instance, looking things up on the internet and printing things out. (I'm sorry, but how many 9 year olds know how to use the family printer? I can barely work out the combination of different gizmos that are required before it actually does something other than give me an "error" message.)

In the past year, I've slaved over looking up homophones, making a fez, putting together collages and more, while gritting my teeth over mis-spelled words, messy writing and silly words inserted in stories. And I know it's only going to get worse, as they're really piling on the homework at school this year. I know at some point in what seems like the distant future, they're going to be doing homework alone in their rooms -- but in the meantime, how do I stop myself from having a nervous breakdown over it?

 How do you cope with homework - and what's your involvement?

Friday 5 September 2014

What age do kids walk to school on their own?


At what point does the adult in this picture disappear?
The new school year has started, and Littleboys 1 and 2 are now at the same school. This makes dropping off/picking up much easier for me; however, building works at the school now means that parking has become even more chaotic than usual. So as always, it's a challenge.

We can walk/cycle to school from our new house, although it's a brisk mile and a half steeply downhill; fine for going, not so great for the way back. But we are already talking about whether the boys could do it on their own in future, which brings me to the subject of this blog post -- what IS the right age for kids' to walk to school on their own?

Expat Mum touches on it in her latest post, and it's a subject we often discuss at home. The Doctor is always telling me how, at the age of seven, he was travelling across central London on his own to school, by bus and tube. This was the late 70s; apparently he was the only boy in his class doing so, but when his brother, six years older, had done it in the late 60s everyone did it.

But it's not just a generational thing; different countries have different expectations. Our friends in Norway tell us that their 11 year old not only walks a mile home, she lets herself in and does her homework for two hours until her parents come home from work. Apparently this is completely normal over there.

I was talking to some mums recently and the consensus was that 10 was about the right age. But is 10 old enough to also be supervising a younger brother? And does it make it better, or worse, to do it with a friend? (The idea being that if they're with a friend, they're less likely to concentrate on things like crossing the road).

So I'd love to know what everyone else's kids do and whether they're doing it on foot, bike, scooter, public transport or in the car, with you as their taxi service. Because, while I enjoy walking my kids to school, I don't want to be chauffeur forever.