You can lead a kid to homework but you can't make them think.

I hope your son has a safe landing but I don't think you should feel bad about it either. Not enabling him may seem harsh in the short term but may be the only way left for him to learn.

After things calmed down last night Mr. B and I had the "how do you think I should make him do this stuff...." conversation and his answer was that Mo's life should be stripped down to the bare walls.

Over homework.

It's the anger and frustration and meanness that make Mr. B mad, "not the homework" but the fact is in the absence of homework there isn't the anger and frustration and meanness.

I don't know what to do.

Now I cant sleep.
This thread opened up some pretty deep wounds.
My daughter is a sales exec with a high end hotel chain.
She works really hard and is quite sucessfull so i know what happened is not my fault.

The only thing we didn't try was a trip to the woodshed.

Just one for shock value. I doubt it would have worked but might be worth a try.
We reserved smacking for life threatening situations like playing with matches and running onto the road.

I know the economy is pretty tight but some professional councelling for the boomer family
(dad included) might be valuable. An objective view might be just what is needed.

Has dad supervised homework? More time with dad might be useful.
Have you tried different times of the day for homework?
Do the easy bits only?
Let him decide what to do and what not to do as long as he does some.

Make sure his teacher is up to speed with how things really are.

We don't have the homework problem, thank goodness. (Most nights the only "homework" is reading, which she does every night before bed whether there is homework or not.) But the whole issue of us wanting her to do something that she doesn't want to do still comes up a lot.

The biggest one is ballet. I hate this one because I absolutely don't want to force her to do something that she doesn't want to do. And before ballet, she often is pitching a fit about how much she doesn't want to do it. But the thing is that AFTER ballet she's smiling and happy and pirouetting and showing me the cool new thing she learned and basically on cloud nine about how much she loves ballet. This drives me absolutely batty.

T's been doing some research into behavior issues (empirical stuff, since T is a psychologist).

I'll double check, but I think what she learned is that punishment, as a rule, doesn't work

I'm not saying to expect less. I'm saying to expect 'different' sometimes.

I expect functional. But what some people need to function is different from what others need to function. And it doesn't always occur or click in at the same time.

I can't expect my children to be me - they have to be them.
But I still want them to be good people.
I don't think that's expecting less - I think that's acknowledging their unique gifts.
It would be like my daughter expecting me to be able to draw like she does because she can.
Well, I can't. But I can write like she can't.

People, and especially children can't be poured into the same moulds.





If I had a child who was exhibiting rage, fear, confusion, etc...I'd put that first and then later ask him or her to learn how to spell- that's all I'm saying.

I wouldn't ask them to learn how to spell as a priority when it was obvious they were confused about how to function day to day.

I don't really have anything to say about how to make him understand but I do case one strong vote for him needing to learn a critical life-lesson. In my opinion, the main lessons a kid needs to get out of school are:

1) Learning to deal with authority.
2) Learning to socialize.
3) Learning to learn.
4) Learning to think about the future instead of the present (he is still a hedonist).

Does he understand that the real point isn't the homework but that he needs to learn to jump through some hoops in life? I am as anti-authority and anti-stupid hoops as they come but I worked hard to have the freedom not to jump through them and picked my spots. I've seen other kids really hurt themselves with this anti-authority schtick and while I've endlessly debated the disciplinary side of it I don't have any answers.

But here are some other random ideas anyway:

If he is given freedom to pick when he does it (i.e. can he turn stuff in weekly instead of daily) would he be willing to do it?
Can you make it a homework bank? Where he's saving up his homework that he refuses to do and not avoiding it?
Can you go on strike in some way in your social contract with him till he ends his strike?
Can you have a trial? Where a jury of his peers determines whether he is being reasonable and he is allowed to present his case and is willing to submit to the result? I'm thinking a kind of arbitration if he really thinks it's unfair he should try to make his case and be willing to live with an adverse result? Maybe too theatrical...

Can I pay him to blog his homework learning? If he writes a diary of how he beats his homework problem so that other kids can get ideas from him on how to make it less of a chore I'll pay him $100. A "me vs homework" site or somesuch (hey, when you have a good hammer you see nails everywhere and I'm a big fan of the "teach others to teach others" concept).

Many psychologists say that some of these kids just need to hit their own "rock bottom" before they get jolted out of it. I think there is always hope.

I ended up homeless as a teenager because I refused to take a drug test when I'd admitted to taking drugs (thought it was kinda pointless a hoop to jumpt through and there were a lot of other underlying issues as well but ultimately it was a refusal to do what I was told, regardless of my reasons). That was my rock bottom, I had a backback full of CDs, a discman and a gun and was a general jackass. Not that I'm not now and while I'm still unwilling to submit to authority I sucked it up until I could make my own terms. I worked hard because I didn't want to submit to authority but I had to take my lumps to learn that lesson.

I hope your son has a safe landing but I don't think you should feel bad about it either. Not enabling him may seem harsh in the short term but may be the only way left for him to learn.

Punishment is objectionable to many, but anyone schooled in the art of manipulation knows that the combination of carrot and stick has the potential to work much better than the carrot alone.

As every good leader knows, a little fear is a very good thing.

It's beyond depressing.

Can I pay him to blog his homework learning? If he writes a diary of how he beats his homework problem so that other kids can get ideas from him on how to make it less of a chore I'll pay him $100. A "me vs homework" site or somesuch (hey, when you have a good hammer you see nails everywhere and I'm a big fan of the "teach others to teach others" concept).

for the life of me I can't see how homework is benefiting him.

Two years ago, Shelli began collecting studies on homework, most of which suggest that, particularly for younger grades, there is no clear link between work at home and school performance.

The time our children spend doing homework has skyrocketed in recent years. Parents spend countless hours cajoling their kids to complete such assignments—often without considering whether or not they serve any worthwhile purpose. Even many teachers are in the dark: Only one of the hundreds the authors interviewed and surveyed had ever taken a course specifically on homework during training.

The truth, according to Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, is that there is almost no evidence that homework helps elementary school students achieve academic success and little evidence that it helps older students. Yet the nightly burden is taking a serious toll on America’s families. It robs children of the sleep, play, and exercise time they need for proper physical, emotional, and neurological development. And it is a hidden cause of the childhood obesity epidemic, creating a nation of “homework potatoes.”

In The Case Against Homework, Bennett and Kalish draw on academic research, interviews with educators, parents, and kids, and their own experience as parents and successful homework reformers to offer detailed advice to frustrated parents. You’ll find out which assignments advance learning and which are time-wasters, how to set priorities when your child comes home with an overstuffed backpack, how to talk and write to teachers and school administrators in persuasive, nonconfrontational ways, and how to rally other parents to help restore balance in your children’s lives.