How much homework help should I be giving?

[cygar]

A question for parents with slightly older kids -- my son just started middle school and the workload is considerably more. My inclination is to help him with his homework every night, but is that really helpful? How mush is too much. After an hour of back and forth and him still not understanding the assignment, we are both frustrated and upset. I know this is not productive, but I feel if I stop helping him, he is going to fall further and further behind. Any parents out there find the right balance yet? We plan on getting a tutor eventually, but right now financial restraints are preventing us from doing so.

[Kaysmom84]

Your son and my son are very much alike! My son started middle school at 10 this year as well, it feels like 5th grade is so young to be a middle schooler! We are also looking to find the balance of homework helper vs do it for me! The first thing we did is recognize where my son exceeds in school i know he does not need help with spelling or language arts assignments as this is something he does very well so during this time he is expected to do his homework in his room, however during math his father sits down with him for one on one time to explain each problem and walk through the steps(his father does this because even 5th grade math baffles me) We still have many night that result in a battle of wills but what has helped us is in his 504 plan it states that if he can show his understanding of concepts he had less homework than his classmates...so they may get 25 problem of homework while he gets 8, because it takes him so much longer to do the problems, and in our house tv time is one of my sons favorite thing, particularly you tube so in order to watch his hour a day homework must be done first and if done peacefully he gets a bonus 30 mins! So far this has reduced homeowrk battles to few and far between! A lot of school have a 10 mins of homework per grade level so it would be 50 minutes for 5th grade, if he spends much more time than this on homework u may want to talk to his teachers about reducing the workload.

[DeAnneS in reply to Kaysmom84]

To kaysmom84. Yur comment "his 504 plan it states that if he can show his understanding of concepts he had less homework than his classmates..." hit home with me. Can you give me an example of that could be applied for a math and/or English class? I need to work with our school to develop a better 504 plan and they aren't all that "creative" to help us find possible solutions to include in his plan. Thank you!

[Kaysmom84 in reply to DeAnneS]

So in his 504 it states in order to get a reduction in homework he must show proof of understanding! His teacher introduces a new concept once a week so on Monday after she has taught the lesson, my son takes his homeroom time with her to go over the lesson together, he works out the problems with her, and then the rest of the week he is assigned less generally 50 percent of classmates! My son is taking advanced classes in math reading language arts and science his counselor has said this is one of the reasons she has suggested this accommodation as the kids in these classes must learn and master concepts very quickly, and that she may not recommend this for children in other classes, so far we only have this in place for math, not sure how it would work for other subjects! Hope this helps!

[surfmomma]

I can def relate! Thank you for sharing...I'm looking forward to the advice that you receive!