After school and on weekends, there’s usually nothing a kid wants to do more than run, play, and not do anymore work. But completing homework is an important step not only in making sure your child succeeds in school but also learns important lessons about discipline and the benefits of hard work. If your child is resistant to doing homework and you’ve been having a difficult time convincing him or her that it’s important, check out the list below. It contains 5 easy ways to encourage your student to become more excited about work after school and to motivate him to complete his work on his own volition.
1. Offer Regular Incentives
Offering your child incentives after he finishes his homework is a great way to get him to sit down and complete it. For example, if your kid loves playing computer games, make a rule that he cannot play his games until his homework is done. While this doesn’t necessarily get him excited about the work he is doing, it will get him into a regular pattern of starting it and completing it on time.
2. Offer larger, long-term Incentives
Nearly every child has something he wants in the long-term – like a bicycle, driver’s permit, or a summer away at sleep-away camp. Explain to your child that completing homework is a demonstration of rule-following and discipline, and that in order to prove he is ready for much bigger privileges, he must show that he is capable of handling small responsibilities every day. Once your child begins to associate completing his homework with being given better and bigger responsibilities and privileges, he will be more and more excited about doing it daily.
3. Join a Homework Group
Kids often do better and have more fun when they’re around other kids. Talk to parents of other kids in your neighborhood or parents of your child’s friends. Then, get the kids together to have a weekly or daily homework session. Having a homework group is a great chance to let the other kids help each other with work, learn teamwork, and make the often unpleasant experience of doing homework social and more fun.
4. Make Homework Fun
Completing homework can be fun if it feels more like a game. One great way to make homework feel like a game is to make it a race. If you have more than one child, offer a prize for the kid who can finish their homework fastest. If your child is an only child, pick a chore for yourself and race against him – for example, he gets a prize if he can finish his homework in the time you wash and fold the laundry.
5. Designate a Space and Time
Make homework an important activity unto itself by giving it a space in the house and a time of day. By creating a homework station, your kid will feel not as if they’re being sent to their rooms or distracted in the midst of regular household chaos, but in a special, designated spot to get work done. Create a comfortable desk with tons of supplies and equipment. Also designate a time in your household as “homework time” – that means that all of your kids, you and your spouse or anyone else in the house takes the same time to do work every day – whether that’s house work, catching up on e-mails, or doing homework. This will help a child feel like he is not missing out any fun or action in the rest of the house.
