Angie, I had the same problem with my BS, starting at age 7 and we just finally found something that worked for him this year. He turned 9 in January. I totally feel your pain! Here's what we tried...

First, I found a daily reward that would pique his interest. If he does well during homework, he earns Mystery Topics. I pre-select three things that he's never heard of and then if he does well with homework, we sit together at the computer and research them. I try to find things that he will want to learn about and that will capture his interest and enthusiasm. Some examples of topics we did early on are zeppelin, blood parrot, Galileo, Icarus, Otzi the Iceman... you get the idea, something he's probably never heard of and would be interested in finding out more about. Wikipedia is a good place to find ideas.

Next, I put a Post-It note on the desk where he is doing his homework with five stars on it. These represent how many "chances" he gets to screw up before he loses his Mystery Topic. You sit down with the child and explain what is expected during homework and what will not be tolerated. Then you sit beside the child throughout the homework session and every time he exhibits a behavior that is against the rules, you cross out one star. If he completes all his homework with at least one star left that's not been crossed out, then he earns Mystery Topics. You don't say a word to him about the bad behavior, you just cross off a star.

Eventually, they start to pick up on the cues and figure out what is causing them to lose stars. The important thing, though, is to try to make sure you give them enough chances, hence the five stars, so that they can earn the Mystery Topics. If you set the bar too high, like with two stars, then they never get to win and they will lose interest. If you start out with five or six, then they have plenty of chances to mess up while still earning the reward. It's really important that he actually gets to earn the reward the first few times, so if you have to give him more than five stars at first, let him have them. It's a process, but you have to show him how to be aware of his behavior, then teach him that he has the ability to control or modify his behavior as needed to reach his reward.

You do this with the five stars for the first two or three weeks, or however long it takes him to catch on. When you start to see him trying and succeeding and he's able to make it through homework with at least three stars left, then you raise the bar and only give him three stars or three chances to screw up. Once he masters homework without having any of the three stars crossed out, then he graduates to one star... which means screw up once and no reward.

You should get to the point where eventually he doesn't need to see the stars being crossed off, he will have trained himself to control his behavior in order to gain his reward. The reason this works, especially with boys or children who have attention problems, is that some children do better with visual reminders. If they can see that star chart while they are working, it's a visual reminder of what they need to do. And when they see that they are working down to their last uncrossed star, they start to really work to prevent that last chance to earn a reward from being taken away.

The Mystery Topic as a reward worked really well for us. Plus it has the added benefit of increasing vocabulary and teaching them new things. But I think the best reward involves a parent participating in an activity with him, whether it's playing a game together or reading together or whatever works for you.

I came up with this for my son and he now does his homework all by himself, on his own initiative, with no screwing off AT ALL. We don't even use the star chart or the Mystery Topics anymore, because now he's so good at homework that he gets to use the computer himself to research whatever he wants after homework is finished. It's been a night and day change for us... no more screaming, no more crying, no more frustration and no more three-hour homework sessions to complete a twenty-minute assignment. It's not an overnight fix, it does take a few weeks to progress to that point, but it really worked for us.

I hope this helps!

~ Anne ~

We are the masters of our own fate; the architects of our own destiny.

keep on it, punish him if he throws a fit next time. maybe no tv for that day. keep at it, he'll learn soon enough to know that you are serious about this and that there is no other choice. my ss would hide or not show me some of his homework because he didn't want to do it. i then started to look through his bag for everything. reading every paper in his folder/books just to see if he has done all his work.

-happy mom

Have a consistent place to do the work. If you write a homework "to do" list that he helps create nightly and cross things out as he goes that might help (he'll see his progress in a visual way which is important for younger students). If he gets an allowance you could charge him when he doesn't do well (we charge the 10 year old and have a jar he puts money into...he'll never know it but we put that money in his bank account so it actually goes back to him). If you have a routine that he gets used to he'll be less likely to resist. We started the 10 year old with his homework table and he starts homework within 10 minutes of getting home from school (he is too tired after dinner to do the work and he is still in school mode, not play mode which makes a big difference). The 10 year old doesn't even wait the 10 minutes, he starts almost right away! There are few struggles with homework now but it took time to get the routine down. Good luck!

My son is 7 and I have the same problems when it comes time to do his homework. I have to sit with him and constantly remind him that he has to sit down and do his homework. It's his homework, not mine, I already did my grade two homework. There was a parent teacher meeting last night and I was telling the teacher that sometimes it took up to two hours of nagging to get his homework done. She suggested that I simply remind him to do it and answer questions about how to do it if he wasn't sure. After that he is on his own, she said to give him 1/2 hour only and then if it's not done she will keep him in at recess the next day until it's done. She has done this with other kids in the class and it worked quite well as no one wants to miss out on recess with their friends. Hope this helps, good luck.

My son has ADD so homework was a huge problem for a while. (Things are going good now)
He would get very frustrated and would get mental blocks, especially when it came to written assignments, like book reports or story telling. There were many evenings of tears, arguing, threats of punishment, etc... It used to be horrible!!

What I found helped us...aside from the meds..was changing the homework time. I used to give him a break to play outside etc. after school before he had to do homework....my rational was he just spent all day in school and a break would do him good.....WRONG!!!!!!!!

After being in school all day...then running around outside all afternoon....then having a big supper sitting in belly....he was tired, and cranky....and completely incapible of fucusing on school work.

Changing the time while he was still somewhat in "school mode" really helped us......

Something else to consider ......

lovin-life

PS Oops....Sorry Becky....I just read all of your post...I pretty much repeated what you said.... Now there's 2 votes for homework right after school

School mode and consistency have really worked for us.

We have him every other week and we started this in January (we had the skids on weekends until then). He was failing school so badly we had to do something.

The rewards and punishment work for us(we charge $1 each issue we have and he gets something extra at the end of the week if he has a good week~some like daily rewards but he is more of the weekly type). He even gets "speeding tickets" if he gathers things up too quickly after school and doesn't bring the homework home for his subject (the charge started at.25 and went up each time he forgot something but we made $1 the top). We know what his homework is because his teacher puts the homework online and it really helps! He can argue until he's blue in the face but when I show him the assignments on the website he'll say, "oh yeah, I remember". We've finally gotten him to be more consistent in bringing it home. He does NOTHING and I mean nothing at his mother's house for homework...it is a free ride there (another story and past blogs). There are weeks we have 3 transition days from her "do nothing" house to ours. I need extra patience those weeks.

It has taken a long time and we still have set backs (he was recently diagnosed with ADD and is now on meds...not a cure all but it really helps). The homework used to take 3 hours + each night and now it might take an hour or less.

Hang in there. Do you have the option for summer school? That might help him get up to speed on things and help him start the school year next year with more confidence. We were able to tell ss that he might be repeating 4th grade if he didn't get things on track (we would have held him back without a doubt if he is not academically ready to go on...I don't like the social promotion thing). That helped him understand how important school is.

plenty of positive praise for each day that he does follow through with the rewards tactic, because that will reinforce to him what you expect from him. When he doesn't follow through, and he doesn't get the reward, say little about it. Say your piece and be done. When he does get his reward, be sure to- later in the evening, say bedtime- let him know how pleased you are with his progress- he did good and have him recap what he learned to you, etc.

I like to have my SS have a 15 minute break after school, but DH lets him have about a half hour. I've noticed that when he takes longer than a half hour, it's quite a chore and takes forever... he'll fall asleep. We never ever wait until after dinner, because that's just too long and then his work is sloppy.

Homework was a challenge for us too, but now he does it. But the time it takes him to do it various from week to week. And I think it has to do with what homework it is that he's doing. Anything that has to do with writing... lord can take us alll night. Anything that has to do with math, 15 minutes tops, in less it's a new concept. Reading used to be the biggest issue, but we have been really focused on getting his reading up to par so it's not that difficult now.

And also, with my SS, we used to have issues if you left him by himself to 'go figure it out', while it took twice as long. We assumed that because he's in school that he understood his homework, but it's just not true. Sometimes the teacher didn't have time to explain to the kids, but still expected the kids to do the work- at home. The teachers expect us, the parents, to pick up and reinforce things to the kids. We can't expect the school and teachers to fully and utterly 'teach' our kids- some teachers do expect us parents to participate.

We found out that when we had him bring it all to us, and had him go over the instructions- how he understood them, correct him if he didn't get the concept, etc, went over everything with him and had him prioritize the work from what he thought he could get done the quickest to the longest... crank out the stuff he can do right away so he could spend more time with the stuff he really needs to study- it went smoother.

I really like Anne's suggestion. There are all sorts of things you can do, but the key is consistency.

StepMom

Man has the intelligence to change his life,
Sometimes, he just fails to use it...

Does hubby support you and back you in making SS do his homework??? If so, that's half the battle..

A set time do do home work every night is essential..Like with my own kids...We do homework after dinner and all sit at the dinning room table.. I am working on my masters degree so I do my homework too while the kids are doing theirs. (I try to do the same with step daughter but makes an emotional display and DH doesn't support me but caters to her displays.)

I ingore the temper tantrums and emotional displays..If that takes place I allow the child to sit there and don't pay attention to their display. It doesn't get them anywhere..Though I will tell them that in the time they spent having a fit we could have had the home work done.

The kids sit at the table until their homework is done.. PERIOD..Now if your SS is frustrated because he is struggling in a particular subject then I would suggest consulting his teacher and coming up with ways to help him with that particular subject. If he is just having a fit because he doesn't want to do it..Ignore the tantrums and make him sit at the table until he has finished his homework..

Having your DH's backing and support of you is crucial..With out it your beating your head against a wall..And I suggest leaving your SS homework issue exclusivly to your DH..

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