Helping Kids Focus on School

A TPS parent shared a link with me that features several ideas about how to help/motivate kids to focus on schoolwork and take it seriously. All the ideas are from real parents with real kids. I copied and pasted the information I thought was most helpful below, but if you would like to go to the actual website, the link is at the bottom of the page. Hope you think some of the strategies are useful!

I took a "Homework Survival Course" and it made such a difference in our home. When my son comes home from school at 3P we give him an hour to 'decompress' at home and enjoy time with his family. He knows at 4P it is quiet time in the house. That means the entire house is quiet, phone off the hook, no tv, no radio. My son has a study area in our kitchen. He does his homework close by so he knows we are available to ask questions and we can gauge if he's getting frustrated. We make sure all the supplies he needs for homework is close to him so he's not running around all over the house to get scissors here and crayons there. My daughter (3) colors or looks through picture books. My husband and I also read a book to show that even though we are not in school, we still regard keeping up with education and improving ourselves continuously as important. Since implementing this schedule homework time has been a breeze. I love it because I want to instill in my son that when he goes off to college that study time is study time: if you work hard you can play harder later, just give yourself that allotted time to do good now.

I always let my girls know that education is the ultimate in life. My little daughter has this big admiration for police in uniform. She always wish to be one of them,. Then I tell her getting education and especially doing her homework is the first step. Hearing this, she get down to doing her homework.

Like many Moms, I face the constant struggle between telling my children to do things and letting them make their own choices. I want my children to come home and do their homework because they want to, and I also want them to play and have fun because, after all, they are children. If we let our children run the show then we often don't get the results we want for them, but if we don't give them the freedom and respect of their own choice then it can come back to bite us when they are older and the stakes are higher.

Here are 5 tips I use to get my children to focus on their school work.

1. Get involved. - When my children know that they are getting positive attention and support as they work through their school work, they have more confidence in themselves and tend to get their work done quickly and easily. They are reassured because I am right by their side if they need a little extra guidance and they are so proud when they can show me that they figured something out on their own.

2. Make it fun. - Sometimes I thought that being firm, rigid and strict would help my unfocused child gain focus. This was a huge misunderstanding. The truth is the more I breathed down their necks the less focused they became. (And I remembered when my father did it to me… YUCK!) Now we brainstorm at our family meetings ways to help my children make boring or hard work fun. We work through the solution together so the results are easier and much more fun! Just using Google I have found crossword puzzles to learn spelling words, sudoku puzzles to learn math, and we have even taken a family field trip to an Animal Eco Station to do a book report. Making it fun is making it happen.

3. Give them choices. - If they aren't motivated to do their school work right away, I give my kids an outlet to clear their mind so they can move into a space of greater focus and clarity. My son is active, so we shoot hoops or walk the dogs prior to getting started with his school work. My daughter is an artist, so I encourage her to do a project before sitting to focus on homework. The more I have learned how my children operate, the more success I have had in supporting the work they need to do.

4. Turn it into a game. – The last thing I want to do is fight with my kids to get them to want to do things, so I had to figure out something that made it fun to ask. The solution: my kids LOVE GAMES! We started playing them as a family when my kids were very little (a bit of early conditioning has proven to be quite effective!). I get creative with my kids and as often as I can I make their homework into a game so they are playing rather than working. It is all in how you look at it so I make it fun.

5. Make agreements. – When I was a kid my father was great at telling me what he expected from me and rarely asked me what I thought. This demand tactic never really did much for me, so with my kids I took a different approach. I began to make agreements with them. I would share what I wanted from them and they shared what they wanted from me and we ended each conversation with the question “Do you agree to that?” Beside building trust and respect in our relationship, we know what is being asked of us and what we are asking for so we achieve results or make new promises. Making agreements for our family has reduced expectation and increased our joy and fulfillment making homework time fun time. We have all learned to interact rather than react!

A little focus on some new approaches can make homework fun work!

Good Luck from Conscious Parent Monika Zands www.consciousparents.info

Diet is absolutely an essential component of academic success, as well as enough sleep. I feed my son nutrient-rich, unprocessed foods. We have almost no processed foods in the house. We are not wealthy and I work from home, so I don't have any more time or money than anyone else. I've just made it a priority, and we do without many other things to ensure that we are as healthy as possible by using a good portion of our income to buy real food. We support a lot of local farmers and have stopped buying brand-name products, and we actually save money that way because health problems you pay for later are expensive. nourishing foods we feed our children are essential to their success, but they are also some of the only things we really have choices over.

You can read these entire responses and more at http://www.circleofmoms.com/survey_qa.php?view=1&question_id=1701110&trk=digest_featured_question&trk_info=1701110&email_enc=odWl1N2motqqzc7HytKPlqih&email_src=1331752328247d0927df81c18aa583fbb1e97eda29&template_name=digest_weekly_3&subject_id=3e39efd8990ec404b7fc6e0e6509e163%3A1&has_fb=1

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