When deciding where your children will do homework, your goal should be to set up a location that, over time, will reinforce their abilities to focus and concentrate. By using the same location and props day after day, you can help your children learn to work more effectively. Wherever you decide, try to be consistent about using it so that eventually your family thinks of it as the homework zone.
Ideally, your children should be doing their homework in a quiet location that’s not full of distractions. It may be tempting to send them to their bedrooms, but that may not be the best location. It’s all too easy for a daydreaming child to completely forget about homework in the quiet of her own room, or even to fall asleep! Children who are easily distracted may find the excitement and stimulus of their bedroom toys too difficult to ignore. And for parents, it can be difficult to monitor what’s going on when the kids are in the other end of the house. Most families need a more public location.
For many families, the kitchen or dining room table is the perfect spot to do homework. Parents can be as close as necessary while doing their own activities. Just take care to have fascinating phone conversations and watch interesting TV shows in another area of the house.
Start to build up a homework focus by setting a consistent tone every day. First, when it’s homework time, remove everything that’s not homework related from the table and then pull out a tray filled with all the pencils and papers and other tools that your kids may need. Over time, the tray becomes a signal that it’s now time to focus on homework.
Depending on your child’s independence, you may want to be sitting at the table too, or just walking past the room periodically. The goal should be to move in the direction of having your child be responsible for his or her own homework. If you need to be present, at least try to have your own activity to do at the table while supervising and assisting your child.
While homework is being done, try to keep distractions away from the table. If the kids need a snack or to make a phone call, have them move away from the homework zone. Over time, this will help reinforce the idea that the table is the place for homework.
Just as it’s important to set up the homework area, it’s equally important to shut it down. This will signal to your family that the homework time is over, and the table is now just a table. Have everyone pack up their backpacks, put away their work and remove the tray of tools. Add back the flowers or the napkins so you all can see that homework time is over.
Check out more homework management ideas in the other articles I’ve published here.
Patricia Robinson, MA, MFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in California. She has offices in Danville and San Ramon, CA and works with children and families and runs social skills groups and teaches parenting. Patricia focuses on kids with Asperger’s Disorder, High Functioning Autism, ADD, ADHD and Pervasive Developmental Disorders. She has an MA in Counseling Psychology from Santa Clara University as well as Engineering degrees from MIT. Please visit her at http://www.patriciarobinsonmft.com/
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