Scaling Down the Homework – Pt 1

The Homework Situation
Our daughter is slow. She takes her time with everything she does: writing her name, walking to the door, putting on her socks. Her teacher told us she takes so long on her class work that she is the last kid to finish, and often she doesn’t get finished at all. As Hannah puts it, “I like to take my sweet little time.” Keep in mind that she’s only 8!
My husband and I weren’t surprised by the teacher’s observation because we’ve experienced Hannah’s dawdling first hand. A simple request such as “get your homework out of your folder” could take 20 minutes, as she takes out each piece of paper individually, looks it over, sets it on the floor, sings a song about it, maybe draws a picture on it, then starts with the next piece of paper! 20 minutes later, I come to check on her, and find the homework hasn’t even made it out of the folder yet!
We share 50/50 custody of Hannah with her other biological parent, so she’s only home every other week. Our time with her is already cut in half by default, and that cannot be changed. The goal has always been to make sure Hannah has as much of a normal home life and as much family time as possible in spite of the arrangement.
This school year there has been a major impasse, however, to family time. HOMEWORK. Michael and I were upset with the amount of homework Hannah’s teacher was sending home. After school, Hannah would do homework until dinnertime, take a break to eat, and then continue homework until bedtime. She’d get distracted, she’d come out to tell us stories she remembered from school, she’d draw pictures in the margins of her worksheets… the entire night was filled with us reminding Hannah to stay on task until it was finally time to get ready for bed.
I am of the opinion that schoolwork should be done at school; home time should be play time, chore time, and family time. My sister-in-law, who is one of the smartest people I know, gave me a very deep insight on homework. For her kids, family time is always the priority. If there is enough time and the homework gets done, fine. However, her kids do not miss family activities to do homework instead. Her words really sunk in, causing a paradigm shift of gigantic proportion, especially to someone like me who places great value on education.
Hannah’s teacher sends home weekly math worksheets, 30 minutes of reading each night, writing in a reading response journal each night a minimum of 1 1/2 pages, and 2 separate lists of spelling words (yes, two – they have one test Wednesday and one Friday, different words). If you boiled down the work, it probably should take about 45 minutes to 1 hour per night. To me, even that would be too much for a 2nd grader. However, this work takes Hannah 3+ hours EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. She has no time to play or help make dinner, and barely enough time to attend her Tae Kwon Do class. Her whole life is hearing, “Stay on task,” “Do your work,” “Stay focused,” “You’ve got to hurry up.” It’s terrible!
A few months ago, we decided to scale down the homework. In Scaling Down the Homework (Part 2), you’ll see what steps were taken and how they worked out.