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Why Your Child Procrastinates and How To Help
Did you just find out your child has been sitting on a project for weeks, and it is due tomorrow? Does your child come up with every reason under the sun to avoid a writing assignment? Most parents need to know how to stop procrastinating on homework, whether procrastination is occasional or a habit.
Homework procrastination creates stress and tension around homework for you and your child, which can morph from a bad study habit into a less-than-ideal work habit.
This article investigates the “why” of homework procrastination, provides ideas on how to help your child overcome it, and identifies behaviors that might suggest avoiding homework is a symptom of a learning delay.
Children want to please. Any time you and your child fight over starting homework, you need to stop and think. What’s driving this?
Is it a Learning Delay?
Learning delays are most evident in homework, which requires attention in class, organization, and reading comprehension. Even if a child seems to be on track, homework procrastination could be a warning sign.
Is your child on grade with reading? If you have doubts, here is a free reading assessment. Check with the teacher. Is there inattentiveness in class? Do any of these auditory processing symptoms apply? If so, a learning intervention can help.
For elementary age, maturity is a big factor. Inattentiveness in class leads to not understanding the assignment. Homework after a long day at school is a step too far for many young children, which is why many countries don’t give homework early on.
Other Reasons for Procrastination
Here are some other sources of homework procrastination:
- Exhaustion. Exhaustion is a symptom of a learning delay – slow processing makes the school day exhausting – but could also come from a child being over-scheduled or tired for other reasons, such as lack of sleep.
- Anxiety. A fear of failure can cause anxiety around homework, unfair comparison to others, and feeling she doesn’t measure up.
- Feeling overwhelmed. Is your child unsure of what to do, or is it beyond his capability?
- Lack of motivation. Has your child lost interest in school and not seen the value of doing homework?
- Distractions. Does the homework environment have temptations around?
- Unclear instructions, where the assignments are unclear, are often a symptom of a learning delay.
In addition, some children, especially younger children, have busy personalities, and sitting down to do homework is a skill not yet learned. These cases require patience.
Each of these reasons for procrastination is likely to have a back story – a learning delay, difficulty with a teacher, peer pressure, or too much going on – that requires careful investigation.
If something is going on, finding and addressing that issue will be a far more effective way to stop procrastinating on homework than using time-saving and other motivational strategies, which are workarounds, not solutions.
Having said that, here are some strategies to help with homework procrastination.
Strategies to Stop Procrastinating on Homework
The strategies that work are the ones that apply to all procrastination. It’s about finding the smallest step to complete to make a start, modifying your surroundings to encourage work, etc. Here is a quick list of ideas that might work for your child.
Improve planning:
- Make sure your child understands the assignment and the timetable. A lack of clarity can make a project seem bigger than it is.
- Break the homework into manageable steps. It is not for you to do this work, just to structure the work into small, manageable wins.
- Choose the right time of day. Observe your child. Is your child better right after school while the learning momentum is there, or is a break for physical exercise needed? For almost all children, the right time is not after 9 pm!
- Environment. Removing distractions such as phones can only help.
Work on motivation:
- Remind your child, doing his best is the expectation. It does not have to be perfect, especially at first.
- Address fears. Validating anxieties as real is a very big step to helping your child manage them.
- Connect homework to outcomes. Your child might respond to understanding how homework fits the big picture.
- Consider rewards. As s last resort, small incentives can motivate children to start and finish homework on time.
Each child is unique, and what works for one may not work for another. It may take time and experimentation to find the most effective strategies for helping your child overcome procrastination and develop good study habits. Be patient and supportive throughout the process.
Remember, getting through each assignment is not the point. Homework is all about building self-reliance and learning independence. That means minimizing your actual involvement in homework and maximizing praise and positive feedback.
In the case that one of the above makes a difference, reconsider the possibility of a learning delay. Is your child a candidate for one of our reading comprehension programs?
If you are in doubt, don’t hesitate to call Gemm Learning for a free consult.
Is Homework Taking The Joy Out Of Parenting?
If you dread your child’s homework time, you are not alone. Stress, arguments, standoffs, and general frustration play out in homes every school night all over the globe – especially when a child has a learning delay.
Homework procrastination comes from a very real place when there are learning delays. Homework melds all of the difficulties and gaps in a child’s learning in one frustrating parcel, namely difficulties in:
- Reading comprehension
- Understanding the teacher in class
- Writing
- Difficulty with focus
By the time a child sits down to confront his homework, he is already in a hole based on what has gone on during the school day including avoidance behavior exercised all day, trying to avoid disappointing anyone – teachers, parents, peers — by keeping out of the mix, laying low.
These homework battles can have a real impact on family life. It creates distance between parent and child and neither party is happy about homework. It casts a pall over the after-school hours, which should be a happy time for child-parent bonding.
And yet, while there is evidence that homework is not helpful, and many top-ranking countries in PISA international testing have little or no homework, the fact remains in the US, homework is a fixture of daily school life. And so it has to be managed.
Address The Learning Delay
If your child has a learning delay, far and away the best way to stop procrastinating around homework is to change the learner. Consider a learning intervention that has the potential to empower your child, to help them become independent and confident learners who nail their homework.
There are websites like Empowering Parents with advice on managing homework battles. But that is a band-aid approach, ignoring the underlying source of difficulty.
In most cases, unless you go the drug route, addressing the underlying learning delays requires a learning or reading intervention – like Fast ForWord software, provided by Gemm Learning at home with oversight.
At first, an intervention is a step in the wrong direction, as it adds to your child’s after-school to-do list. However, for younger children, there is nothing more important than mastering reading and learning. Homework can take second place, and if you ask the school, they will probably go along with that call.
The Gemm Learning programs build learning and reading efficiency, which helps in class and at homework time. To find out if we can help, start with a free consult with a Gemm Learning team member.
Homework Tips
We have covered our ideas on how to stop procrastinating on homework. Now let’s review some best practices around managing your child’s homework experience that apply to all learners.
When it comes to homework time, a little organization and strategic planning help to make homework time structured, so that kids know what to do, where to do it, and how to complete their homework on time.
- Set Up a Study Area. Designate a homework zone, a “work zone” free of distractions.
- Keep Supplies. Use a container to keep supplies handy, so your child doesn’t have to rummage around.
- Distractions. Don’t be too stringent; some people do better with a little background noise, like a radio playing quietly.
- Set a Time Routine. Choose a time that fits the family schedule and stick to it.
- Offer Guidance. But don’t do the homework for your child.
- Stay Informed. Talk regularly to your child’s teacher – to make sure you are seeing the full picture.
- Offer Praise. Praise effort, not intelligence. And be specific. Kids will appreciate the effort being recognized, and it helps confidence.
- Watch Frustration Level. If your child is feeling stressed by homework or just can’t master the concepts, then it’s time to seek help.
For some children, homework stress can be reduced with more encouragement. But for others, it’s a symptom of a larger learning issue that needs to be addressed.
