Homework is a bad word in our house. He drops his pencil, he whines, he argues, I argue, it turns nasty. I hate it.
As a teacher, I always thought, "Oh what a great way for parents and students to work together. What a great way to review what we're doing in class."
As a parent, I think, "this is ridiculous, this is not how I want to spend afternoons with my son, he needs to play, we need to have fun together, he needs to have fun with friends"
The issue with the homework is, it should take him about 30 minutes at the most to do. Instead, it takes about 2 hours because we argue the whole time. Its some of the worst mommy moments, and I hate it.
So, starting next week, we are going back to stickers. He is going to set a goal. If he gets homework done in the 30 minutes I set the timer for, he gets a sticker. If he gets up in the morning and gets dressed without arguing, sticker, and if he goes and gets ready for bed the first time I ask, another sticker. We'll set a goal and he'll need to reach that goal for a special adventure with mom.
I don't always like to use extrinsic motivators, but I do think they have their place when behaviors need changing. I don't want to spend my time with my little man getting frustrated and upset. I want to get the yucky stuff out of the way so we can do other things, like if this rain ever goes away, we can go for walks before bed!
I'll keep you posted. We're going to set it up this weekend when he's back home at our house. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
