What I learned this week:
This week's lessons
1. My son would rather be hungry during the day than pack a snack/lunch for school. He specifically asks me to bring his lunch that he made when I pick him up as he’s going to be hungry. Apparently he doesn’t want to take that extra step of putting his lunch/snack in his backpack. This is all fine when I pick him up from school, however there are days that I don’t pick him up and those are the days he chooses to pack his lunch.
2. My son prefers that I manage his homework schedule. With fabulous insight from Vicki Hoefle, I was able to have a conversation with my son about homework. The conversation went like this:
Me “Rip when we get home I would like to have a conversation with you about how to manage your homework.”
Rip “Can we have the conversation now?”
Me “Yes. I want to know how you would like to manage getting your homework done each week.”
Rip “I don’t know.”
Me “I would love to have your input. However, if I get to decide how your homework is managed, it is going to go like this: As soon as you get home you will do all your homework. Once the homework is done, I will check it for errors. If there are any errors, you will get to correct them. Then I will watch you put your homework in your folder, your folder in your backpack. At that point you will be able to play, have snacks.”
Rip “Sounds good to me.”
Me “Ok”
As soon as we got home, we pulled out the homework, he got it done and all was good. I’m not really sure what to do with this, but it is only day one. Interesting things may happen next week. We’ll just have to wait and see.
January 28, 2011 at 1:17 pm
sounds like my dd (8). I have been letting her do her homework when she wanted to, but often she would forget until right before bed or something. Then she would have to get up really early to do it in the morning. I am not the most helpful person in the morning. So a couple of weeks ago I decided it was time for me to schedule it for her. To help her learn order. Her schedule looked like Rip’s. It seems that after only a couple of weeks she is doing better at managing her homework on her own. When she asks to do something after school I ask her when she plans to do her homework and she thinks about it and decides. So now it is hers to own. She does have to do her homework and contribution before computer time however, so often she doesn’t play on the computer. But it is her choice.