I hate homework day.
Five minutes into my daughter starting it, she’s asked 4 irrelevant questions and walked across the room twice – for no reason.
She had a break when she first got in from school, and had a snack. Then we agreed to a little outside time before starting homework.
She’s got the book open and a pencil in her hand, but that’s the sum total of her achievement so far.
Her mind doesn’t seem to want to sit still – preferring to bounce all around the place. It’s like her mind is a magnet, and when it’s put near homework, it repels away from it.
When she was 5, I thought she would grow out of it; but at 8 years old I was beginning to worry.
As someone who likes to get in and get things done, it drives me nuts.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my daughter dearly. But the way she gets distracted every 5 minutes during homework time is enough to make anyone go crazy.
She’s highly intelligent, has loads of positive energy and is warm and engaging. She can focus long and hard on anything she is interested in. But getting her to focus on homework she isn’t keen on? Damn near impossible.
I just couldn’t sustain parenting positively unless I got this under control. I wanted to take some action.
At one point when her distraction was driving me nuts, I had started to wonder if I should get her tested for attention deficit disorder (ADD). My research on this topic led me to discover some behavioral techniques used with ADD kids, that are also applicable to any child having difficulty focusing.
I decided to try them for teaching my daughter how to focus on homework. Some worked better than others but overall it has been a great success. Here are the ones that worked for us –