In the last post I spoke about the homework hurdle that we encountered and in this post, I will tell you how I actually have been working through the resistance.

Every single time we presented work to L he groaned and whined and it was always a fight to get him to do anything. Honestly, a lot of the time he wore me down so much I gave up. But during the vacation and since he began Primary School I have started to use techniques to get over the hump.

Here is what has been working for us:

Short time periods: For work that I gave him at home, I would let him do it in 10-minute slots. That way he would understand that I did not intend for him to sit down for hours of tedious work. This has changed his mindset dramatically!

Lots of breaks: For homework that has to be done overnight giving him lots of breaks has been helping. So if he has one page of writing I would have him do one line, then give him a 2-minute break, then the next line and so on until he is finished. He likes this so much he does his own 2-minute countdown (he is into numbers so this is fun for him).

Make it sound fun: Ok, so hear me out with this one. I know, I know you have read all the blogs that spout this kind of advice for practically everything and you are now rolling your eyes so hard you can see your brain. This somehow worked for L. Somehow, making his work sound like an ‘activity’ instead of ‘work’ made him excited to do it and more willing. We have a crap tonne of activity books here that teach him all sorts of stuff and he loves the fact that there are almost always stickers (who doesn’t love stickers right?). Anyways, somehow this worked and I am rolling with it. The lesson here is that any child with the resistance of the Hulk can probably be influenced by something.