The other day my 7-year-old told me he didn’t want to go to college. He said it was going to be too much work. He had just finished the 1st grade.
My soon to be 4th grader does deep breathing exercises on Sunday nights and on Monday mornings before going to school to manage his daily stomachaches and headaches associated with the pressures and anxiety of the school day ahead of him.
These kids spend six and a half hours inside an old, decaying building with questionable water quality and poor air circulation. When I’ve been there on warm days, I’ve developed migraines from being inside the building because there is no place for the air to escape and the classroom temperatures reach an illegally high temperature far greater than that which it is outside on its hottest days.
My 7-year-old child is allowed one snack at a specific time before his 11:30 lunch. If he gets hungry between 12:00 and 3:00, he needs to wait until he gets home. On the first day of school, no one noticed that he didn’t advocate for himself as to HOW to get his own hot lunch. Even though he had money on his lunch card, he was confused as to how to make the transaction. Instead, he sat quietly and ate his handful of grapes that I had packed for him intended for his morning snack. He had not wanted to make a fuss or get into trouble. He came home crying, exhausted and hungry.
My 10-year-old child is in a classroom where the teacher is militant and strict. He has a ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ rule. Once you’re out, you lose recess.
On the first day, my son received 4 strikes. Talk about feeling like a failure. I asked him what they were for. He was confused, anxious, and didn’t know why. He just knew he didn’t want to go back.
During the school day, there is one 15 minute recess. If the weather is deemed nice enough – that is, not rainy or wet or too cold, students go outside to the playground. That is it. 15 minutes. If the weather is inclement and there is an indoor recess, it remains in the classroom. The same classroom that they do all their work.
In the winter, students are not allowed to touch the snow. They are not to play in it or pick it up. They are to stay away from the snow. Really?
So, when they come home from school and they are “required” to complete a homework sheet – or two – or three – I have a problem with that. It is now after 3:00.
By 8:00, they are tucked in and asleep. In these five short hours, I want to see them play, exercise their bodies and souls. I want them to freely talk about their hopes and dreams with me without a schedule looming over and tell me what they are thinking. I want to let them go to that guitar lesson or help cook supper and help clear the table afterwards. After supper, I want to see them build Legos together afterwards. I want to be together as a family – anyway that I define that to be.
What I don’t want is the pressure of school hanging over their young minds into the afternoon and evening hours. This gives my children the stomachaches, the headaches and kills their natural desires to learn and discover. This robs my family of our precious time together and the quality of that time together. This is because that homework sheet brings out the very worst in all of us – it especially brings out the anxiety and the understandable resentment in my child.
They are done at 3:00. DONE.
These are little kids.
If we want to raise mentally healthy, productive citizens, we can no longer allow whatever isn’t completed by 3:00 to bleed into the rest of the day. The system is broken enough, but I can no longer stand by and watch the system corrupt my children’s natural inclination to learn. If I do – if I assist in that effort – I am just as much to blame.
It is time for me to right this ship before it gets too much off course. So as unpopular as it might make me, I am going to do what very few are willing to say: NO MORE.
No more.
That’s it.
No more.
Count it against his report card. It’s elementary school. I’m more worried about him wanting to continue school than his elementary school record.
Call me in for a meeting. You can’t bully me. I live with these kids. I’m a pretty compliant, play-by-the-rules type of person. For the last four years of their public education, I’ve insisted on homework completion and I’ve been the homework coach – all with a great attitude. So I know it’s not me just being some sort of non-conformist type.
I tried that. It didn’t work. It BACKFIRED. They are my children and I need to do right by them. And this homework thing isn’t doing right by them.
It’s making them hate school more than they already do. I regularly have to have a discussion about the difference between school and learning in an effort to stop the bleeding that the system has done to education. I tell them that even if they don’t enjoy going to school right now, that LEARNING can still be fun. Fortunately, they are still at an age that they are willing to accept this.
But I need to do more.
I need to draw a line at 3:00 to preserve what’s good from 8:30 to 3:00 or it’ll all soon be lost.
Spilling into their after hours with homework is the very definition of diminishing returns. It’s making them hate their young lives more than they already do. And boy, just typing that sentence breaks my heart.
Yes, the system is that bad for some kids. Yes, it clouds their worlds THAT much. It’s contributes to their pessimistic views of life at way too early of an age – of a feeling that they are never going to be able to get free from under ‘all this work’. And while I agree that life is full of work and that I need to prepare them for that in their futures, there is such a thing as ‘too much, too soon’.
Right now, I need to fill up their souls and minds with hope. I need to fill their time with a childhood – because before I know it, they will be grown. This is critical and this is not the lazy way out. This is what they NEED to thrive – what they will need as a foundation for a lifetime of happiness.
So…NO MORE.
NO MORE HOMEWORK.
My child is clocking out at 3:00. I’m filling up my kid with hope and a childhood.
And if they aren’t filled with a capacity to hope, a zest to learn, and family values – whatever they’re working for won’t be worth working for at all.
*Update*
I decided to DO more. About 5 or 6 months after I originally wrote this post, I made the decision that public school wasn’t the best choice for our family and that I would try homeschooling. I talk about what I learned in my first year here.
Couldn’t agree more. My kids are in the second grade & get weekly homework & it causes so much conflict in our house. They hate it & so do I!!
It’s ok to fight back! You’re in charge!