Homework Isn't Sacred. You're Allowed to Say No.
Why We Said No to Homework And Yes to Our Kid (Plus the Exact Script You Can Use to Opt Out Too)
Not everyone will agree with me on this one, and that’s okay with me. But as a mom of three teens and a former teacher, here we go:
Homework isn’t sacred. You’re allowed to say no. Your family’s peace matters way more than a worksheet… at least it did to me.
When my children were in the early years, we didn’t really do homework. There were some exceptions and I will get into all of it below. They are 13, 16 and 19 now. Most of the time, they all do their homework. One is in college, pursuing professional flight. One is a high school junior getting ready to start the college process, and one is in seventh grade, a newly minted middle schooler.
I’m not a homework researcher and this isn’t my area of expertise. I’m sharing what worked for my family, how we mostly avoided homework, and why.
It was November of 2017, and I was walking into a meeting with my daughter’s second-grade teacher. She was about my age. Soft burgundy sweater, slacks, a warm but weary smile at the end of a long day. I remember thinking that she probably still had soccer pickups, dinner, bathtime, and laundry waiting at home, and I really didn’t want to add one more thing to her pile
But I had to say something.
My second grader was bright, eager, sensitive, and she was spending every afternoon glued to reading logs and worksheets. Instead of joining her siblings on fall walks in the woods, climbing trees and scaling the log that ran across the creek, she was racing to finish her book list so she could win the “no-missing-assignments prize.” Instead of building forts or making a gluey mess of a collage, she was spending afternoons upstairs in her room focused and dutiful, working.
Her grandparents praised her. The teachers sent her home with extra prizes. Other parents told me what a role model she was for their kids.
I should’ve been proud. But instead I had a pit in my stomach.
This was a kid who used to fall asleep every night with a book on her chest and a book light lost somewhere in her sheets. Even as a toddler, she kept a stack of board books in her crib to fall asleep with. She was a kid who, despite a nightly bubble bath, still had glitter somewhere on her left elbow and red and brown clay under her fingernails. There were buttons and bits of yarn on her carpet and marbles in an ancient coffee can that she’d count and organize and trade with her brother and sister.
But now?
She was a second grader staying up late to “work on her reading log,” recording her reading minutes like it was her job. The books she used to read, the ones that were too hard for her but that she’d happily chip away at anyway, asking us what certain words meant and taking ages to finish, were now shoved to the back of the pile in favor of much simpler books that she could race through and record on a list.
And she wasn’t complaining. She liked homework. She enjoyed the praise and the little plastic toy prizes that seemed to be tripling in number daily, in the bottom of her navy polka dotted backpack.
I could see what it was costing her. I felt it. The logs were eating the time she had to just be a kid, time to bicker with her siblings and wander the neighborhood with chalk on her jeans and a smooshed granola bar jammed in the back pocket of her jeans. Instead, she was upstairs with a reading log and a stack of books.
Kids need time to play. A lot of it. It's how they make sense of the world. Play is the most important learning there is, and no one will convince me otherwise. And there was no way that I was letting my daughter's playtime disappear without a fight.
If your five or six or seven year old comes home from a full school day and now they are tasked with homework and a five step chore chart, this post is for you.
Below is what we said and did at every age:
The word for word email, both versions, ready to send tonight
Exactly what to say if the teacher pushes back and tells you they have to assign it anyway
What we did when my own kid wanted the homework
The sticky note trick from third and fourth grade, and how it turned into a real email my kid sent a teacher at 16
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