Top 5 tips for ending Homework stress

Does any of this feel familiar?

• You're making a last-minute run for posterboard the night before a project is due.

• Your child stays up all night working on an assignment due in the morning. They knew about it three days ago!

• They forget to turn in the homework they worked on all night.

• Your child spends forever on one assignment because it has to be perfect.

• You hear frustrated groans only to find your child staring at the same blank page they opened 45 minutes ago.

• They can't remember what assignments they should be working on.

If any of those DO sound familiar, don't stress. Many students struggle with homework, and many parents find study time to be one of the most stressful parts of the day. Many students report feeling stressed and overwhelmed about homework, and many suffer from sleep deprivation as a result of staying up late trying to finish assignments. Aside from the stress it can cause at home, it can impact their performance in school, their social life, and their overall mental health.

Of course, there's no one answer to the homework conundrum. There's no prescribed amount of hours I can promise the math or writing assignments will take. However, there are a few tried and true options that will help make homework time less stressful.

Here are five tips to put an end to feeling overwhelmed about homework.

1. Create a routine

Routines reduce stress by creating stability, predictability, and efficiency. These lead to productivity.

Children need structure. It's not always easy to build this structure for them, but if you get started early with developing good habits, it will be easier for them when they hit the age that they no longer want your help. Don't worry, if you're reading this with a child in middle or high school, it's never too late to improve productivity habits that will lead to less homework stress.

Block off Time

The first part of a good homework routine is establishing a consistent time to start. For some students, right after school is best. Others won't want to start until after dinner. Sometimes homework needs to fit around an organized extracurricular activity. You may not be able to have the same time blocked out for homework every day of the week, but you should be able to identify a consistent time for each Monday, each Tuesday, and so on. If you and your child have not already blocked out homework time for the week, grab a weekly calendar and draw their schedule. You'll quickly see where the time is available.

One challenge I've often seen is finding the balance between taking a break from school and getting started on homework. We used to see this at the martial arts studio as well.

Parents would come and say, "I have SUCH a hard time getting little J to class every day. Once we get here they LOVE your class, but every day is a FIGHT."

I'd always ask, "What is J doing right before you come to class?"

The answer was never homework or chores. Usually, it was watching TV, playing video games, or playing with friends. I was never too proud to admit my class just could NOT compete with those activities.

NEITHER CAN HOMEWORK.

One great way to reduce the struggle transitioning from the after-school "break" to homework is to make sure the break is calm, mellow, and does not include your child's favorite thing in the world. Keep it simple - a healthy snack, time to chill with the family dog, a 20-minute meditation or walk, chores - something that allows them to reset their brain, but that they'll willingly give up in order to tackle homework.

Create the Ideal Environment

Think back to when you were in high school or college. Where did you like to study? Was it a library - perfectly quiet, clear of clutter, and calming? Or maybe it was a coffee shop with some jazz or classical music in the background, and the chaos of people moving about? Did you prefer to work at a desk or sprawled out on the floor?

When I was in high school, I did my homework on the floor. I could spread my books out farther, and I could lie down if I wanted to. I ALWAYS had music on. I would also often be on the phone, working with a friend through difficult assignments. My parents did not approve of my homework style and often tried to get me to work at the kitchen table. I just couldn't do it.

I was recently hired to help a student who had trouble focusing. He would stay up too late most nights and get up too early most mornings because his homework took so long. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, he just had trouble starting. When I got there the first night, I was shocked to see that his homework space was the dining table - covered with bags and boxes, and right in the space between the living room and kitchen. His parents walked back and forth to the kitchen, talking to each other. His brother was watching TV in the living room. I thought I had found the issue.

Surprisingly, when I asked him if he found all the noise distracting he said he preferred it. "I used to do my homework in my room, but I'd just stare at the walls. It was too quiet."

What seemed like chaos to me was the perfect white noise to him.

When my sister was in high school, she would do homework with the TV on, the radio on, talk on the phone to a friend, and send instant messages to people. My dad would complain that she would get her work done faster without all the usual distractions. For her, the chaos led to better focus.

The right environment is incredibly important. Talk to your child about what does and doesn't work for them.

Do they need silence, quiet music in the background, noise-reducing headphones? Does it change for different subjects?

Look at the physical space as well. Is it cluttered? Is there enough room to work? Are the toys and nick-nacks going to be distractions or are they helpful fidget toys?

A good homework routine will help organize the afternoon or evening, eliminate distractions, and create a good environment for focus.

2. Make a Plan

Sixth grade was the first year that my teachers expected me to keep track of assignments over multiple days. Every Monday they would put a schedule on the chalkboard to let us know what was going to be due that week, and they taught us how to transfer that information to our assignment planner. When I got home from school, I knew what work needed to be done. My teachers coordinated with each other and all used the same system for assignments.

These days, every teacher seems to have their own way of assigning work and a different expectation for how to keep track of it. In order to know what homework to do, students need to know what to do, and when to do it, and they need a strategy for prioritizing the work. This is a challenging skill to learn, and it is a huge contributor to homework stress.

A great habit is to plan the week and to plan each study session.

Plan the Week

In order to plan a week's worth of homework, a student needs to know what is due in every class and when. The first step in making a plan is learning how each teacher gives assignments. Here are some common systems teachers use:

• They write it on the whiteboard. Sometimes they give the students time to write it down, sometimes (according to the sixth graders) they don't.

• They assign it in Google Classroom. One advantage of this is that it can automatically show up on someone's Google calendar. Kids can sometimes get lost when trying to keep track of what has and has not been turned in, or when it's due.

• They use a subject-specific website.

Imagine you are 11 years old and have never had to track your assignments before. Now you have different information in different places, and you need to choose which assignments to do first. How do you do it? Where do you start? It' no wonder these kids carry around so much homework stress.

How do you help them not feel overwhelmed?

Start with helping them identify WHERE the information is. Make a plan for how to pull all the assignments together in one place. As much as we love technology, I really recommend a spiral-bound planner. The act of writing makes important neural connections and improves hand-eye coordination.

Once they know WHERE to look, they need a plan for gathering the assignments into their planner so they can see what is due when. This will help them prioritize each day. It will also help them learn the art of telling you in advance when they need specific supplies.

Plan the Day

One big source of frustration is not knowing how to choose where to start. Your child may look at assignments in Language Arts, Science, Math, and History all due tomorrow, and simply freeze. If you just ask what they want to do first, they may not have criteria to decide. Ask these questions first:

• What's most important?

• What easiest?

• What's hardest?

• What do you think will take the longest time?

• What do you think will take the shortest time?

After they've thought about all this, ask them, "Where do you want to start?" and follow up with one more question - WHY?

This will help them learn to think strategically about different options for organizing their work. Maybe they want to start with the hardest thing first - before they get tired. Maybe they want to do the easiest or shortest thing first for a quick win. It's good for them to be able to explain their reason so that they create some logic about how they choose.

3. Learn to estimate time

I asked a child, "How long do you think it will take you to do this assignment?"

His dad overheard and laughed. "You know he's making up that number, right?"

I smiled at him, "Of course I know. That's why I have a timer. "

Time management is trickier than you think. Learning to accurately estimate how long it takes to do things is the critical first step to knowing how much time you need to complete different types of assignments. I used to do an exercise with my leadership team where I gave them a list of 10 things and asked them to estimate how long it would take to do. Then we would do them as a group, with a timer. It was a huge eye-opener for how long it takes to get things done.

It's a great thing to do with homework as well. Use a stopwatch NOT a count-down timer when you are learning to estimate. Look at the assignment, guess how long it will take, start the stopwatch, and get to work.

It's not about how fast you can do it, it's about learning to estimate. When the assignment is complete, take note of how long it took. If you're using a paper planner, you can write it next to the assignment. Eventually, you will either know or be able to look up how long it takes to read 15 pages or do 25 algebra problems, and you'll be able to figure out how long homework really takes.

If our goal is for children to learn time management, it really needs to start with estimating time.

4. Create a system for keeping track of things

I was shocked the first time I heard a parent say, "My child DOES their homework, they just forget to turn it in."

It took a while to understand the problem, but eventually, I realized it was a matter of keeping track of where everything was. Papers got jammed into backpacks and lost. Or they get left on the desk or dropped in the car. There's nothing more frustrating than spending hours on work, and then forgetting to turn it in.

The first time I went to my mom's office, she had files laid out neatly on one side of her desk. When someone came in with a question, she looked at the labels on the files, pulled out the right one, and answered the question. It seemed like magic to me - how did she know which files to leave on her desk?

She had a system.

The files on her desk were contracts that she was working on. Once they were finished, they went into a file cabinet.

A system for keeping track of all the papers is an incredibly important tool for minimizing homework stress.

Folders are a great way to organize homework.

Start with a different color folder for each subject, plus a brightly colored (maybe red) folder labeled "TURN ME IN." Regardless of the subject, put completed assignments in the TURN ME IN folder when they are complete. That way, it's always in the same place. At the end of study time, put that folder in that backpack, and put the backpack by the door.

What matters most is that there is some kind of system. What it is specifically doesn't matter as much.

5. Take Brain breaks

At some point when you're tired, it is no longer worth working. The diminishing returns become so negligible that you aren't really getting anything done. At this point homework stress increases, and your child starts acting out.

A lot of people, especially kids, don't realize they are getting tired until it's too late. Building in breaks helps solve this.

There are a lot of different ways to manage your focus time and break time. The Pomodoro Technique is one popular system of focus for 25 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of a break. Some people prefer 45 minutes and then a 10 minute break. I've worked with students who I gave a 2-minute break every 10 or 15 minutes. I even had one student who drew a picture WHILE she did math. Every problem that she finished meant one more piece of the picture got filled in. Believe it or not, this got us through math twice as fast.

Brain breaks can be as simple as taking a few deep breaths, grabbing a healthy snack, or getting up and stretching. Just like the after-school break, they shouldn't be too long or so entertaining that you don't want to get back to homework. That would only lead to more stress.