Kids

Tonight Br. Zhao Yi and Sr. Huiyi came over to have a fellowship with us about Esther and her homework. This problem has been going on ever since Esther went up to the third year of primary school, and her homework load started to increase. She’s a terrible procrastinator, and perhaps has a bit of dyslexia, and, to be honest, she just isn’t the smartest kid in class, so she has trouble doing all her homework. It doesn’t bother me too much, but it drives Lena crazy, and it’s affecting the domestic situation at home. So, I asked Zhao Yi for help - and he suggested his wife talk to us, because she’s a very experienced primary school teacher, and has brought up two kids too. And she was very good. She had lots of practical advice (though quite a bit of it involved more work for Lena) but she kept coming back to the central point that homework is not that important: the key thing is to give your child over to the Lord, because she’s been blessed with certain things, and blessed by lacking other things too, which will all help her in later life, if she knows how to enjoy Christ.

Here are the main tips:

• Have a family meeting to work out a schedule for homework. Set the rules for everyone, including the younger siblings who have to get out of the way. The mother runs the schedule, and the dad is the supervisor, who hands out punishments if necessary. There should also be rewards when the child keeps to the schedule.
• Pray with the child before she sits down to write her homework, but don’t focus on the homework - read a scripture from the Bible with her, and pray about that. Put her in touch with her spirit, and then she’ll be able to concentrate better.  
• Order 國語日報 and read it with the children. Ask them to read a 60 word article every day. Engage them in a conversation about the stories - point out words or phrases that you like. Get them interested in reading other stories, and looking up words in the dictionary, by pretending that you want them to help you.
• In Taiwan, teachers don’t have time to teach writing in class, so parents have to do it at home. But don’t write the articles for the children. Help them work out an outline by prompting them with questions, but let them write it themselves. Ask them to read it for you, but again make it like you want them to do you a favor - don’t make it a task. When they read, they’ll find problems in the structure, and you can encourage them to correct them if they want. But don’t ask them to rewrite the whole thing. If there are mistakes, the teacher can correct them, if she wants. Encourage the child by pointing out good words and phrases in her article.
• For maths, ask them every day what they learned in class, and give them a quick 2 or 3 questions to do, to make sure they understood what the teacher was saying. Maths in taught in a progressive way, so you have to make sure the kid hasn’t missed a step which may cause problems later. 
• Encourage interests - like art and music - but if she’s not interested or doesn’t have time, just drop them. Tell the music/art teacher to focus on sparking an interest in the subject. Unless she’s very gifted, it’ll be more than enough for her to be able to thump out a hymn on the piano, or just sing in tune.
• A lot of things can wait, so don’t try to keep up with the school curriculum if it’s going too fast for your child. English is probably the exception, because there are just so many things to learn it’s probably better to start early. But if she hasn’t got the wiring in her head to do maths, or gets Chinese characters mixed up all the time, don’t sweat too much about it. She can always catch up later.
• The important things are good health, enough sleep, and loving God. Don’t let homework get in the way of these. If she can’t finish before bedtime, let her go to school with an unfinished textbook, and the teacher can handle it. In time, she’ll learn to meet deadlines.
• Like the writing - don’t try to do her homework for her. It’ll be a vicious circle, because the teacher will think the child knows it all, and will keep ploughing ahead, and the parents will have to cheat to help the child keep up. If she can’t do it, let her get it wrong, so the teacher can see there’s something wrong, and fix it in class.