How Homework Is Ruining My Families Life

I see a lot of debate about whether homework is a good thing or just creates unnecessary work for children. I am not entirely sure what the right answer is, but now that I have a child in high school, I’m starting to see the reasoning behind the debate.

My daughter has always needed extra support at school. I have always encouraged her to complete her homework and supported her with it when she needed help. Now she is in high school, and the workload is a lot. I knew it could be a difficult situation for her. So many different lessons to attend meant a lot more homework than she was used to. At her old school, she was only given one piece of paper with spellings on it. She would get these on a Friday and had a whole week to complete them. I thought this was more than fair, a whole week to complete 8 spellings felt like nothing. But now the drastic change is a lot.

On a Friday, she gets maths homework due on Monday. A student who is already struggling and already has extra support in place at school is expected to complete maths homework over 2 days. Homework, which sometimes takes around 2 hours to complete, is her weak spot.

It has totally changed our weekend dynamics as a family; we find things to do together and enjoy our days off from work and school. Now it has changed, my daughter only has Saturday and Sunday to complete the homework that she really struggles with. As I mentioned earlier, it takes us about 2 hours to complete. It takes a lot of the weekend fun away from us all. If we go out on Saturday, we have to make sure we do it on Sunday, or, if we want to go away for the weekend, homework has to become a part of it. She doesn’t get any time to relax and not think about school any more. Maths is just one thing. There are also all the other lessons and the homework that comes with it. She doesn’t struggle with every subject, but she now has to complete that homework for the other subjects during the week, so that it doesn’t spill into the weekend, so it now gets done after school, so she comes home from school to do more school work, just so her entire weekend doesn’t become another school day. She has no downtime; she has no time to think about anything other than school.

As a parent, my children’s well-being will always come first, so one day I said to my daughter, Don’t do it! Don’t do that homework; relax this weekend. We're going out, and we are going to have fun. After weeks of seeing her down and shutting herself in her room and shutting off from everyone, I knew enough was enough. She didn’t complete the homework as I told her to. The next day, I got a message saying she had got an after-school detention. I rang up to protest this. The school was very aware of her struggle, to the point of putting her on the SEN register, but even this wasn’t enough to support her further. Now I constantly have an issue with them over detentions and punishments because she hasn’t done her homework.

A week ago, I had parents' evening. I was expecting to hear maybe some bad things, because I only ever got phone calls saying she had been in detention, and that was when I realised everything I was being told on the phone was based solely on homework. I got told so many great things about my daughter. I was told how well she is doing and how hard she really tries in everything she is given. I was told that even in her weakest parts, she still really tries and does everything she can to get her work done. They told me she’s confident, happy, and a joy to be around. I noticed my daughter was actually doing really well in school. She’s being punished constantly for not doing something she struggles with, even though she’s got great grades in every subject. She’s doing amazing, but because she needs some time to switch off from school and learning she’s being punished.

Is this the system we want for our children? There are definitely children out there who may not be struggling. They might get everything done and excel in every subject, but they deserve a break. A weekend is supposed to be their time off. Why are they expected to come home and continue with the schoolwork?

Is it wrong to give homework? Don’t they already do enough?

I also published this story on Vocal. Media