99 Ways to Get Your Kids to do Their Homework (and Not Hate It) Updated and Revised

by Mary Leonhardt

Is homework ruining your family life? Do you spend hours every day worrying about how your children (and you) will ever get through the piles of homework that schools are sending home now? There are no magic bullets and no easy answers, but Mary Leonhardt’s commonsense advice will make the whole process easier. Since the main goal must be that children become independent about managing homework, Leonhardt’s book is full of suggestions about helping that to happen. Chapters deal with issues from preschool through high school. There is also a section on gifted children.Included is a greatly expanded Appendix, with interviews with her high school students about their homework experiences. She interviews students who have been very competent about completing homework, as well as students who have rebelled, and done very little. There are interviews with gifted students, and interviews with students needing special ed. services. Here are some excerpts from the "Junior year started off about the same as other years. I was playing football, but then I got in trouble and I got kicked off the team. That started a downward spiral. Everyone was disappointed and I was more than everyone. It happened quickly. I just stopped caring, totally. I stopped doing assignments.""I remember my dad read to me as a child, in English and Chinese, every night. I shared a room with my sister, and one night I was working my way through this book and he was helping me, and my sister said, “Can you stop? I want to go to sleep.” And he said, “No, this is important. “There was always the expectation that the homework needs to be done. " "So at one point, when my older sister was in 9th grade, I was in 6th grade, and my younger sister was in 3rd grade, my parents made a designated “homework time. . . So we would all sit down at the kitchen table, from 7-8:30 or so. Doing this never improved my grades and never me focus better. It just made me annoyed with my parents for being too controlling."

Genres: Nonfiction

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 29, 2000

Reviews

[Susan B · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book covers schooling from elementary through high school grade levels. The author is a teacher with 25+ years of experience. I think this book would have been more helpful to me if I'd read it before my kids got to high school. A lot of it seemed like common sense advice to me. That being said, I think this book could be helpful to someone on the starting-out end of things. For me, the best parts of the book were the "case studies" (ie student profiles, written by the students themselves). And the point about putting your child above whatever grades s/he may receive.

[Jessie Rember · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really needed to read this book. It will make a huge difference in my life next school year.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read all her books.