Helping Your Teen with Schoolwork

Helping your teen with schoolwork involves more than the nightly question of "Did you do your homework?" While it is good to respect your teen's privacy, it is your responsibility as a parent to make sure that your teen completes homework assignments. Here are some ways to help your teen with schoolwork:

• Create an environment for work, study, and learning. Use a room of your home designated as a study, and equip it with bookcases, books, a desk, lamps, supplies such as various kinds of paper, pencils, pens, rules, tape, paperclips, glue, staples, a computer, reference books, a world map or globe, and a television. Place a comfortable chair next to a table with a lamp for a reading area. Make sure the room is quiet and conducive for study. Make ready in that room everything your teen might need to complete homework, so she doesn't have to stop in the middle of a project to find something.
• Make sure that you are available to answer questions your teen might have about her schoolwork. If you work outside of the home and your teen works on schoolwork before you get home, ask to look at her work—not because you are checking up on her, but because you might want to offer input.
• Schedule a time for schoolwork. Routine can make us feel secure. Talk with your child at the start of the school year and together allocate a daily time for schoolwork, and then adhere to that schedule. If your teen abuses the schoolwork schedule, set up a consequence for infractions. Allow your teen to choose the daily schoolwork time so that she feels in control of the situation.
• When teens transition from junior high school to high school, they are offered many extracurricular activities. Talk with your teen about taking on too many responsibilities and explain that she may start to feel overwhelmed. Schoolwork can suffer if your teen spends too much time with activities, leaving homework for last. Help your teen find a good balance of schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

Some school districts have websites available for parents to check their teen's academic progress. Check to see if your teen is turning in schoolwork, if she has missing assignments, or if she receives a failing grade on homework. If you don't have a website to check, talk with your teen and ask for graded homework. Call or email her teachers to ask for progress reports. Address problems when they arise, and do not wait until your teen's report card comes home with bad grades. By that time, it's usually too late to perform makeup work to bring grades up for a certain project.