Homework without heartbreak

Dr Michael Carr-Gregg AO

We want our kids to be successful. We want them to be competent, confident and ahead of the curve. And so we hover. We prompt. We re-explain. We sit down at the table and answer the questions ourselves. This is entirely understandable. And it is, I’m sorry to say, very counterproductive. The evidence on this is pretty clear. When children experience their parents as overly involved in their learning, they don’t feel supported, they feel incompetent. At a visceral level, they learn that they can’t cope without adult help. Psychologists refer to this as learned helplessness, and it is one of the most quietly insidious things we can unknowingly be teaching a child. The message we believe we are transmitting is that 'I value your education". The message to them: "You can’t do it without me".

So when to step in and when to step back? Like virtually all the advice I give in the psychology of parenting the answer is: It depends on the young person. For years, I have given parents this general advice when it comes to homework:

Step in when:

• Your child has hit a wall after making a real effort. If they’ve attempted, re-read the question and yet still can’t get a grip on it, they need a hand, not a lecture about effort.
• They have not fully come to grips with the assignment. That’s more common than teachers wish to admit.
• Emotional dysregulation has set in. No learning takes place when a child is in full meltdown. This is when they take a pause, regulate, reconnect, and return to the task later.
• There is a learning difficulty in play, meaning the child needs scaffolding, not pure will.

Step back when:

• Your child is frustrated but functioning. Frustration is not a sign of failure. It is learning in fact. It remains the discomfort of not yet knowing that is where growth occurs.
• They haven't tried yet. Sitting beside them before they have even read the question is a quick way to train helplessness.
• You realize you’re doing more work than they are. If you’re leaning in hard, re-reading aloud, wrapping up their sentences, stop. Take a breath. Slide back your seat, figuratively and literally.
• You are more anxious about it than they are. Your anxiety is contagious. Children are sensitive to the emotional temperature of the adults around them.

The homework environment is more critical than you think. A child struggling to complete homework in a crowded, noisy, screen-saturated, chaotic environment is fighting an uphill battle before they write a single word. The basics matter a great deal: a reliable time, a relatively quiet area, a snack before they start and devices that are out of arm’s reach. A 2024 systematic review in the Journal of Family Theory & Review found that children from families with consistent daily routines showed better academic outcomes, including stronger literacy, maths skills, and greater academic self-efficacy, so studying at the same time, in the same place represents a good routine.

The right environment is certainly one of the highest-leverage things a parent can do. Remember, your presence doesn’t equal your participation. And being close, reading your own book, doing your own thing can be a potent signal. It says: this is how we as a family spend the evening. We work. I’m doing mine; you’re doing yours. That normalisation is worth more than any pep talk.

What to say (and not to say). The language we have about homework sets the stage for children’s relationship with learning forever. Here’s a couple of things I’d urge parents to immediately cease saying:

- "Just do it, it'll take you five minutes." (Famous last words. Now you're both committed to a timeline nobody can meet)
- "I've already explained this three times." (The fourth explanation delivered with frustration will work just as well as the first three didn't)
- "You'd know this if you'd been paying attention in class." (Possibly true. Completely unhelpful. And now they feel stupid and accused)
- "Let me just show you, move over." (The moment you pick up the pen, the homework becomes yours)
- "If you'd just started when I asked, we wouldn't be doing this at 9pm." (Accurate. Also irrelevant right now. Save it for the debrief, or better yet, don't)
- "Your sister never had trouble with this." (Congratulations — you've now added sibling resentment to the maths problem)

What works better:

• "Tell me what you've tried so far." (Instead of replacing their thinking, it's turning it on.)
• "I reckon you can have a go at this bit." (Confidence, not pressure.)
• "It's okay to find this hard. Hard is how we get better." (Normalise struggle.)
• "Let's take five minutes and come back to it." Permission to pause without permission to quit.

It would be remiss of me, not to mention American author and educator Alfie Kohn, whose 2006 book The Homework Myth made a provocative and genuinely important argument: that the evidence base for homework, particularly in primary school, is far weaker than most parents and schools assume. Kohn's review of the research found little convincing proof that homework improves academic achievement in younger children, and he was withering about the emotional toll it extracts from families in the meantime. He deserves to be taken seriously. The research on primary-aged children does broadly support his scepticism, the benefits at that level are, at best, modest and inconsistent.

Where the evidence becomes more supportive is in the secondary years, and even then, it is the quality and purpose of the task that matters, not the sheer volume of it. Forty minutes of meaningful, well-designed work is worth something. Forty minutes of a child copying out definitions they don't understand, just to have something to hand in, is worth very little to anyone. So if your child is drowning in homework that seems disconnected from their learning, Kohn would say you're right to be frustrated and the research would largely back him up. The answer, though, is not necessarily to abandon the habit of home-based learning altogether, but to advocate for schools to be more thoughtful about what they send home, and why.

Homework includes more than solving maths problems and reading comprehension. For it is at this moment, an essential practice every day for something much more fundamental, the ability to sit with difficulty; to persevere and to trust in oneself. And these are the abilities that will carry your child through a life which, I promise you, will surely be full of hard things. In rushing in and saving them from discomfort so often, we deprive them of a small but real chance to find that they can cope. Every time we remain calm, keep our distance so they work through it (even imperfectly), we give them something which neither a tutor, no app nor exam paper can deliver: a true belief in themselves. That's not a small thing. That's everything.

Checklist: 4 Ways to Support Without Taking Over.

1. Set up the space, not the answers. Clear the table, remove distractions, and provide a snack. Environment first, always. Try and have the homework at the same time and in the same place, routine matters.
2. Ask before you explain "What have you tried?" is always the first question. Understand where they're stuck before offering anything.
3. Stay nearby, don't hover - your calm presence is supportive. Your anxious hovering is not. Do your own work alongside them.
4. Let the mistake stand (sometimes) A small error corrected by a teacher is a better learning experience than a perfect result you engineered.

Poll Prompt.