Helping Your Kid With Homework Probably Isn't Benefiting Them Like You Think It Is

Helping young children with their homework is one of the things that goes hand in hand with making sure kids eat their vegetables. It's what you do to give your children a good start.

A boost to those grades probably isn't one of the possible benefits of sharing time.

There was no correlation between parental help with homework and a child's math or reading achievements.

No matter how smart the adult or child, or their socio-economic status, time spent slogging through that math together is not likely to have a significant impact on a student's academic results.

The findings put into question decades of encouragement of parental help with and control over homework.

Academics have debated the issue of how much help a parent should give with homework. The right attitude could make children want to learn more. Too much involvement may be more of a problem than a solution.

It's possible that parents don't like the work. Research shows that stress at home can be caused by parents' perception of homework as a stressor.

If there is a time crunch, parents might give answers to their children.

Most of the studies focused on middle school- and high school-aged children, but kids in elementary school are at an important stage of development where homework could have a bigger impact.

Researchers have been trying to figure out how younger children handle parental help with homework.

National datasets were used by the authors to do this. They took into account variables when analyzing their results.

The team didn't find an effect when considering the level of parental homework help.

The authors have a few explanations for why that is.

The stress of the home may not be good for learning. Parents are doing most of the work, instead of teaching their children how to think on their own.

Parents don't have the same training as teachers to teach reading and math to their children.

Katerina Bodovski is a researcher from Pennsylvania State University.

A child's skills and habits are more important than the knowledge a child has.

A child's learning can be hampered by high expectations. If a child feels like their parent is breathing down their neck, that could make things worse. A busy teacher is less likely to be aggressive.

The study did not differentiate between types of parent help and only looked at what impact it had on academic achievement. In some cases, it could lead to parents spending more time with their children, which is beneficial for their mental health.

The team points out there's a need to distinguish between different types of parental homework help because reports from children's perspectives suggest parental support and confidence are associated with higher achievement.

The authors acknowledge that while their results suggest parental help with homework does not translate to better grades, they didn't examine learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

A key factor in successful remote learning in 2020 was the balance between teacher and parent.

Potential parental involvement in school was made possible by carbon dioxide.

That is not the same as parental help with homework when their child goes to school.

The authors suggest rethinking homework suggestions for the future. Asking parents to help out may not be a good idea.

The study was published in a research journal.