Well after reading a couple of his other books I knew I had to read this one and see if he had any insight on the problems of getting kids to do their homework and not pawning it off on us parents. After reading the book I found that I was now equipped with many new tools for making homework the kid’s responsibility and for helping me not feel guilty for not sitting down and helping them complete their work assignments.

In the book John uses a few examples to show how we are doing a real disservice to our kids by helping (and in a lot of cases doing) them with their work. A few of the recommendations he gave was to put a desk in the child’s room instead of allowing them to use the kitchen table for their homework. This will help the child be less distracted and will also help keep the homework from getting in the way of the rest of the family. He goes on to show how there is a fine line between answering a few questions to help the child get over a hump and sitting with the child and doing the work for them.

I went out and got a desk for my older two today and will keep you posted on any changes I see in their work but I have seen one change already that I can report on. My oldest has a report due tomorrow and has been trying to get us to sit at the table and help her with it all day. This has kept us from being able to get other house work done. It’s not that she can’t do the work but I see now that she is trying to get us to do the work for her. Now that there is a desk in her room and she’s been instructed that the only place she can do her work is at the desk I’ve not been hearing a lot of questions out of her about her report. I can also say that when I asked her about it she says that she is almost done.

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone with children in school or that will soon be in school since it has shown me quite a few things I can use to help make my kids take more responsibility for their school work.