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A new study points out that children getting too much homework compared to before. Some elementary school children spent up to thrice as long finishing their after-school assignments, the study found.
According to a report in CNN, the 10-minute rule is the standard that’s supposed to be followed, and is endorsed by the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association. The rule says that children should spend 10 minutes per night per grade level doing homework.
This means that children in the first grade should be given 10 minutes of homework, those in the second grade, 20 minutes, all the way up to 120 minutes for senior year of high school. And this applies to every student, no matter which continent he belongs to.
The study, published in The American Journal of Family Therapy, covered over 1,100 parents whose children were in kindergarten all the way through grade 12. Parents reported that their first-grade children were spending 28 minutes every night doing homework and that second-graders spent 29 minutes a night. Even those children in kindergarten had homework to do, and parents reported this to be 25 minutes every night.
“Anybody who’s tried to keep a 5-year-old at a table doing homework for 25 minutes after school knows what that’s like. I mean children don’t want to be doing, they want to be out playing, they want to be interacting and that’s what they should be doing. That’s what’s really important, ” said Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman, the contributing editor of the study and clinical director of the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology.
A previous study involving high school students concluded that excessive homework lead to a lack of balance in children’s lives, high stress levels and physical health problems including weight loss, headaches, ulcers and sleep deprivation.
The study also reflects that the stress in the household went up as the parent’s confidence in their ability to help their child with homework went down.
Parents should first find out how and why it takes as long as it does for their child to do their homework. For instance, maybe they are distracted by smartphones or household activities. If you’ve checked this and still feel that your child is spending too much time on homework, you should consider having a talk with their teachers.
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