A Mother Writes To Her Daughter’s Teacher Saying She Is Done With Homework!

A mother recently shared a letter she sent to her 10 year old daughter’s teacher saying she is sick of the amount of homework her child has to do.

Blogger Bunmi Laditan expressed her frustration with the hours her daughter spends every night completing her tasks. So frustrated in fact that Laditan decided to take action and declare that her daughter is ‘done with homework.’

“How does homework until 6:30, then dinner, then an hour to relax (or finish the homework) before bed make any sense at all?” she asked. “Is family time not important? Is time spent just being a child relaxing at home not important? Or should she become some kind of junior workaholic at 10 years old?”

While the mum doesn’t blame the teacher for the work load she does express her concern in the way kid’s are growing up with limited time to play. “They need to play with their siblings,” she wrote. “They need to bond with their parents in a relaxed atmosphere, not one where everyone is stressed about fractions because ― SURPRISE ― I’m not a teacher.”

“My kid is done with homework,” Laditan continued.

While the mum shared her letter to Facebook she is yet to say how the school responded to her statement. Laditan did reveal however that she was slightly nervous to hear the school’s reaction and hoped she wouldn’t have to homeschool her daughter!

“I just want her to be intelligent, well-rounded, kind, inspired, charitable, spiritual and have balance in her life,” Laditan added. “I want her to be mentally and emotionally healthy. I want her to know that work is not life, it’s part of life. Work will not fulfill you. It will not keep you warm ― family, friends, community, giving back, and being a good person do that. My kid needs to be a kid.”

The letter has so far received over 55,000 likes and an overwhelming number of comments have been in support of the frustrated mum. In fact many educators and child psychologists themselves have come forward saying there is no benefit in the long run for young children spending hours doing homework every night. They are better off spending quality time with their families and playing with each other being kids!

As a teacher and parent myself I wholeheartedly agree with Laditan’s sentiments. I’ve always said homework has to be meaningful to the child otherwise it’s completely useless. I’ve been on both ends of the homework argument and I can tell you even as a teacher having to correct all those assignments and worksheets is a complete drain on time and resources.

Unfortunately teachers don’t always have control on the amount of homework they set as it’s usually a curriculum issue decided upon by the school. In primary schools I know students are expected to do some reading at home every night along with any extra tasks the teacher assigns.

So far the homework my kid’s receive hasn’t been too bad. It doesn’t take up hours of their time and it usually relates to what they’re doing in class. But not always. There have been times when their homework has been to ‘help mum make dinner’ or ‘play a boardgame with your family’ or even ‘cut out pictures from the olden days into your homework book.’ Umm…ok.

In my opinion there are two things that kids can do at home that will greatly improve their learning. READ and practice your TIMES TABLES. Let’s just get back to basics. Reading will improve a child’s comprehension and spelling a hundred times better than any worksheet will do and learning your times tables is fundamental if you want to be able to do any other kind of math.

There is no point in getting a child to WRITE a maths sentence to practice his/her tables. It takes my son 10 hours to write a sentence and 10 seconds to fill in a maths sum. You work it out? What will benefit him more? Knowing how to spell ‘six groups of two equal twelve’ or actually knowing what the answer is?!

Primary school children benefit more from being involved in after school activities or spending time with their families than they ever will being made to cut and paste picture into their homework books. But that’s just my opinion. What do you think?