Homework and special needs? Insert silent cursing in my head.
Homework. I’m gonna be honest. When I was a young, enthusiastic SLP, I assigned speech homework all the time. Most of the time, it didn’t come back. I could never understand what the deal was. It’s seriously like 5 minutes of their time. Who doesn’t have 5 minutes?
Man, sometimes I want to go back and smack some sense into that young SLP!
Let’s talk homework. I know most parents dread it. That wasn’t a typo. I just wrote parents. I know this, because I hear it all the time. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to sit here unfortunately, and tell you homework is not important and our kids shouldn’t have it…I don’t believe that either. BUT……
Now, I want to talk about homework and kids with special challenges. Seriously people, if parents of kids without challenges want to pull their hair out during homework, let me just give you a tiny peak into my life.
I have a kid who actually wants to do homework, like I was. Thank God. Everything I am about to tell you would only be THAT much worse if she didn’t, and from what I hear, most kids DON’T want to do it. It starts with reading, which we are supposed to do for 15 minutes every night. That’s usually doable. I say usually, because in the time I pick her up from school at 3:30, we usually have some sort of extra therapy (Speech or OT) or extra curricular we have her in hoping to catch her up, and they also assign hw. I actually have her in less than many parents I know because their kids are still requiring more than 1x a week therapy, just as an FYI to any professionals reading my blog gaining some perspective. Anyway…I like reading because at least it’s a time limit and not an amount. Actually, that would be nice if instead of an amount, we were given a time. Let me give you an example with a recent math worksheet.
This was a packet. A PACKET people. There was a pie graph with nickels and pennies and we were to spin a paperclip with a pencil and then document how many times the paperclip landed on either coin and we were to do ten trials on spinner A and ten trials on spinner B. Then on the back we were to compare. It was a great activity. I looked at it and realistically thought we could complete it in a week. It was due the next day.
Sigh
Okay, to start, spinning a paperclip with a pencil tip is hard for even ME and I’m an adult without motor planning issues. You can only begin to imagine how much time was actually spent on just trying to keep the pencil tip in the paperclip and spinning a spin that actually stayed on the graphic. Basically, the task turned into learning how to spin a paperclip with a pencil…I’m serious. Now that I have some foresight, I think maybe it would have been best if I were to spin and then she were to write down the results, because writing down the results also doesn’t just teach her math, it’s another OT (occupational therapy) lesson. She would mark in the wrong column and then have to erase, which sounds fast…but with motor planning, NOTHING is fast. I was so frustrated after 5 trials of just the first spinner (and mind you we had 15 more to go) that I stopped there…..because after that we had to shade in a bar graph. Ahh yes…”shading” in with a kid who has motor planning. Do you know the serenity prayer? I was repeating it in my head over and over and over again. We are now at least 30 minutes into math hw and this is after the 15 minutes we did of reading. Nevermind I have my own work to do from my job that I still have to get done before the next day. I have to do her hw with her. Sigh. Okay….graph is done. Awesome…turn the page…..and….math calculations.
Silent cursing in my head. Big deep breath. Stay calm.
“Okay honey, so let’s count how many more times we landed on the nickles and write that number.” Oh yeah…writing…that’s a motor plan too. She forgets how to write letters and instead of “calculating” the task in now a handwriting and number formation lesson. FML The ONE silver lining is Ashlynn is not frustrated at all. Thank goodness. I don’t know how she has this amazing tenacity, but she does, and I am so thankful, because this night looks much more difficult in many houses with kids who do get frustrated and want to give up and fight them.
We finished all the math in about 50 minutes only completing 1/3 of what was required. Is this what a first grader is supposed to be doing? Because I also put her to bed early because she’s six, so between 3:30 and 7:30 we have four hours to drive to a therapy, attend a 45 minute therapy, fix dinner, eat dinner, and then do homework and then go to bed. I get why parents don’t do it. I do it because I’m a type A personality and if something is required I can’t let it go.
The school recognizes that kids should not have hw all the time, so they only assign hw M-Th. I guess they think this is helpful. It’s not. I asked last year AND this year for them to send the hw over the weekend…when we have lots of time…and we will complete ALL of it. It hasn’t happened yet, but seriously, if the goal is the amount, than I need more time, which includes the weekend. My kid has special needs. Other kids aren’t challenged by the motoric acts and attention issues that we have. There is no other option than more time for my kid. It’s the way it is. Either that, or we set a time limit, like reading. Work on reading for this amount of time. Okay, we can do that.
I go back to current IEP meetings I am in now with a MUCH different perspective than my young, pre-kid, SLP self. Speech homework?? Speech homework?? Ahahahahahaha. Yeah, no wonder parents wanted to laugh. I just had no idea. I think back to kids I had with ADHD. Ashlynn has it minus the hyperactivity, and if anyone or anything enters the hw room she looks up and is gone. It takes time to regain her attention, find the problem she was working on, and then continue our work. When this happens at least 10 times during the hw assignment, we are talking a sizable chunk of time!
You know what really sucks about homework though? It’s that OUR kids, MY KID, need it the most, and they take the LONGEST to do the amount the average kid is given; and because they need more repetition, they get MORE than the average kid.
Think about that! Isn’t that jacked up??
So, for a kid like Ashlynn, an average hw load already takes her at least double what it takes a typical peer, and because she needs more help, she also GETS double the work.
My apraxia sister with a 2nd grader in Oklahoma wrote it best the other night in a text to me saying simply,
“Global Apraxia SUCKS!!!”
Yep. That sums it up.