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How do you Help?
By Dr. Marvin
Berkowitz
In a previous column I
pointed out how important it is to be involved in your
child’s schoolwork, especially their homework. Parents who
monitor and help with their kid’s homework have kids who get
into less trouble and demonstrate better character.
But it is important to
recognize that you can help helpfully or help harmfully.
That is, you can help a kid with her homework in a way that
both helps her learn better and builds good character or you
can help in a way that hinders her learning and builds
friction between you and her.
I am so impatient that my
son and I often end up arguing when I am supposed to be
helping him with his homework. So he started avoiding asking
for my help because, for him, it became a nightmare. Dad,
who was supposed to be really smart and able to help him
understand his math, seemed to quickly degenerate into some
math ogre who would rather bite off his head than explain
algebra. Then of course, the “mom of sanity” would intervene
and send me to my room.
A recent scientific
article in the Journal Developmental Psychology by Wendy
Grolnick and her colleagues at Clark University explored how
parents help kids with homework. Grolnick investigated
whether parents who were controlling did better or worse
than parents who were more supportive of their kids’
autonomy. In Grolnick’s words, the difference is between
“parents [who] allow give-and-take and involve children in
decision-making” and parents who rely on “pressuring and
directing them and squelching open discussion.”
These researchers found that the former kind of parents
(parents who support kids’ autonomy) have kids with higher
motivation and who do better in school. Even more
interestingly, even though parents come to her experiments
with tendencies to be one way or the other, turning up the
pressure on all parents increases their tendency to be
controlling.
It is certainly important
to help kids do better in school. But it is interesting that
the autonomy style of helping kids with school work is very
similar to what is known as “authoritative parenting”, a
style that produces a whole host of positive character
outcomes in kids.
So helping kids with
homework is important. But it needs to be done in way that
actually helps them. Parents need to listen, and be patient,
and let kids take the lead. Don’t just do the work for them
or tell them what to do. Discuss it with them and let them
try to work it out. And I promise I will try to do likewise.
Furthermore, by helping
kids the right way you are also helping them develop
character. Help them right, so they can do right.
