Help Your Child Cope With Homework Anxiety With Rating Scales
For children with anxiety, the hardest part about homework is just getting started. Before even picking up a pencil, they build a story in their head that the task is too difficult, takes too much time and too much to complete. And so they closed. Pep’s conversations and the pleas of Dad and Mom seem to only make matters worse.
Rating scales are an effective tool that helps us articulate and track our suffering and progress – as adults, we use them to access our mental health , assess our pain, and analyze how we deal with situations . Children can use this method too. Having reliable data about their ability to complete tasks can help them refuse “I can’t do this!” to “Actually, I can. Here’s proof that I’ve done this before. “
On Understanding.org, Harvard neuropsychologist Jerome Schultz shares a rating scale he has developed that can help students better understand themselves when doing homework. To use it, have your child review the assignment and answer these three questions:
Time: How long do you think this homework will take? (Then help your child keep track of the actual time spent on homework.)
Difficulty: How difficult do you think this homework will be for you? Use a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the easiest and 5 being the hardest.
Abilities How likely is it that you will be able to complete the task? Use a scale of 1 to 5: 1 for “I’ll get through this” and 5 for “I don’t even know where to start.”
The next day, Schultz writes, ask your child how accurate he or she is in the predictions. Most likely, the task was not as difficult and time-consuming as they expected. You can ask them to use rating scales with different types of assignments – essay, math, chapter reading. The information can help them plan their evenings based on time.
If the assignment turns out to be much more difficult than the student expected, this can be the starting point for a possible conversation with the teacher. “Schools need to be clear about how much time they think children will spend on homework,” Schultz writes.
You can also use a scale to track your child’s progress over time. Perhaps at the beginning of the school year, the child could give most of the tasks 5 points (the most difficult ), but by the middle of the year, start giving more than 4 or 3 points. Show them this trend the next time they seem stuck.
The goal is to help your child get their thoughts out of their minds and get to work.