With the arrival of home-based learning, everything your child has to do for school seems to have become “homework”. Jokes aside, while your child still regularly receives assignments that he or she is expected to complete outside of lesson time, home-based learning is likely to have changed the dynamic between parent and child when it comes to dealing with homework.

For example, you may be more familiar now with your child’s homework than before as a result of spending more time with them at home. You may also have found yourself getting more involved with your child’s homework than before, and started to wonder if you’re going about things the right way.

The key, as always, is to strike and keep to the right balance. Here's some advice on how you can do so.

There is no doubt that as a parent you should be involved with your child’s homework. This runs the whole range from becoming familiar with the syllabus for each of your child’s subjects to reviewing their day to day workload and the quality of their work. Knowing what assignments your child has to complete makes for an easy starting point to open dialogue for setting goals, discussing progress, and working towards those goals together.

It also lets your child know that he or she is not alone in their learning journey, and that you are there for him or her. Keeping involved with and abreast of your child’s homework also puts the both of you in a better position to navigate the changes that come with moving up each successive step of the education system, as you will be able to make the necessary adjustments in a timely fashion.

And helping too much with homework can turn out to be counter-productive, as it conditions your child to rely on your help all the time instead of learning to seek out answers and solve problems themselves — critical skills that they will need to succeed in school.

At the same time, being overly involved opens up the risk of putting unnecessary pressure on your child and potentially fracturing the parent-child relationship. While it’s natural for you to have expectations for your child’s academic performance, the last thing you want is to smother him or her with them by monitoring your child around the clock and constantly nitpicking.

At The Learning Lab, we believe the optimum balance is one that enables children to be active learners while giving them the security and support to try, fall and bounce back. This is a balance that in large part will have to be worked out between you and your child.

Our teachers are more than willing to help out with their students' school homework, and encourage students to bring any complex questions they encounter to class. There, they will teach students and their classmates how to go about (for English and Science) devising an answer for these questions or how to (for Maths) solve them using various methods.

This dynamic also allows our other students to gain exposure to a large range of question types and trends from other schools to make them more exam ready and well-rounded. As always, we encourage you and your child to think of us at TLL as your partners for each step of the way in your child’s academic journey. 

At The Learning Lab, we are committed to equipping you and your child with the right tools and strategies for success through an educational philosophy that constantly renews itself according to changing needs while remaining grounded in core principles.