How to Help Your Children with Homework

Learn how to help your children with homework in this Parenting advice video series.

Dr. Diana Zuckerman: I am Dr. Diana Zuckerman. I am President of the National Research Center for Women and Families. And now we are going to talk about your time, the quantity and quality of time you spend with your family. Host: What do parents do if they are too tired from work to help their children with homework? Dr. Diana Zuckerman: Now a lot of parents are working very long hours, and by the time they get home, they are eating and then they are just exhausted, they don't really want to do anything else. They don't want to help with homework, they would rather just watch TV. It's one of the things that parents really have to be aware of, it's how they keep up that energy level for their kids. And there are a lot of different ways to do that. But if your child needs help with homework, it's really important that you give them that. And if there are two parents, you can switch off and try to divide up that homework for, one of you might be better at math, one might be better at spelling. So there are ways to divide the work, sometimes older kids can help younger kids with homework and it gives them a real sense of accomplishment. Of course you only want that to happen if the older child will give the right answers and really help the younger child, not just do the homework for them but help them learn it. So there is no magic to this but it is very important that parents set aside enough time for when their kids need them. And have it be a time that works for both the parents and the kid, and that might mean doing homework before dinner, instead of after. It might mean spending more time on weekends when the parents aren't just exhausted. So it's just a matter of figuring out how to make it all fit together, there is no magic way to do it.