Dear Melissa,
My son is in first grade. We spend around 30 minutes on homework every night! Doesn’t this seem like too much homework time?
My son is in first grade. We spend around 30 minutes on homework every night! Doesn’t this seem like too much homework time?
I, too, have often wondered if my elementary-aged children are receiving too much homework. It is such a tricky item to balance. We want our children to thrive academically. However, we also want them to be in extracurricular activities, spend quality family time together, and have their own “down time”. We also know our children need to be able to get to bed on time and get a restful night’s sleep. How in the world do we balance it all?
Let’s see what the experts and research studies show:
The National Education Association (NEA) reports that homework overload is the exception rather than the norm. They cite research from the Brookings Institution and the Rand Corporation, which concluded that the majority of U.S. students spend less than an hour a day on homework, regardless of grade level, and that this has held true for most of the past 50 years.
The National Education Association (NEA) reports that homework overload is the exception rather than the norm. They cite research from the Brookings Institution and the Rand Corporation, which concluded that the majority of U.S. students spend less than an hour a day on homework, regardless of grade level, and that this has held true for most of the past 50 years.
Upon hearing this research, you may be thinking, “What? My children seem to have way more homework than I ever did!” I know that was my first thought.
The general recommendation endorsed by the National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association is the so-called “10-minute Rule”. That is 10 minutes per grade level per night, and NO homework in kindergarten (CNN, 2015). However, a recent study of over a thousand parents with children in kindergarten through grade 12 found that first grade students averaged almost 3 times the homework load at 28 minutes, and kindergarten students were averaging 25 minutes when they should not be receiving any homework at all.
So, it seems that there might be an average recommended amount of homework out there, but the actual amount of homework assigned by individual teachers and individual school distracts appears to vary widely.
What is the real problem with spending excessive amounts of time on homework? If kids are spending more time on academic work, then these hard-working students will be smarter, go to better colleges, and get better jobs, right?
A study of 4,300 students from high-performing public and private high schools in an upper-middle-class California community looked at the health effects of too much homework on our students. The average amount of homework for these high school students was 3 hours per night. In this study, 56% of students cited homework as a primary stressor in their lives. Additionally, this study found clear, negative physical impacts of too much homework, such as migraines, ulcers/other gastrointestinal problems, sleep deprivation, and weight loss. These students were also found to be at a higher risk of other serious disturbances, including drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and anxiety. (CNN, 2014)
So…Why so much homework? Why do we feel the need to “over-achieve” and push our children to get more and more academic work done in what should be their free-time? A 2011 article from Psychology Today reports that “study after study has shown that homework has little to do with achievement in elementary school, and is only marginally related to achievement in middle school.” Furthermore, this article uses the comparison of homework to a sewing machine. If a child spent 8 hours a day hunched over a sewing machine, then came home and worked on the sewing machine some more, we would be appalled at the inhumanity and mistreatment of children.
Perfectly in line with the general philosophy of occupational therapy, this same Psychology Today article goes on to cite the importance of play in a child’s development. Play promotes creativity, social skills, brain development, problem solving, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and the list of benefits goes on and on. Take away play, and you will also lose many of these play-based foundational skills, which are so crucial for academic achievement. In addition, a far stronger predictor than homework for academic achievement in children ages 3-12 years, is having regular family meals. Family meals allow parents time to “check in” with their children and further provide a platform to build language and problem solving skills.
So, if your family is overloaded with homework, talk to your child’s teacher and school administration. Share with them some of the research on this topic. Let’s start a movement to push our children to be well-rounded, creative, happy adults, rather than anxious grown ups who can recite learned facts, but have poor problem solving and flexibility/adaptation skills.
Enayati, A. Is homework making your child sick?, (March 21, 2014), CNN
Research Spotlight on Homework, (accessed March 2016), National Education Association
Vatterott, C. Hints to Help Reduce Homework Stress, (accessed February 2016), National PTA
Wallace, K. Kids have three times too much homework, study finds; whats the cost?, (August 12, 2015), CNN
Winch, Guy, How Much Homework Is Too Much?, (October 19, 2011), Psychology Today
