When you were younger, you likely remember having times where you needed help with your homework. But now that you’re older and haven’t been in school for years or even decades, you might have forgotten how to best be of service to your kids or younger friends or family members when they come to you needing help. Luckily, there are some things that you can keep in mind to help make this easier on everyone.
So whether your grandkids are coming to you at your senior living facility asking for help with their history project or you see your child struggling to connect with a new concept in math, here are three tips for helping a young student with their homework.
Help With Time And Space Management
Before they are going to be able to really sit down and get to work on their homework, the young student you’re trying to help needs the time and space to focus on their work. Otherwise, they can easily get distracted and try to rush through the problems without actually doing any real learning.
To help with this aspect of homework, you’re going to want to find a place where they can focus and be away from other distractions. This might mean working at their desk in their room, asking other family members to stay quiet while they work in common areas, or even visiting a library where you can both focus on working through these problems together.
Practice Teaching, Not Telling
When you see someone you care about struggling with something, it’s only natural to want to do what you can to help them get through this, even doing some of the work yourself. But when it comes to homework, it’s vital that you teach them how to do this correctly rather than just telling them what to do.
If the student or child you’re working with doesn’t understand how to find the solution to the problem on their own, they won’t be ready to progress to other levels of learning. So while it can be hard to see them struggle and now just try to give them the right answer, teaching them how to get to this right answer will be much more helpful for them in the long run.
Learn How To Get Help When You Both Need It
If it’s been a while since you’ve been in school, you might not remember how to do everything that this current student is learning. So if you don’t know how to help with the homework problems, you can at least learn how to get the student the help they need.
To do this, consider doing things like reaching out to their teacher or a tutor, finding videos that explain these things online, or asking older children who’ve done this work more recently to lend you both a hand.
If you’re trying to help a young student with their homework, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you both get through this process successfully.
