The Great Homework War

It's a truth universally acknowledged that, if you've had unprotected sex, homework never ends.

No sooner have you slogged through primary, secondary, college and grad school, then you're looming over your kids, making sure they're doing theirs.

With my first-born child, nine and in Primary 3, I have to play the homework warden more often as his school workload increases.

"Any homework?" I ask, soon after he returns from school at 1.45pm. After lunch, it mostly devolves into a broken-record situation.

I check on him every 15 minutes and yell "Do your work!" if I find him doing anything but. It doesn't help that he loves to drag his feet over homework.

Last year, Singapore ranked third in a global survey done by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to measure the amount of time 15-year-old students spent on homework: 9.4 hours a week, on average.

Last week, my son spent seven hours on homework - in a single day.

2pm: Learn ting xie, or Chinese spelling.

4pm: Eye-rolling and groaning (him); screaming and stern lecturing (me).

5pm: Son sighs dramatically, while doing his corrections.

6pm: Mum acts out two sentences son has to learn by heart for mo xie (memorised writing).

7pm: Dinner break.

8pm: Write a journal piece for English.

9pm: Complete a Chinese practice paper.

His dad and younger brother were his cheerleaders - dangling football breaks as an incentive to work faster.

By the time he was done, even the cheerleaders were exhausted, pulling their hair and gnashing their teeth.

"Please, hurry!" they begged, as their eyelids drooped.

I don't blame the first-born, really.

When his homework is interesting - such as when it's research on contagious diseases or pollution, or a PowerPoint presentation on maths solutions - he labours over it without being asked.

But when it is something drier, getting him to do it is like pulling teeth.

It doesn't help that he has two work-from-home parents breathing down his neck.

Pity the son of journalists. His every delay, every omission, is magnified under the scrutiny of two people obsessed with meeting deadlines.

I decided enough was enough. I interviewed him to discover the root cause of his procrastination.

Me: Have I ever told you that homework is your responsibility because you need to take ownership of your own learning?

Him: Yes, you have. Many, many times. But it doesn't work. I still don't want to do my homework. Because I want to play. You know the habit of me saying "Later"? It's forever just do later.

Me: If I don't force you to do your homework, don't nag at you, will you automatically do it?

Him: If you don't force me to do it, I won't automatically do it, of course. Most of the time, you have to. When I don't do my homework, the only consequence is that you just say I'll go to school and get scolded by teacher. So, there are no consequences.

Me: …

Okay, fine. If he wanted consequences, he was going to get consequences.

I drew up a homework contract, subject to renewal yearly. It stipulated the daily hours for homework, and the rewards for adhering to (football, iPad time), as well as the penalties for flouting it (revoking of weekend computer game privileges).

Saturdays were "homework-free days", while any complaints from his teachers about undone homework would mean an allowance cut.

The terms were not new to him; we had verbally agreed on them in stages, but it was the first time everything was spelt out.

My son signed the contract. The Supportive Spouse and I were witnesses. We posted the document on the refrigerator door.

I sat back and waited for miracles to happen. I had visions of me calmly leafing through his completed work before kissing a well-organised and relaxed boy goodnight.

The next day, he went back to ignoring his pile of homework. When I found him playing computer games with his younger brother, I invoked the contract. He stared glumly at me. And refused to move.

I realised that micro-managing was inevitable. Pep talks too. I saw myself repeating the mantra, "Do today's work today", until I was long in the tooth.

So, I told him a very long story about how I used to put off my undergraduate essays until the night before because I wanted to party.

The only problem was that my looming deadline hung over me so much that I would party with a kind of desperate anxiety and totally not enjoy myself.

Then, I would stay up all night before D-day, wishing I could turn back time.

"Wouldn't it be better to just get it out of the way and truly party after that?" I asked.

Thankfully, stressing our shared penchant for procrastination worked. He turned off his video game and prepared to record an oral book report due in a couple of days.

Where homework is concerned, there is no magic bullet. You just have to, well, bite the bullet. Perhaps there are angelic children out there, who need no prompting to complete their homework.

Most probably, there is a homework-avoiding gene, which I have passed on to my kid.

Some days, I wonder at the Singaporean student's (and parent's) lot not to question why, but to do and die. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Our job as students, to question everything with Socratic brilliance?

But that is another column. Besides, I have homework to supervise now.

How do you motivate your child to do homework on his own? Write to stlife@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 15, 2015.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.