Addressing Homework Avoidance

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When a child is avoiding doing their homework or procrastinating getting started, it is easy to come to the conclusion that they lack the motivation to get it done. Then, you offer an incentive to try and spark some sort of progress— “You can have an extra hour of screen time as soon as you get your homework done.” Not budging? There may be something a bit more complicated in play. 

Let’s consider from this perspective – let’s say your child’s all-time favorite thing to do is playing Guitar Hero. You suggest to them that if they start their English paper by a certain time, they can have a non-stop Guitar Hero party with no limitations on how much they can play that night. The incentive is motivating, your child wants it, but somehow they still have trouble getting started on the English paper. There must be something else going on that is making it difficult to get started. Task avoidance is often caused by challenges with crucial emotional and executive functioning abilities.

Balanced thinking/emotional regulation: When taking a look at an assignment or situation, it can be challenging to accurately judge how difficult it will be, the time needed to complete it, and how their own skill level rises to being able to complete it. The inability to have accurate foresight for these items can lead to automatic negative thoughts and thinking mistakes. Common thinking mistakes related to task initiation can be all-or-nothing thinking (“I’m terrible at math” versus “I struggle with division”) or catastrophizing (“I don’t know what topic to write about, I’ll probably fail 8th grade!”), which can create a sense of defeat before a student even begins. Experiencing these thinking patterns when faced with an assignment can result in feeling overwhelmed and/or getting stuck before they even make an attempt to start. While on the outside a child looks like they’re procrastinating, it may be that the feelings are too strong to allow them to begin independently.

It is important to help your child regulate their feelings and identify and challenge these thoughts by looking at alternate perspectives, gathering evidence (or lack thereof) that supports their initial thoughts, or practicing various other means of balanced thinking in order to get to a place where they can feel emotionally ready to begin with an open mind, without the harsh expectations.

Task initiation: Task initiation is another area that can prove challenging in organizing thoughts and understanding where to even begin. An effective means of helping overcome this can be to take proactive measures in looking through an assignment and planning out steps needed. Breaking things down can make them feel less overwhelming, and can help provide a blueprint for your child to follow, starting with the initial steps that can be hard to identify. This may be needed for short-term assignments (ex. Complete 5 math problems, then take a 5 minute break) in addition to long-term school assignments (ex. Identify a topic on Monday, organize an outline on Tuesday, write 1 paragraph a day for the next 5 days, edit on the following day).

Resilience: It is possible that your child’s ability to sustain putting in effort when faced with a mistake or feeling overwhelmed (perceived or real) is in need of being fortified. Teaching your child to approach things with a “growth mindset” allows them to understand that stepping out of their comfort zone allows for the brain to grow and form new connections. One way to do this is to give recognition of your child’s persistence, not just the outcome of what they try to do (it’s more about the journey rather than the destination). Rewarding them for being persistent, rather than focusing on the quality of the outcome, can encourage them to continue trying their best and continue putting in effort to grow and improve over time. This can be done by focusing on smaller, incremental accomplishments. An example of this can be saying something along the lines of “Wow! I noticed that you worked on your math homework for a whole hour today, despite it being really hard. It’s really great how much effort you put in to get those problems done.” The key is to positively reinforce effort over quality. This allows for your child to focus on persevering rather than worrying about what the outcome will be of their efforts. You can focus on quality once the effort is established.

Asking for help: Another common challenge children can face is knowing when to ask for help when feeling stuck or overwhelmed by something they need to do. To help them build this skill, we first must look at why they can’t ask for help. One possible reason might be that they feel embarrassed, especially if they perceive their peers doing the work without any assistance, which can amplify negative thoughts, such as “my classmates aren’t asking for help, I must be stupid!” Again, help them regulate their emotions, balance their thinking, and then offer opportunities for them to ask for help, whether that is done by scheduling points to “check in” or sitting down with them and simply asking “would you like some help?”.

The flip side of this is that some children respond to anxiety by asking for help too frequently. You might find your child asking, “What do I do?” immediately after being given directions or prompted to do a task before taking a moment to look it over themselves. This can actually be a way your child is seeking reassurance, which can sometimes become its own form of avoidance. It is imperative we allow them some time to sit with their anxiety and find ways to work through it before stepping in to help. We want to encourage them to try their best and praise the effort they put forward. Of course, after they spend some time reviewing the assignment and are still stuck, it is helpful to show them ways to assess and break down the assignment into more digestible pieces. In this case, refer back to the ways to support task initiation to help build some momentum. 

While these are some of the more common reasons your child is engaging in avoidance behaviors, it is possible they are symptoms of a learning disability or more complex mental health difficulty. If you notice that your child is having a particularly hard time with academics or is not responding to some of the interventions listed above, seek advice from a learning specialist or mental health expert.

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Helping Kids Develop Positive Self-Talk