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What Is Mirror Writing? Everything Teachers Need to Know About Letter Reversal

Written by Jeanne Sager

Have you noticed students writing letters backward in your class? Called letter reversal or mirror writing, reversing letters or even words is common for younger kids as they make the move from drawing pictures and objects to writing letters and words. So how do you tell when it’s a sign of dysgraphia? When do students need additional support?

The teachers of Teach Starter sat down to answer primary teachers’ most pressing questions about mirror writing. Find out why it happens, how to help students who reverse letters and when mirror writing is a sign that a child may need additional assessment.

What Is Mirror Writing?

The name may sound self-explanatory. Then again, maybe not. The term mirror writing specifically refers to the act of writing letters and words in reverse, something commonly seen in kids from age 3 to about 7. If you were to attempt to read what’s written, the letters are formed from right to left, rather than the left-to-right orientation of the English language.

Why Do Kids Reverse Letters?

So why does mirror writing happen? When kids start learning their letters, they tend to lack meaning says Chaya Gottesman, a pediatric occupational therapist and founder of Sensation New York  in the United States told Teach Starter.

‘Letters are just ‘shapes’ with no meaning attached to it until it is learned,’ Gottesman explains. ‘Without visual-motor, memory, or visual processing maturity, it can be a challenge to recognise subtle differences between the shapes.’

Common letter reversals for young children include:

• Writing a lowercase ‘b’ as a ‘d’ or vice versa
• Writing a ‘p’ as a ‘q’ and the reverse

The reason? ‘All four of these are the exact same shape (a circle/curve with a stick attached to it), the only difference is the positioning or orientation of the stick,’ Gottesman explains.

But they’re not the only letters of the alphabet that get mixed up, and it doesn’t stop at letters — words and numbers can be subject to mirror writing too. In a study of French schoolchildren , researchers found that letters and numbers often reversed by kids include ‘3’ or ‘J’ in which the correct form ‘faces’ leftwards. Their conclusion was that kids who are learning to write notice that most characters face to the right and over-apply the rule.

What Are Signs of Mirror Writing?

While getting papers back from your students with reversed ‘b’s or ‘q’s where their ‘p’s should be is a fairly obvious sign of mirror writing, there are other more subtle clues to look out for!

Some behaviours that you may notice in students:

• Students who struggle to work out the difference between b and d may resort to writing capital letters for a B and a D.
• When you observe how they form letters, some students may begin their letter from the bottom for letters such as F or J as they are not sure which way to create the curve.
• In letters that have a circle in them such as a d, students may write a few circles over and over while they try to work out which side the ‘stick’ goes on.

Download a free handwriting worksheet printable for your students to practise!

How Do You Help Students Who Reverse Letters?

So you know your students are reversing their letters. Now what? Some of it will simply disappear as they read more and write more, says Beth McCarter, an American teacher with a special certification in dyslexia.

‘[Young children] haven’t been exposed to the alphabet for very long — so it’s easy to confuse symbols that look very similar,’ she points out. ‘It’s not intuitive to read in a certain direction; it’s explicitly taught!

‘They may not have stored the letters’ appearances in their long-term memory yet,’ she adds.

Noting letters have been transposed and asking a student what they notice about the letter can sometimes be enough to help your students in some cases, McMaster advises. Studying their work, the mistake may well jump out at them. Visual reminders around the classroom can help kids too.

Teach Starter Teacher Tip: Do you display the alphabet in the classroom? Try updating your decor with  alphabet posters that display  a guide to forming your letters!

Other tips, Gottesman suggests include:

Explicit handwriting instruction starting at age 5.

Teaching directionality from the start is key. Teach the concepts of ‘forward’ and ‘backward,’ but make it simple and fun. For example, the d is drawn starting with a backward moving curve (or ‘super/magic C’) while b begins with a downward moving straight line.

Practise lowercase letter formation with these printable task cards , perfect for early writers.

Teach the letters in groups based on the shapes used to form them, as well as where the strokes begin.

When teaching lowercase letters, the d is taught first along with coag, then other formation groups are introduced. The group that includes the lowercase b should come last. By then, the d has already been habituated and will less likely become confused with the b formation.

Use visual memory tricks

Although she says these don’t work for every child, they can be helpful for some.

Some popular methods for kids who mix up b and d especially include:

• Tip: Hanging this  b and d letter confusion poster in your classroom can help kids keep them straight!
• Teaching kids that ‘b’ has a big belly, and ‘d’ has a dirty diaper!

Is Reversing Letters a Sign of Dyslexia or Dysgraphia?

Often the concept of reversing letters is immediately associated with a dyslexia diagnosis, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. In fact, dyslexia is a condition that affects how people read letters and words, while dysgraphia is the condition in which kids reverse their letters while writing — they’re quite different.

It’s estimated that as many as 30% of kids will grapple with dysgraphia at some point, but it’s not until Year 2 after a child has been given a solid foundation in letter formation that writing letters backward should be a warning sign, Gottesman says.

It’s important, however, not to diagnose a child right off the bat, instead making a referral for assessment. Other possible presentations of a development delay to share with the assessment team include:

• Does the child bump into objects or people regularly?
• Are they much slower to respond to demands than their peers?
• Can they put together the craft and art projects in an organised way?

All this information can help determine what’s going on, but again it may simply be part of the student’s typical development. If you have concerns about younger kids, McCarter suggests saving the student’s work and taking that to your school’s special education experts as this will give them a starting point as they evaluate how to help the child.

Aside from dysgraphia, McCarter said there may be other issues going on.

‘Poor eyesight may be preventing them from seeing things close to them,’ she notes. ‘Trouble tracking what they’re reading may be causing a delay as well. Attention span is another factor; remember it’s hard to concentrate with 20-ish other noisy people in the same room! If the child is hungry, sick, or tired they may not have the capability to write neatly or accurately.’

Getting support for any of these concerns may help your student learn to write their letters, numbers, and words correctly.

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How To Create The Ultimate Homework Station (So You’ll Never Have To Ask “Is Your Homework Done?” Ever Again)

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Homework can be the bane of the school year and can often be the source of much drama in the household. “Where is my notebook?” “Have you seen my backpack?” and of course the often-used “Is your homework done?!”

Instead of playing into the drama, why not make your home set-up a point of calm amongst the chaos, and set your children up for success by creating (or updating) an incredible homework station.

Teaching your kids how to keep themselves organized is such an important skill. Tasks such as time management, tidying workspaces, and project preparation will not only help them with school work, but also with life and the challenges it brings as they continue to learn and grow.

As organizers, we have used these tips to create homework stations for elementary school aged children onwards and they can easily be applied to families looking to refresh their existing systems for kids of any age.

And big bonus – your kids will love their new work space so much, they may actually be excited to do their homework!

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our  disclosure  policy.

PIN for when you’re ready to organize!

FIND THE SPACE

First things first, you’ll need to find a room or space in your home that works for your child. Depending on their age and how much assistance they require, this spot could be in a communal room (think kitchen or family room) or at a desk in their own room.

The ultimate goal is to get them working in a proper set-up with a table and chair instead of working from their lap – this way they establish good habits, can properly work on their handwriting and have room to spread out all their materials.

To spark your creative juices, we’ve pulled  30 of our favorite homework station examples  to serve as inspiration:

• Dual Desks from  @littlelibertyrooms
• Fold Down Desk via  This Old House
• Rustic 3-Desk Set-Up via  Postbox Designs
• Closet Transformation from  This Old House
• Homework Station for 4 via  Householdno6.
• Modern Loft Study Area via  Houzz
• Display Wall Station via  Houzz
• Dual Closet Homework Station via  Houzz
• Hallway Station via  Jen Hannotte for Houzz

• 2 Desk Work Station via  Better Homes & Gardens
• Double Sided Desk from  Better Homes & Gardens
• Closet Study Area via  iheartorganizing
• Family Room Homework Space via  Better Homes & Gardens
• Classic Desks via  Classy Clutter
• Walk-in Closet Transformation via  Petite Party Studio
• Kids Homework Station via  Clean and Scentsible
• Freestanding Table via  Houzz
• Colorful Workstation for Four via  Houzz
• Study Nook from  @littlelibertyrooms

• Chalkboard Wall via  Houzz
• Station Under the Stairs via  Houzz
• Hallway Homework Station from  @ninaandcecilia
• Double Desk Space from  @littlelibertyrooms
• Hanging Chair Hideout via  Houzz
• PBTeen Sleep & Study Loft Bed
• DIY Kids Art & Homework Station via  Craft-O-Maniac
• Tri Station via  Juvenile Hall Design
• Pull-Down Hallway Station from  Sand and Sisal
• Homework Nook with Chalkboard via  By Dawn Nicole
• DIY Homework Station from  Tatertots & Jello

Now, if finding a dedicated desk space isn’t possible, consider making your own mobile supply station that can be easily moved in and out of the space (like the kitchen table) when it’s homework time.

We love these smart DIY ideas for a portable study station:

• Dollar Store Portable Homework Caddy via  Simple Made Pretty
• Mobile Homework Station Cart from  Design Improvised
• Ikea Raskog Homework Station via  Smashed Peas and Carrots
• DIY Organizer from  Sprinkle Some Fun
• Homework Study Station via  Mom Advice
• Side of Fridge Storage via  the 36 th  Avenue
• DIY Homework Station Turntable from  Mom On Timeout
• Over the Door Organizer from  A Bowl Full of Lemons
• Freestanding Homework Station via  Simply Organized
• DIY Cutlery & Canning Jar Caddy via  Clean Mama

MAKE IT COMFORTABLE + FUNCTIONAL

Select a good desk chair that is both comfy and supportive. You don’t want a chair to be the reason that your kids are gravitating to doing their homework on the couch!

A few of our all-time favorite options:

• PBTeen Ergo Chair
• Land of Nod Class Act Mint & Gold Desk Chair
• Land of Nod Toto Desk Chair
• PBTeen Emily & Meritt Bed of Roses Airgo Chair
• PBTeen Rockin’ Roller Desk Chair
• Walmart Kids Retro Molded Chair
• Home Depot Modway Edge Office Chair
• PBTeen Northfield Wingback Chair
• Walmart Urban Shop Swivel Mesh Chair

Although it may seem obvious, having a  trash/recycle can  near their desk will encourage them to not only throw out their old papers, but also (perhaps with a little coaxing), to purge the garbage from their backpacks on a regular basis.

GET IT ORGANIZED

Wall Organization

Hang up a cork, magnetic or pin board for your kids to put papers, reminders and a calendar. This is a space that should be within reach of their desk so they can easily add/remove important items on a regular basis. It can also give them a chance to decorate and personalize their space – hopefully inspiring them to actually use it!

There are so many amazing wall organizing systems available – take a look at some of these incredible ideas:

• PBTeen Cubby System Pinboard
• PBKids Build Your Own Modern Gabrielle System
• Land of Nod Stick With Me Magnet Bar
• Land of Nod Cloud Corkboard
• Target Bulletin Board with Chalkboard & Hooks
• Umbra Trigon Bulletin Board
• Sweet Jojo Designs Pinboard
• PBTeen Dot Pin-It Pinboard
• Land of Nod Beaumont White Shelving System
• Land of Nod Colorblock Corkboard Letters
• PBKids Butterfly Shaped Pinboard

DESK ORGANIZATION

Having supplies within reach of the workspace is key to their productivity (there needn’t be twelve trips around the house looking for the tools they need to complete each project!).

If there’s room on their workspace, consider keeping their supplies neatly organized in one of these nifty containers:

• Land of Nod I Could’ve Bin a Things Bin
• PBKids Rainbow Shaped Pencil Holder
• PBKids Candy Canisters
• Land of Nod Perfect Pitch Storage Caddy
• Lani Ang 4-Grid Desktop Organizer
• PBKids Printed Metal Lazy Susans
• Container Store Acrylic Accessory Drawers
• Land of Nod Multicolor Desk Accessories  
• Target Room Essentials Desktop Storage Unit

A version of these supply caddies can also be made for the road as there are often times that your child won’t be home when it comes time for homework (ie. at a sibling’s after-school sporting event!). Capitalize on that travel and waiting time with a to-go bag of their most needed supplies. We especially love  this portable storage one .

Make cleanup easier on everyone by using labels on your supply containers/caddy. This will help teach your children how to maintain their space and hopefully put an end to the continuing cycle of them asking where to put things when they are cleaning up.

We love  this no-fuss, inexpensive labeler  and also check out  these cool reusable chalk board labels .

As your kids get older, homework will often require the use of technology, which means cord and charging chaos! Keep their space tidy from the cord clutter by using some of these ingenious products and hacks to help cables stay neat and handy for when it’s time to plug in and charge.

• Cable Sleeve
• Container Store  Cable Twisters
• Cable Management Box
• Cable Catch

ESTABLISH GOOD HABITS

Time Management

Give them the tools to manage their own time  by keeping a clock or timer at their workspace . Setting time limits for each subject can help them stay on track and is a life skill that will bode them well in life after school.

If you haven’t heard of  the Time Timer  before, it is an ingenious tool that visually shows your child how much time they have left for a certain task. It is easy for them to set themselves, and they don’t need to know how to read a clock in order to understand the concept of time diminishing.

Subject Management

Help keep your child’s different subjects organized with  color-coded file folders  (1) — for instance, green for science, blue for english, etc. — so they can keep their notes organized on their desk and in their book bag.

A  simple file folder organizer  can help keep their most important documents at arm’s reach ( this one  (2) even has some extra storage underneath!). If there’s not enough room on your desk for one, try  this nifty cascade folder  (3) that you can hang on the wall when working, and collapse and bring with you on-the-go!

In/Out Parent Bins

There’s always a plethora of school paperwork and updates that need to get safely into your hands. Consider setting up some  in and out bins  where your kids can drop off any papers that need to be signed or seen by a parent. You can then go through them each night, and put any that need to be returned to school in the “out” bin, ready for them to pick up in the morning and pack in their backpacks. With a little practice, this can be an extremely effective method that can be used all the way through high school!

It is vital for older children to start learning how to manage their own calendar. Whether it’s a  desktop planner , or a  large dry-erase calendar  that can hang on the wall, it’s a great way for them to visually see what tests and assignments are coming up, so they can manage their time accordingly.

Form a Routine

Now you’ve got their work space expertly organized, help your child form a routine of  when  they do their homework. It could be as soon as they come home after a snack, after ½ an hour of “down” time or after dinner. Whatever you decide, help them stick to their routine for the first few weeks by setting a timer or providing gentle guidance. Hopefully with their new homework station in place, they’ll feel a real sense of ownership and be excited to get down to work!

After their homework is complete, consider helping them put a routine in place that will help make the morning rush less hectic. It could be as simple as establishing a nightly backpack check ensuring that all the books and papers needed for the next day are all packed away. Or having them place their packed backpack in a designated space (preferably near the door!) so there isn’t a mad scramble to find it in the morning.

RELATED:  For more smart tips and hacks for smooth morning routines see our popular post:  67 Life Changing Organization Tips & Hacks For Stress-Free Mornings

So there you have it mamas, tons of tips and inspiration to create the ultimate Homework Station. We wish you much success in the homework drama and hope you’ll never have to ask “is your homework done?” ever again!

Pssst – before you go, we’d love to have you  join our What Moms Love community  and we’ll hook you up with all of our exclusive resources including our popular  10 Screen-Free Toys For Guaranteed Quiet Time  (this is seriously a game changer mamas!),  Holiday/Birthday Coupon Book for Kid s  and  35 Food Subs & Swaps for Healthy Family Meals . Just let us know where to send all your goodies!

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MICHELLE HALE & ANNIE DRADDY

About The Authors:

Michelle and Annie are co-founders of  Henry & Higby , a professional organizing company in New York City. They believe that life should be as simple as possible and that the process of getting organized can help.

If you need help organizing your life & home, contact them at  [email protected]

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Wow, these homework stations are amazing! Almost too pretty to work at. Haha. I like the wall organization ideas the most. Always good to get stuff up and off the desk!

Wow, this post is pack full of good ideas! I think it is so important to have a fun, bright station that get kids actually excited to do their homework! Beautiful post.

So much inspiration here!!! My oldest just started kindergarten but I want to have good habits established early and these ideas are great!

These are amazing ideas!! I’m saving for the future

Always such helpful posts! Thank you!

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Home / Expert Articles / Child Behavior Problems / School & Homework

“My Child Refuses to Do Homework” — How to Stop the Nightly Struggle Over Schoolwork

By janet lehman, msw.

For many parents, getting their kids to do their homework is a nightly struggle. Some kids refuse to do their homework. Others claim that they don’t have homework, but then the report card comes out, and you realize that their work was not being done.

So why is homework time so difficult? In my opinion, one of the major reasons is that it’s hard for kids to focus at home. Look at it this way: when your child is in school, they’re in a classroom where there aren’t a lot of distractions. The learning is structured and organized, and all the students are focusing on the same thing.

But when your child comes home, their brain clicks over to “free time” mode. In their mind, home is a place to relax, have a snack, listen to music, and play video games. Kids simply don’t view the home as the place to do schoolwork.

If the homework struggles you experience are part of a larger pattern of acting out behavior, then the child is resisting to get power over you. They intend to do what they want to do when they want to do it, and homework just becomes another battlefield. And, as on any other battlefield, parents can use tactics that succeed or tactics that fail.

Regardless of why your child won’t do their homework, know that fighting over it is a losing proposition for both of you. You will end up frustrated, angry, and exhausted, and your child will have found yet another way to push your buttons. And, even worse, they will wind up hating school and hating learning.

A major part of getting your child to do their homework lies in establishing a system so that your child comes to see that homework is just a regular part of home life. Once they accept that, you’ve already won half the battle. Accordingly, my first few tips are around setting up this system. If you get the system right, things tend to fall into place.

Put this system in place with your child at a time when things are calm and going well rather than during the heat of an argument. Tell your child that you’re going to try something different starting next week with homework that will make it go better for everyone. Then explain the system.

You’ll find that this system will make your life easier as a parent, will make you more effective as a parent, and will help your child to get the work done. And when your child gets their work done, they’re more likely to succeed, and nothing drives motivation more than success.

Structure the Evening for Homework

When your kids come home, there should be a structure and a schedule set up each night. I recommend that you write this up and post it on the refrigerator or in some central location in the house. Kids need to know that there is a time to eat, a time to do homework, and also that there is free time. And remember, free time starts after homework is done.

Homework time should be a quiet time in your whole house. Siblings shouldn’t be in the next room watching TV or playing video games. The whole idea is to eliminate distractions. The message to your child is, “You’re not going to do anything anyway, so you might as well do your homework.”

Even if your child doesn’t have homework some nights, homework time should still mean no phone and no electronics. Instead, your child can read a book or a magazine in their room or work on longer-term assignments. Consistently adhering to the homework time structure is important to instill the homework habit.

Start the Evening Homework Habit When Your Kids are Young

If your children are younger and they don’t get homework yet, set aside quiet time each evening where your child can read or do some type of learning. Doing so will help children understand that evening quiet and study time is a part of everyday home life, just like chores. This habit will pay off when the real homework begins.

Use a Public Place for Homework

For a lot of kids, sending them to their rooms to do their homework is a mistake. Many children need your presence to stay focused and disciplined. And they need to be away from the stuff in their rooms that can distract them.

You know your child best. If you think they’re not being productive in their room, then insist they work at the kitchen table or in some other room where you can monitor them and where there will be fewer distractions.

If they do homework in their room, the door to the room should be open, and you should check in from time to time. No text messaging, no fooling around. Take the phone and laptop away and eliminate electronics from the room during study time. In short, you want to get rid of all the temptations and distractions.

Give Breaks During Homework Time

Many kids get tired halfway through homework time, and that’s when they start acting up. If your child is doing an hour of homework, have them take a 5-minute break every half-hour so that they can get up, have a snack, and stretch their legs. But don’t allow electronics during the break—electronics are just too distracting.

Monitor the break and ensure that your child gets back to work promptly.

Be sure to encourage your child when they’re discouraged. It’s okay to say things like:

“I know it’s a drag, but think of this—when you get your work done, the rest of the night is yours.”

“Look, if you do your work all week, you’ll have the whole weekend to do what you want.”

Show your child empathy—how many of us truly enjoyed homework every night? It’s work, pure and simple. But your child will be encouraged when they begin to have success with their work.

Help Your Child Get Started With Their Homework

Some kids have a hard time getting assignments started. They may be overwhelmed or unsure where to begin. Or the work may seem too difficult.

There’s a concept I explain in The Total Transformation® child behavior program called hurdle help . If you have a child who has a hard time getting started, spend the first five minutes with them to get them over the first couple of hurdles. Perhaps help them with the first math problem or make sure they understand the assignment.

For many kids who are slow starters, hurdle help is very effective. This doesn’t mean you are doing their homework for them—this is simply extra help designed to get them going on their own.

Help Your Child Manage Long-Term Assignments

If your child has a big, long-term project, then you want to work with them to estimate how much time it’s going to take. Then your child has to work within that time frame. So if your child has a science project, help them manage and structure their time. For instance, if the project is due in 30 days, ask them:

“How much time are you going to spend on it each night?”

They might say, “15 minutes a night,” and you hold them to that.

Don’t assume that your child knows how to manage their time effectively. As adults, we sometimes take for granted the habits we have spent a lifetime developing and forget that our kids are not there yet.

Make Sunday Night a School Night

The way that I structure the weekend is that Sunday night is a school night, not Friday. So if your child has homework for the weekend, and as long as they’re done all their work for the past week, they get Friday and Saturday night off and can do their homework on Sunday night.

If there’s a project or something big to do over the weekend, then work with your child to budget their time. They may have to put some time in on Saturday or Sunday during the day. But other than that, your child should have the weekend off too, just like adults do.

The Weekend Doesn’t Begin Until Overdue Work Is Done

If your child has overdue homework, their weekend shouldn’t begin until those assignments are done. In other words, Friday night is a homework night if their week’s work is not complete.

Believe me, this is a highly effective consequence for kids because it creates a great incentive to get their work done. Indeed, each minute they’re doing homework is a minute they could be hanging out with friends or playing video games.

If you can hold to this rule once and deal with the complaining, then next week the homework will be done.

By the way, if they say they can’t do their homework because they didn’t bring their school books home, they should be grounded for the weekend. You can say:

“I don’t want to hear that you can’t do it because you don’t have your books. You’d better call around and find a friend who you can borrow them from. Otherwise, you’ll be staying in this weekend.”

Make Homework a Higher Priority Than Activities

Kids are involved in a lot of after school activities these days. I understand that. But my priority has always been “homework comes first.”

In my opinion, if the homework isn’t done on Monday, then your child shouldn’t go to football on Tuesday. It’s fine if he misses a practice or two. You can say:

“Here’s the deal. We’re not going to football today. You need to get your work done first.”

If your child says, “Well, if I miss a practice, I’m going to get thrown off the team,” You can say:

“Well, then make sure your work is complete. Otherwise, you’re not going to practice. That’s all there is to it.”

I personally don’t put football, soccer, or any other extracurricular activities above homework and home responsibilities. I don’t believe parents should be going from soccer to karate to basketball with their kids while homework and school responsibilities are being neglected.

Use Rewards for Schoolwork, Not Bribes

Most kids get personal satisfaction out of getting good grades and completing their work, and that’s what we’re aiming for. Nevertheless, it’s important to reinforce positive behavior, and that may mean offering an incentive for getting good grades. For instance, my son knew that he would get a certain reward for his performance if he got all B’s or above. The reward was an incentive to do well.

One of the shortcuts we take as parents is to bribe our kids rather than rewarding them for performance. It can be a subtle difference. A reward is something that is given after an achievement. A bribe is something you give your child after negotiating with them over something that is already a responsibility.

If you bribe your child to do their homework or to do anything else that is an expected responsibility, then your child will come to expect something extra just for behaving appropriately. Bribes undermine your parental authority as kids learn that they can get things from you by threatening bad behavior. Bribes put your child in charge of you.

The appropriate parental response to not meeting a responsibility is a consequence, not a bribe. A bribe says, “If you do your homework, I will extend your curfew by an hour.” In contrast, a consequence says, “If you don’t do your homework, you’re grounded until it’s finished.” Never bribe your kids to do what they’re expected to do.

Use Effective Consequences

When giving consequences, be sure they’re effective consequences. What makes an effective consequence? An effective consequence motivates your child to good behavior. They put you back in control and teach your child how to problem-solve, giving your child the skills needed to be successful.

An effective consequence looks like this:

“If you fall below a B average, then you can no longer study in your room and must study at the kitchen table until you get your average back to a B.”

For the child who prefers to study in their room, this is an effective consequence.

Another effective consequence would be the following:

“If you choose not to study during the scheduled time, you will lose your electronics for the night. Tomorrow, you’ll get another chance to use them.”

And the next day, your child gets to try again to earn the privilege of electronics. Short-term consequences like this are very effective. Just don’t take away this privilege for more than a day as your child will have no incentive to do better the next time.

For more on consequences, read the article on how to give effective consequences to your child .

Be Prepared to Let Your Child Fail

Failure should be an option, and sometimes you just have to let your child fail . Parents often do their kids a disservice when they shield them from the consequences of their actions. If your child chooses not to study enough and they get a failing grade, that’s the natural consequence for their behavior. And they should experience the discomfort that results from their behavior.

Let me be clear. If you interfere and try to get your child’s teacher to change their grade, your child will learn the wrong lesson. Your child will learn that if they screw up enough, Mom and Dad will take care of them. And they don’t learn their math or science or whatever it is they failed.

To be sure, failing is a hard lesson, but it’s the right lesson when your child fails. And it’s not the end of the world. In fact, for many kids, it’s what turns them around.

Don’t Fight with Your Child Over Homework

Don’t get sucked into arguments with your child about homework. Make it very clear that if they don’t do their homework, then the next part of their night does not begin. Keep discussions simple. Say to your child:

“Right now is homework time. The sooner you get it done, the sooner you can have free time.”

Say this in a supportive way with a smile on your face. Again, it’s important not to get sucked into fights with your child. Remember, you don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. If your child refuses to do his or her work, then calmly give the consequence that you established for not doing homework.

Also, trying to convince your child that grades are important is a losing battle. You can’t make your child take school as seriously as you do. The truth is, they don’t typically think that way. To get your child to do homework, focus on their behavior, not their motivation. Rather than giving a lecture, just maintain the system that enables them to get their work done. Often, the motivation comes after the child has had a taste of success, and this system sets them up for that success.

Stay Calm When Helping Your Child With Their Homework

It’s important to be calm when helping your child with their homework. Don’t argue about the right answer for the math problem or the right way to do the geography quiz. If you get frustrated and start yelling and screaming at your child, this sets a negative tone and won’t help them get the work done. It’s better to walk away than it is to engage in an argument, even when you’re just trying to be helpful.

For couples, it may be that one of you is more patient and acceptable to your child. Let that person take on the homework monitoring responsibilities. And don’t take it personally if it isn’t you.

Remember, if you can’t stay calm when helping your child, or if you find that your help is making the situation worse, then it’s better not to help at all. Find someone else or talk to the teacher about how your child can get the help they need. And try not to blame your child for the frustration that you feel.

It’s Your Child’s Homework, Not Yours

Remember that your child is doing the homework as a school assignment. The teacher will ultimately be the judge of how good or bad, correct or incorrect the work is. You’re not responsible for the work itself; your job is to guide your child. You can always make suggestions, but ultimately it’s your child’s job to do their assignments. And it’s the teacher’s job to grade them.

Know the Teachers and the Assignments

Build good relationships with your child’s teachers. Meet with the teachers at the beginning of the school year and stay in touch as the year progresses. Your relationships with your child’s teachers will pay off if your child begins to have problems.

And if your child does have problems, then communicate with their teachers weekly. If they’re not handing in their work on time, ask the teachers to send you any assignments that they didn’t get done each week. Many schools have assignments available online, which is a big help for parents. Just don’t rely on your child to give you accurate information. Find out for yourself.

The bottom line is that you want to hold your child accountable for doing their work, and you can only do that if you know what the work is. If you keep yourself informed, then you won’t be surprised when report cards come out.

Work with your child on a system to keep track of assignments. I recommend an old-fashioned paper calendar simply because we already have too many distracting electronics in our lives—experiment and use what works best for your child.

Finally, try to see your child’s teachers as your allies. In my experience, most teachers are dedicated and caring, but I realize that this isn’t always the case. So, for your child’s sake, do your best to find a way to work with their teachers.

If You Think Your Child Might Have a Learning Disability

Kids are expected to do some difficult work, and your child may struggle. If your child is having an especially hard time, talk with their teacher. Ask if it’s typical for your child to be struggling in this area.

In some cases, the teacher may recommend testing to see if your child has a learning disability. While this can be hard to hear as a parent, it’s important to find out so that you can make the necessary adjustments.

If it turns out that your child does have a learning disability, then you want to get an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) set up with the school.

Most kids don’t enjoy homework, and for some, it will always be a struggle. Our children all have different strengths and abilities, and while some may never be excellent students, they might be great workers, talented artists, or thoughtful builders.

I have to admit that dealing with my son’s homework was one of my least favorite experiences as a parent. It was overwhelming at times. Often, I just wasn’t equipped to offer the help he needed.

Our son struggled with a learning disability, which made the work feel unending at times. My husband James was much better at helping him, so he took on this responsibility. But even with this division of labor, we had to make adjustments to our schedules, our lives, and our expectations to make sure our son did his homework as expected.

Life would be easier if all children were self-motivated students who came home, sat down, and dug into their homework without being asked. This is hardly the case, though. Therefore, you need to set up a system that is right for your child, and it’s going to be easier for some kids than for others.

We’re trying to raise our kids to be responsible and accountable for their homework. And we’re trying to avoid fighting with them over it every night. When I had parents in my office, I would take these concepts and show them how they could make it work for their families in their own homes. The families I worked with were able to turn the nightly homework struggle around successfully time and time again.

Related content: The Homework Battle: How to Get Children to Do Homework

Empowering Parents Podcast: Apple, Spotify

About Janet Lehman, MSW

Janet Lehman, MSW, has worked with troubled children and teens for over 30 years. A veteran social worker, she specializes in child behavior issues — ranging from anger management and oppositional defiance to more serious criminal behavior in teens. She is co-creator of The Total Transformation® Program , The Complete Guide To Consequences™ , Getting Through To Your Child™ , and Two Parents One Plan™ .

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Hello, my grandson recently moved with me from another state. He is currently in 8th grade (but should be in 9th). He basically failed the last 2 years and was promoted. I would say he is at a 6th grade level. It's a daily fight with him to do his homework. He won't even try. I know a lot of this is because no one has ever made him do his homework before. I thought he would just have to get in a routine of doing it. He's been in school for a month now and its a fight every single day after school. I have lost all the patience I had. I am tired of being a broken record and being the "bad guy". I don't want to give up on him and send him back to his mom, where I know he will never graduate. I have made so many sacrifices to get him here, but I am literally at my wits end with this. I knew it wasn't going to be easy but I didn't think it was going to be this hard.

My rule is homework after school. If he comes home and does his homework after school, it was easier for him to complete. That lasted a week and a half. Now, he just sits there and does nothing. Does anyone have any suggestions? I couldn't live with myself if I sent him back and he became nothing but a drop out. I know I am not one to have patience, and I am trying but at the same time, I am almost over it. I don't like going to bed crying and knowing that he is crying too. I am open to all suggestions. Please and thank you.

I'm so sorry you are facing these struggles with your grandson. We here from many caregivers in similar situations, so you're not alone in your frustration. We have several articles that offer helpful tips for managing these homework struggles, which can be found here: https://www.empoweringparents.com/article-categories/child-behavior-problems/school-homework/

We appreciate you reaching out and wish you all the best moving forward. Be sure to check back and let us know how things are going.

Jessicar Thank you for this article and strategies. I echo many of the frustrations expressed by other parents here, including my opinion (as an educator) that homework should not exist. I agree that teachers and parents are in a struggle about which adult is responsible for supporting the child in getting More homework done. The best thing for my son was a free "homework club" in fourth and fifth grade where a teacher monitored completion of homework. He has nothing like this in middle school so far. Where I really disagree with the article is about extracurricular activities. Kids need physical activity through sports! They need enrichment beyond academics through the arts, theater, music. Many families send their children to religious, language, and/or cultural programs after school. If I sat in school all day, I'd want to move my body and interact with others too. The solution is not removing extracurricular activities that are healthy or motivating or valued. The solution is for schools to limit homework. Given that there is still homework as a reality--I'd like advice on when to have child do homework AFTER sports or extracurricular activity. When is the best time for homework if the goal is to go to bed on time (in my house in bed around 9 pm)? Between extracurricular and dinner--when the kid is tired? After dinner? My child is in 7th grade and I still can't figure it out. What do others do/think?

I found school to be extremely boring, as a teen. Looking back I realize that I hadn't found the work challenging enough. Personally, I struggled with this all through high school. I was completely disinterested in school, as a result.

I noticed that there wasn't a section addressing situations where children, who are motivated by challenges, do poorly as a result of boredom.

I enjoy reading many of the articles; even those which don't necessarily apply to my current situations with my child. One never knows what obstacles or challenges one may come across. Thank you

Here's what I know. Correcting our children when their behavior is displeasing is what most parents focus on. Without a lot of explanation I'm going to try to get you to change your focus. All children have 4 emotional needs:

1. A sense of belonging

2. A sense of personal power

3. To be heard and understood

4. Limits and boundaries

Rather than focus on your child's behavior, focus on meeting these needs. Meet the needs, change the behavior. There a 25 ways to meet these needs. One of the most effective is to spend regular one-on-one time with your child doing what your child wants to do. How do you spell love? T-I-M-E. It seems counter-intuitive, but just try it for a week. Do this for 1/2 hour every day for a week. See what happens.

Frustrated Confused Parent, I went through similar challenges with my son when he was in high school. As a grade school student his grades were always B and higher. The changes began when his mother and I separated; my son was 12yo. Prior to our separation I was the one who maintained, and enforced the habit of completing his assignments before extracurricular activities could be enjoyed. His mother never felt she had the patience or intelligence to assist him with his homework assignments and upon our separation she completely ignored his school work. Although he continued to follow the structure I had established through grade school, he soon began to realize that no one was showing interest any longer and, thus, began shirking school related responsibilities. My son and I were, and still are, close. I am certain that the separation likely had some affect on him, but it was more than that. He was reaching his teens and becoming more self-aware. Friends began to play a more integral and influential part in his life. Unfortunately my son's grades began slipping as he reached his early teens. For me, this was extremely frustrating since I was aware of how intelligent he was and of what he was capable. After many aggravating, lengthy, heated, and unyielding conversations with his mother about maintaining the structure established through grade school, it became clear she was incapable or simply unwilling. Essentially, he was on his own. Of course I would do whatever I could to help. For starters, I facilitated a transfer to a Charter School, realizing that he needed more individualized attention than that which a public school could provide. It seemed as though he was getting 'lost in the shuffle'.

Unfortunately the damage had already been done. After two years under his mother's lack of tutelage my son had developed some poor habits.

He struggled with maintaining good grades throughout his high school career. By 'maintaining good grades' I mean that he would take a grading of 45 in math and bring it to a 70 within three weeks of the end of a marking period. He ALWAYS passed, though. He would somehow get his grades to or even above passing by the end of the period. As I began to see this, I began to have more faith knowing that when the going got tough he would step up and take charge. It also indicated that he did well with what might perceive as an impossible goal. So, I started to have faith that he'd find his way.

He has since graduated, he has a good-paying job, and he is beginning school to become an electrician within the next month or so. In two weeks he moves into his own apartment, also. He's never done drugs, never drank alcohol, and never started smoking cigarettes. All of which I have done as a teen and well into my adult years. I am in recovery. My son is aware of my own struggles. Most importantly, I believe, is that he has a complete understanding that we all struggle in our own ways. Working through the difficulties, challenges, and obstacles are what makes us stronger and it's our compassion for others, and ourselves, which help us grow into decent adults.

I came to realize that the 'grades' he received in school had nothing to do with the amazing adult he's become; it was literally everything else.

NanaRound2 My 6 year old grandson has just taken 2 hours to write a list and write 3 sentences. He thinks if the words were shorter it wouldn't take so long. Already went through this with his dad. I celebrated more than he did when he graduated. Can't drag More another kid through school. Losing my mind and like the previous comment have tried EVERYTHING.

Yeah -been there, done that. Doesn't work. At least not for my child. I've read every *actual* parenting book out there ( You know, the books publishes by Harvard & Stanford professors who've been studying parenting and child psychology for the past 30 years?) ... and you're all missing something - because I've tried it all.

My kid DGAF. This was almost painful to read. "oh, yup - tried that one. That one too. Oh, hey - I've tried that as well."

This is so frustrating; tell me something I haven't already tried 50 times.

Psych Fan I'm with you my sophomore son DGAF . I tried so much stuff even set time stuff and he just doesn't go get his work out. He's 5'9 so I am 5'1 and I can't move him to do stuff . All he does is debate with me that More Grades really don't matter that he's like I'm just going to get D's because I'm not going to care to do better because I do not like school. He doesn't understand why I don't approve of D grades because I know he has better potential but he's like D grades I will pass and get my diploma .

The first thing on the list is to try and stay calm. While doing homework with my children I'm usually very calm. When I do get frustrated I'll leave the room for a moment, wash my face, and take a few deep breaths until I calm down. Or I'll make hot chocolate to help calm my nerves. It's not a perfect system, but what is?

Number two is to set clear expectations around homework time and responsibilities. We have a standard homework time at our house, with a timer and everything. If our kids meet the homework time goal they'll be rewarded later in the evening with family time. Each of our kids know their roles and responsibilities in the house whether the work gets done before dinner or not.

Number three is a relationship with the teachers, each of whom e-mail us, some two or three times a day. Contact with them has never been better. They're teachers are all pretty awesome too.

Number Four, play the parental role most useful to your child...I have three kids. One needs no help at all, one needs minor help and advisement, while the third requires constant supervision or their e-mail might 'accidentally' open up. This we've provided through double teaming. One parent works with them until the other gets home, then they switch while the other goes to make dinner.

Five, keep activities similar with all your kids. We all live on the same schedule, if one of them finishes homework early they get the reward of extra quiet reading time-my kids are ALL book worms.

Six, Set up a structured time and place for homework. Done. Homework table with a supplies basket right in the middle of the room. Big enough for all of them to work at and then some, it's an octagonal table which my husband built. I also always have their 'homework snacks' waiting for them when they get home, and I usually try to make it healthy-even if they don't realize it.

Seven, start early. My kids have been doing 'homework' with me since they were babies, and (as I pointed out to them yesterday) they loved it. We'd learn about cooking, dinosaurs, amphibians, insects, math, English, chemistry, even the periodic table came up. We'd do work pages every day and they'd love it.

Eight, hurdle help, works in area's like math, but not so much with history or English when the problems aren't as straight forward. But we do use this method where it applies.

Nine, choose the best person for the job. I'm best at English and my husband at math. When I get stuck on math I know who to go to, and I'll even study in my spare time to get better at it so I can be more useful in case he has to work late. That being said, we both devote a lot of our time to helping our kids with their homework.

Ten, show empathy and support. Done, not only can I relate to my kids, but I've pointed out that not getting their work done will make them feel bad bad enough, and that that's why we should work on getting it done together, so they have something to be proud of.

Use positive reinforcement and incentives. :) There was this one time I sat my son down at a table with a work book about 400 pages long. He was young, not even in school yet. Next to the book I placed a giant bag of M&Ms. I told him for every page he got done, he could have one m&m. About ten minutes later he finished the workbook and grinned up at me. When I found out he'd finished the book, I quickly checked it to see if it was done well, and then pushed the bag of M&M's towards him and told him he could just have it...Now they get rewarded in video games and computer time...

It seems that according to this article I'm doing everything right...So why is my child still struggling with homework/classwork? They've literally just refused to do it. Have seriously just sat in their chair without saying a word and stared at the table, or desk, or screen- as the majority of work is now done on computers...I'll sit with them, ask them if they need help, try to help them with problems. They will tell me the right answer to the questions being asked and then refuse to write it down. I feel like I've done everything I can as a parent to help them, but despite all my efforts, it isn't working. So...when all of these things fail, when a parent has done everything right, and there is nothing more they can do short of taking the pen or pencil into their own hands and doing it themselves, (but that would be cheating their child out of an education) what then should the parents do?

When our kids don't get their homework done before dinner, they're sent down the hall where it's quiet so they can finish it at the desk there, while the other kids have family time. They are told to come and get us if they really need help after that. But at this point it's like ostracizing our child for not doing homework.

I agree with most of what's on this page, and our family lifestyle reflects that, but I will disagree with one thing it said. It is our job to help our kids and be supportive of them yes, to nurture them and help them get the skills they need to take care of themselves and their home when they're older...but it is not our job to do the teachers work for them, they get paid for that. Some days it seems like that's what's expected of parents. Some even send home classwork if the kids don't finish it in class. Which means the child now has even more work to do on top of their homework. Though I understand that the teachers want the child to finish the lesson, and were the homework not a factor I probably wouldn't mind it as much. I don't even mind them sending home study guides to help kids before tests (Which is what homework was originally) but to send home overwhelming piles of work each night for parents to help kids with, (Each child with different homework so that parents need to bounce from history, to math to English) it's unreasonable. When teachers send home homework, they're dictating what the parents can do with the little time they have with their child. Which is wrong. We once had to cancel a trip to a science museum because our child had too much homework to finish and there was no way to make it in time and get their homework done. They could have had an amazing educational experience which would overall help them get excited about learning with new and fun tactile experiences, but their schedule (and therefore our schedule) was being dictated by the teacher while they weren't even in class. Of course I try not to talk bad about homework in front of my children, because that would make it even more difficult to get them to do it. But children NEED family time, they NEED to be kids. To be allowed to get away from their work and be themselves, to go outside and play with their friends, or even go out to dinner once in a while with their parents. Homework has made it difficult to grow a relationship with our children beyond the confines of what the teachers are dictating. It's violating in some ways and frustrating in others. It's grown into this monstrous thing which it was never meant to become, and the funny part about it is that most studies done on it show that schools who don't have homework have higher test scores and graduation rates. Not to mention better mental health rates. Studies also show, that after a child is taught something, they'll only really learn it after a good nights sleep, and that no amount of homework will change that. Sleep is what our bodies need to absorb important information we learn throughout the day, so staying up late with homework might even be harmful to a child's education...

Sorry I guess that turned into a bit of a rant...In the end I was hoping to find something useful in this article, something I hadn't tried that might work, but I've done it all, and will probably continue to do all of it in hopes that consistency might be the key...It's just that even after years of already doing All of this consistently, it's still not working. It's as if my child has made a conscious decision Not to work. He's not unintelligent, he understands it, he's even been tested and found to have an above average ability to learn. He just not doing it..So what now? What more can I do to actually inspire him to do the work?

AshumSmashum Out of all of this, most of which I've read and tried a billion times, your comment hit deeper. My son scores in the 99% on tests but cannot sit down and do the simplest homework. He does have autism and adhd so when he freezes up on homework, despite More knowing it, I'm lost at how to help him get it done. He knows the work so why does he need to show it with 20 math problems after school that take forever to complete one? (whatever honors algebra stuff he's in, I was lucky to learn division lol) He has a high IQ and excels in all subjects and yet is being tutored, so far, in English just to get the work done. I'm so done with the emotional toll it takes on me and him at home. Nobody wants to go to work for 8 hours and come home and do the same for another 5 so why do we think our kids want to come home and do more classwork? I'm so appreciative of your comment!

JC Hi Barb, thank you for bringing this up! My son sounds a lot like you...and he really wants to get good grades and go to an Ivy League school. What could someone do to help an 8th grader in the moment of struggle, while making sure they don't get more More anxious from falling behind for the rest of the year?

Tb Hi Barb, I'm the parent of an 8th grader and I want to thank you for the comment you left here. You helped me look at the deeper issues and I really appreciate that. I'm going to approach the conversation with my son differently, thanks to you. Thank More you!

My 11 year old daughter, Alice, has always helped her 7 year old sister, Chole, with homework. But just recently Alice has been giving Chole the wrong answers. We have been trying to get her to give Chole the correct answers

but she always yells at us. She has a baby sister 2 months named Ray and ever since Ray was born she has been giving Chole wrong answers. I once overheard her and Kevin, my husband, talking about how she felt left out. She came and talked to me and said exactly what she had told Kevin. She also told me she has been getting bad grades and doesn't get her homework. Me and Alice talked and she said "All the cool New York girls get straight A's and ever since I started getting D's and F's they said I wasn't cool anymore." We started having her grandparents come over and she would yell, hit, scream, and talk back to them. She is a great student but she spends all of her time on her phone. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even at school she is on her phone. All I'm asking is that 1. How do I make her stop screaming, yelling, hitting, and back talking? 2. How do I make her feel cool and get A's again?and 3. How do I get her off her phone?

sounds like you have a number of concerns around your daughter’s behavior, and

it certainly can feel overwhelming. We would suggest https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/its-never-too-late-7-ways-to-start-parenting-more-effectively/ and focusing on just one or two of the most serious, to get

started. Behaviors like verbal or physical abuse would be of top priority,

while behaviors like https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/how-to-walk-away-from-a-fight-with-your-child-why-its-harder-than-you-think/ we would recommend ignoring, and not giving it any power or control.

Empowering Parents author Sara Bean offers some great insight into the reason

for poor child behavior in her article, https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/the-surprising-reason-for-bad-child-behavior-i-cant-solve-problems/.It sounds like your daughter is struggling to

find more effective ways to solve the problems she is facing, and the result is

the acting out behavior. Keep in mind, you can’t make your daughter do anything, but what you can do is help her to

learn better tools to solve whatever problems may come her way. Best of luck to

you and your family as you continue to work on this.

Emma Reed Alice also swears at school and she swears to teachers. Please we have tried everything, even her sister at age 18. What have we done wrong?

Being away from loved ones when they are struggling can be

distressing. It may help to know that it’s not unusual to see changes in

behavior as kids move from the tweens into adolescence, as Janet Lehman

explains in the article https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/adolescent-behavior-changes-is-your-child-embarrassed-by-you/. Normally responsible

kids can start to push back against meeting expectations and disrespect towards

parents and other authority figures can become quite common. The behavior you

describe isn’t OK; it is normal though. I can hear how much you want to help

your daughter and granddaughter

work through these challenges. If your daughter is open to it, you could share

some Empowering Parents articles with her, such as the one above and this one, https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/my-childs-behavior-is-so-bad-where-do-i-begin-how-to-coach-your-child-forward/.

We appreciate you writing in. Best of luck to you and your family moving

forward. Take care.

mphyvr Thanks for all these "strategies", they might work for some parents, but quite simplistic and just plain old common sense for more defiant kids... Thanks anyways and hope this article helps many.

Psych Fan I'm a mom of a sophomore he's also a swearing boy and will have quite a tantrum even with consequences of take away all he does is sleep. He doesn't like school says school is a waste of time and that grades won't matter in his adulthood . He says More it over n over about how schooling won't help him in the future as I go it will help you do good on a ACT and SAT he is like getting good scores on those are only good if your going to college. He also is like jobs won't look at my grades . I tell him homework teaches him responsibility once a job sees your amount of effort in school your going to have a heck of time getting hired. I even ask him how is he going to succeed to work real well at a job when he doesn't work hard at school he goes I don't need to work hard at school but I will need to work hard at a job.

dcastillo68 If it was only this simple, but, in reality it is not.  Middle school syndrome is the worst.  Kids don't want to be labeled as nerds so they do everything to try to fail.  I went through that with my first born, and now again with my youngest.  It is More very frustrating when I was the total opposite when I was growing up.  I cared about my grades an I took it for granted thinking they will feel the same way.  Now seeing how they are happy with just getting by is really frustrating to me because I am such an over achiever.  They didn't even get an ounce of this.  Very very frustrating.  And I wish I have never invited video games to this household.  That is all they want to do.  I keep using this an incentive to bring them back on track, but as soon as I give them their games back, they are back to their old habits.  Sorry, but I can't wait until they are finished with school and hopefully moving out of state to hopefully a college career.  I may change my mind later, but at the moment, this is just how I feel.  It is very hard too when you don't get any help.  I find today's teacher to be lazy and pushing on more responsibility to the parents.  Who has time to do a full day's of work, only to do additional work at home?  okay, enough venting.

@frustrated single dad Diane Lewis Hi there - I have a son adopted out of foster care.  He is 6 1/2 and has been in 5 homes.  He is totally the same!  They learn this behavior and are incredibly manipulative.  They are so insanely smart.  I worry about exactly the same thing.  They turn on and off the behavior depending on who they are with and what they want.

We did Parent Child Interactive Therapy (PCIT) at the Mailman Center (Jackson Hospital Miami).  It made a huge difference in the short-term.  They basically taught us to be full-time behavioral therapists with my son.  The effects wore off after a few months as my son adapted and found ways to circumvent the consequences techniques taught to us.  He is like the Borg!  I am going back to get more ideas on how to adapt and change and stay one step ahead of my son.  The gals there are really smart!

So, that being said - we have to be Jean Luc Picard and constantly change and adapt and outsmart them - just like changing the phasers on a laser gun!  It is bloody hard work.  And, harder the older they get -

eg.  He drops like a dead weight - throws his book bag and will not get in the car to go to school - response - next morning I headed it off by calling out to the kids "LAST ONE IN THE CAR IS A ROTTEN EGG!"  This has worked for 2 days now.  

Wont do homework 2 nights ago - response - "ooh I like doing word puzzles - Im going to do them and win" - this worked one night but not the next - he just then just left me to do his work - so I have told his teacher that there will be no school party for Alex next week unless he gets his homework finished - we will see if this works.....

It is totally exhausting and you have to be on your A game all the time.  Im telling you this but - I have to tell myself this too.  We have to stay really fit (like cross fit) and work out like a marine.  We have to be very disciplined with ourselves - a healthy body is a healthy mind - we cannot let up at all.  We have to stay calm at all times (again self discipline).  

Im always looking for concrete reactions to situations with my son.  Like I said - the entire day goes on like this with everything except what he wants to do.  Wont get dressed in the morning - put out his clothes in dining room where there are no distractions or toys - tell him that if he gets dressed and ready for school quickly - he can spend the left over time on the trampoline.  That worked this morning.

STAY STRONG MY BROTHER IN ARMS!!!  If you can get into a PCIT program - do it.

Love to you - R

My child comes home and says he doesn't have homework, does something easy to make it look like he's doing his homework, or says he did it during free time in class.  How do you combat this without going to the school everyday?  Neither my husband nor I can do More this because of work, and the we asked the teacher's if it was possible to send us the assignments via email or let us come pick them up once a week with no cooperation.  He is a very smart kid and gets "A's' on the work he does, but he is failing all of his core classes because he won't do homework.

@atmywitsend  , my child is the same way.  I'm at my wits end.  I feel like I'm a failure as a parent because I thought I taught my smart kid to succeed - and instead she's lying to me.

Psych Fan NinaMays I'm with the same feelings as my son can be above a C student but he choose to go oh I rather just get F's on this work than to actually get at least a B or A on these many assignments.. I ask him why he chooses F's More in many assignments when he could get a grade to bring his grades up and me telling me he's not being his full potential as by making him not do his work how can I truly believe he's going to be successful and he's like I have big brains . Then I'm like why not show me by doing your school work he goes I don't need do that and I show you of my big brains by telling you school isn't important. Telling me I am brainwashed. He is a sophomore in high school.

FRUSTRATED PARENT NinaMays This is my reality too - "relationship" with teachers is difficult when they won't co-operate with homework expectations, or follow up email - the schools complain that kids are on the internet - yet its them providing wifi passwords - so kids are playing in class - lying about More homework - and since I'm not in the class, I have no idea until report cards surface.

Responses to questions posted on EmpoweringParents.com are not intended to replace qualified medical or mental health assessments. We cannot diagnose disorders or offer recommendations on which treatment plan is best for your family. Please seek the support of local resources as needed. If you need immediate assistance, or if you and your family are in crisis, please contact a qualified mental health provider in your area, or contact your statewide crisis hotline.

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Let your child's imagination grow. Our kids' desks are designed to help organize your kid's space and keep their room clutter-free by creating a designated play area, or by simply giving them a place to draw, study and play. Have fun exploring our range of sizes, shapes, materials and colors!

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When kids reach a certain age, they will start needing a dedicated space for creativity and focus. That’s where children’s desks come in. It’s the optimal piece of furniture, creating a private area for both fun and focus. It acts as a safe haven for play, and then shifts to a place of concentration for serious schoolwork. 

In other words, a desk that fits the needs of your child is essential. That’s why we have a large selection of different desk solutions, so you can make sure to encourage all of your kid’s interests and passions. And there are lots of styles and materials to choose from too. 

Children’s desks for focus and studies 

Getting your kid to do their homework might feel like trying to move a mountain. A helpful step in the right direction can be to create a study-friendly area. Here you can encourage your child and help lay the foundation for good studying habits. 

For optimal focus and minimal distraction, here are a few tips. Organize your child's desk with items that are only needed daily. If the essentials are within arm's reach, your child won't have to interrupt studying to go and get something. Stash pens, scissors, rulers, and erasers in a pen stand, so no rummaging through messy drawers are required. 

Limit decorations to a maximum of three. Otherwise there's a risk that fantasy and daydreaming will outwit focus. Consider a left-to-right workflow, as that is the most usual one. Or experiment with arrangements until you find the perfect one for your child. 

And don’t forget the importance of a proper  kids desk chair . If your kid is going to spend hours poring over books, the seating needs to be comfortable and kind on the body. 

Kids desks where fun and fantasy are at the center 

Just as we adults need to do things, we love to refill our energy, so do our children. Make sure to help meet that need by arranging a place to relax and have fun. With a desk as the foundation, the only limit is imagination. 

Invest in tools, colors and comfort to help your child express creativity. It can be children’s books, colorful crayons to paint, and a place above the desk to put up their drawings. Or it might be a computer or touch pad for playing games, which can stimulate learning, improve problem-solving skills and increase the ability to process information. 

If you’d like to use the desk for both work and play here’s a tip: create an arts and crafts box! Using clever  children’s storage  or a fun  toy box  for paints and crafting materials, you can easily bring it out when inspiration strikes. And once another masterpiece is done, you can stow the box away to keep the desk looking neat.  

Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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Write to Katie Reilly at [email protected]

Understanding children’s mirror writing

Professeur émérite de psychologie, Université de Lorraine

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Jean-Paul Fischer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Université de Lorraine provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation FR.

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In recent studies we have been investigating mirror writing by typical 4- to 6-year-old children. The term is used because the characters – numbers and capital letters – are reversed, yet are correct when looked at in a mirror. In the case of standard writing, the mirror must be placed to the right or to the left, perpendicular to the horizontal plane of writing. There can also be vertical mirror writing, which look correct if we look at them in a mirror placed below or above.

At first one might think that children, who often sit face-to-face in kindergarten, reverse the characters because they see them on the sheet of the child who faces them. But this is not so because such an origin of reversal would lead children to double mirror writing – reversed both horizontally and vertically (see Figure 1).

The origin of the horizontal mirror writings – particularly impressive when the letters are in cursive and thus attached, see the writing of Joséphine in Figure 2 – has long remained a mystery. But it can be slightly disconcerting as well because children spontaneously produce writings they have never seen before and certainly didn’t learn. The American linguist Noam Chomsky has essentially used such an argument – that children make sentences they have never heard (nor read, of course) – to support the notion that language is innate . On the contrary, we will see here how the horizontal mirror writing of the characters is explained by the culture, within the constraints imposed by the cerebral processing.

Mirror writing entered the scientific literature with an article of the German neurologist Alfred Buchwald in 1878 (in German, mirror writing is called Spiegelschrift ), but over the following 125 years the explanations for the phenomenon were not only insufficient but also often wrong. One of the main reasons for the explanations’ failure is that they often involved a “culprit” – writing with the left hand. For a long time, this dominant discourse was supported by the observation of left-handed children writing reverse characters, their names or even whole words and sentences. Thus throughout the 20th century, scientific journals have published mirror writing almost exclusively produced by left-handed children. Even today, left-handedness is often the favourite explanation of teachers when children produce mirror writing.

Cerebral and behavioural components

The explanation we find for the phenomenon of mirror writing of characters works on two successive levels, the first cerebral and the second behavioural. The cerebral level was long been limited to the simplistic 1925 theory by Samuel Orton that one of the cerebral hemispheres (usually the left) would correctly represent the letters while the other would represent them in mirror. More recently, however, it has been shown that the brain eliminates orientation (left or right) when storing images, a process called symmetrisation or mirror generalization . This mirror-generalization process, which can be very useful – for example, to recognise a face by both its left and right profiles – leads children aged 5 to know, from memory, the shape of the characters, but not their left/right orientation. Given the features of the process – horizontal mirror in the visual modality – it is important to note that the initial implicit learning of the form of the characters by the children is mainly visual, and that the children produce almost exclusively horizontal mirror writing.

At the behavioural level, when children write the characters from memory, they must give them an orientation. In countries whose primary languages are written in Latin characters – written from left to right – children most often point them toward the right. This leads them to reverse mainly the left-oriented characters: J, Z, 1, 2, 3, 7, and 9 will be considerably more reversed than other characters (see Figure 3). However, when spatial constraints cause them to write from right to left, the children instead reverse the right-oriented letters (see the E, N, and C of MAXENCE in Figure 2). This suggests that children usually orient characters in the direction of their writing.

Since this explanation has nothing to do with the handedness of the children, it can be predicted that right-handed children will reverse characters almost often as left-handed children, and that – left-handed or right-handed – children will primarily reverse left-oriented characters in Western culture. This prediction was confirmed in a 2016 study , as was another subtle prediction : children who reverse left-oriented characters the most are also those who reverse the right-oriented characters the least. This because they strictly orient the characters in the direction of writing.

Our explanation is supported by an analysis of tens of thousands writing samples from more than a thousand children that was published in different journals, notably in the Journal of Educational Psychology . The theory remains relatively unknown, perhaps due to its recency, and some parents continue to wonder if mirror writing by their children might be the precursor of a disorder such as dyslexia. And some paediatricians or occupational therapists today still have no answer other that suggest thwarted left-handedness or a bad lateralization in the child, neither of which are supported by our research on typical developing children.

This article was originally published in French

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More Good Days with Kids

Research, resources & realistic recommendations for parents of kids age 1 to 7, children’s books as windows and mirrors.

“We read to see two kinds of worlds: our own, and the ones we can’t imagine. We read to see ourselves reflected, and to peek into other people’s lives. … Our kids need to read about people not like them to expand their horizons and their empathy.” ( Source )

Here are the topics I discuss in this post. (TL;DR: If you want a shorter discussion, in a handout form, click here for the PDF .)

• the importance of “windows and mirrors” and children seeing a wide range of human experience in the stories they hear
• the challenge of finding good books about diverse people
• what to look for in books about diversity
• how to talk kids into reading books that are “not for me”
• resources for finding great books about diverse characters, with links to lots of recommended books
• I also have separate posts on the importance of windows and mirrors in media that adults consume, and recommended books and movies for adults who want windows into diverse life experiences

Windows and Mirrors

Emily Style  (in 1988) coined this metaphor, saying: “education needs to enable the student to look through window frames in order to see the realities of others and into mirrors in order to see her/his own reality reflected… The delightful truth is that sometimes when we hear another out, glancing through the window of their humanity, we can see our own image reflected in the glass of their window. The window becomes a mirror!” In 1990 Rudine Bishop expanded this, saying ““Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”

Whether you’re a parent or teacher or both, it’s important to spend some time seeking out books that will be windows and mirrors for the children you read to.

The Power of Mirrors

Here are a sampling of stories from people of times when they first saw themselves represented in media:

• “Last week I received my 1st book that depicted a character with a disability.  At almost 28 years old, I’ve never read a book where the protagonist was a person with a disability…. I was thrilled to find a book that allowed children to see someone with a disability be a lead character… To grow up not seeing someone who shares similar looks or abilities as you can make a child or adult feel as if people like themselves are not important…” ( Source )
• “Like a unexpected gift from the cinema gods above, came “Bend It like Beckham,” that had one thing all those other theater-packing, Hollywood hits didn’t have…. A brown girl like me… Jess, wasn’t just the nerdy best friend, the submissive shy girl, or the exotic temptress (all tropes that are far too common for Asian women). She was the main character ― a girl with many layers and quirks…  my 14-year-old self couldn’t help staring at Jess… and seeing a kindred spirit.” ( Source. Note: at the bottom of that article are links to more first person essays on representation.)
• “ I’ve thought long and hard about the first time I “saw” myself in the media ―  really saw myself. If representation simply means the cultural presence of people who physically resemble you, then technically, I’ve seen myself as a housekeeper, a teen mother somewhere in the “inner city,” a child soldier, a slave, a nameless face in a crowd….  The first pop cultural moment that really spoke to me as a black girl was…  “Scary Spice” …. she  was unapologetically loud and unapologetically fierce… That resonated with me, a shy and awkward kid always afraid of stepping on toes…” ( Source )
• Star Trek (TOS) was one of the first TV series to feature a black woman in a role as a skilled professional. Whoopi Goldberg, who was later featured on Star Trek TNG, said “when Star Trek came on she was nine years old and she turned the TV on and… ran through the house screaming: Come quick, come quick. There’s a black lady on TV and she ain’t no maid.” ( Source … and if you follow that link, you get to read Princess Weekes’ take on “Ten Black Female Characters Who Built Me.”) Levar Burton, who starred in Star Trek TNG said “Star Trek [TOS] was one of the very few representations of the future I encountered as a kid where people who looked like me were represented… it’s hard to underestimate the power that seeing oneself reflected in the popular culture… has. It validates you. Absent seeing yourself represented… you are sent … a message that says ‘you don’t matter.'” ( Source ) Now, Sonequa Martin, star of Star Trek Discovery says “I understand as a black woman… how important representation is… representation leads to actualization.” ( Source )
• “I never consciously noticed that my personal narrative wasn’t depicted in the popular culture. … Growing up, the only Disney character I felt any relation to was Mowgli, from “The Jungle Book.” With my short brown hair and dark skin, I thought I looked just like him. When “Mulan” came out, I at least had an Asian character to dress up as, but even that was a generous pairing. It wasn’t a glaring absence of representation. But when you have never seen yourself in books or movies or music, the first time you do is stunning.” ( source )
• “To not only see LGBT people on my television screen …  but to see them loved by others, or in love, is sometimes emotionally overwhelming because these images are new to me.  I am disappointed, however, that I have to feel such joy just to see someone who looks like me — a joy whites, men, heterosexuals, and other privileged groups do not experience because their representation is the norm and, as a result, their presence is treated as the default.” ( Source )

What If the Mirrors Are Missing

“Besides teaching us who we are, books are where we learn whose lives matter enough to read about… Exclusion from this world… constitutes a kind of ‘symbolic annihilation’.” ( Source )

Megan Quibell talks about wanting to cosplay at a conference, and the impossibility of finding a recognizable character who uses a wheelchair. She says “We need characters in books who are in wheelchairs or who use a cane or are missing a limb or have some kind of condition or something. But I don’t want ‘problem’ books. I don’t want it to be all about how hard it is being in a wheelchair. I just want something  fun  for me to read that has someone in a wheelchair as one of the main characters. I really don’t think it’s too much to ask.”

The Power of Windows

“Research on prejudice shows that coming in contact with people who are different – so-called ‘others’ – helps to reduce stereotypes. … we learn about them and get closer to them through their story…. while it may be ideal for children to actually meet people from different backgrounds in person, if that isn’t possible, books can serve as a first introduction to an outside world…. Perhaps the next generation will be less frightened of the ‘other’ if they get to meet them and learn about them from an early age.” ( Source )

“Stories that respectfully depict diverse characters can open the door to conversations about how we are similar and different, breaking down stereotypes and deepening children’s ability to empathize.” ( Source )

“Research from Harvard University suggests that children as young as three years old, when exposed to racism and prejudice, tend to embrace and accept it…. By age 5, white children are strongly biased towards whiteness. To counter this bias, experts recommend acknowledging and naming race and racism with children as early and as often as possible. Children’s books are one of the most effective and practical tools for initiating these critical conversations; and they can also be used to model what it means to resist and dismantle oppression.” ( source )

“Stories also help us understand that the world we live in is not what it should be. Stories can help young children understand that racism very much exists in this country, and that power is unequally distributed based on race, class, and gender. For children from dominant groups, window moments in stories come when the children realize they hold a powerful place in society and that there is something unjust about this.” ( Source )

What if the Windows Are Missing

In this section, I share stories and quotes about what it means that boys are rarely asked to read books about girls and women. But there are corollaries – for each quote you can imagine substituting in – what if able-bodied people never read about people with disabilities? what if white children never read about people of color? what if….

“ I don’t think that most people intentionally teach boys to believe that boys are stronger than girls, but it’s the message they get accidentally all the time…   If your son only watches or reads things with strong male characters, they’re learning over and over again that boys are strong. So it isn’t so much that they learn girls aren’t strong, they just never really learn that they are. When a boy regularly reads books with strong girls at the center, he is just getting more exposure to learn that girls are strong too.” ( Source )

“[Windows matter] to everyone affected by white male privilege, which is fueled further by generations of little boys growing up seeing the world revolve around them and their interests, even in fiction.” ( Source )

“When boys grow up believing stories about women are unimportant they lose far more than the opportunity to read great books… Story is a powerful means by which we see and experience, to some extent at least, the world from another’s point of view. Men and boys who are never encouraged to even try to understand, relate and respect the experiences and stories of girls and women are missing out on those valuable lessons in empathy. Books that present women as little more than side-kicks and decorations, rather than fully-formed agents, also help to create and maintain a culture where women are secondary to — and lesser than — men.” ( Source )

“For majority students, the absences of others’ stories implicitly teaches them that their communities are of higher value, the default ‘norm.’ They end up less prepared for navigating differences and are less adept at keeping up with our evolving culture than those with more exposure to lives not their own.” ( Source )

When you look at required reading lists from schools, there are plenty of books about male characters that all children are expected to read and benefit from. But if female characters are highlighted at a school assembly, boys aren’t expected to even attend. ( Source ) The consistent message is that stories about white males are for everyone, but stories about all those other people are to set aside for those populations, or for Black History month or another specific limited purpose. If, like me, you are a parent to a white able-bodied boy, it may be even more important to seek out windows into other experiences, as they may be less likely to encounter them in school.

What Counts as Diversity

When we think about windows and doors, let’s think as broadly as we can: “What do we mean when we say diverse books? Some people think only about race or culture, and surely those are a part of diversity. Others say gender identity or sexual orientation, and again those are a part of diversity. But, what about children who are homeschooled, whose parents divorce, who live in poverty, and even those who have happy two family homes?” ( source ) Or what about  characters who wear glasses  or have  different types of hair ? We can seek out all these things! So, we want to expose children to books that offer a very wide view of the human experience, right? Unfortunately, it’s not easy to find books that represent all experiences. (The good news is that at the bottom of this post, I give you resources to help you find what is out there!) Let’s look at the…

Lack of Diversity in Kids’ Books

Gender representation.

Approximately half of kids are male and half are female. But that’s not true of children’s book characters!

Amongst the 100 best-selling children’s books of 2017, “twice as many of the characters who were given a speaking part and a main role in the story were male – and, on average, there were three male characters present in each story for every two females featured.” And female characters are missing from a fifth of the books ranked. “Only 40% of characters given a gender were human – the rest were, for example, animals, birds, crayons, vegetables and skeletons. [these creatures were] 73% more likely to be male than female. Furthermore, males were more typically embodied as powerful, wild and potentially dangerous beasts such as dragons, bears and tigers, while females tended to anthropomorphise smaller and more vulnerable creatures such as birds, cats and insects.” ( Source )

“Why is there a persistence of inequality among animal characters? There is some indication that publishers, under pressure to publish books that are more balanced regarding gender, used animal characters in an attempt to avoid the problem of gender representation (similar to the disappearance of Blacks during the height of the Civil Rights Movement).” ( source )

In 2020, it’s predicted that of US children, 50% will be white, 26% Hispanic, 14% will be black, non-Hispanic, 5.4% Asian-Pacific Islander, and .8% American-Indian or Native Alaskan; 4.4% are multi-racial.) 13% of U.S. residents are foreign-born and about 1 in 4 children has at least one foreign-born parent. ( Source )

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center keeps statistics on children’s books, and what identities are represented by their protagonists. Here is a comparison of US children vs. lead characters in children’s books in 2012 vs. 2018 .

It is getting better…. from 2012 – 2018 there was been a significant increase in new children’s books about people of color, but it still has not caught up to their presence in society, and when we factor in all of the classic kids’ books that are still read all the time, we know that the books kids are exposed to are not racially representative.

Many children’s books actually feature non-humans as main characters (animals, trucks, and so on. Here’s how racial representation compares… note how non-human far outstrip Latinx characters. ( source )

13% of US students receive special education services. That includes learning disabilities, speech impairments, autism, ADHD, physical disabilities, and healthy impairments. ( source )

Of 698 picture books published in 2017, “ A child with a disability appeared in only 21 picture books, and only 2 of those were main characters. Most others appeared in background illustrations.” ( Source ) So, that’s 13% of kids have a disability, and 0.3% of the main characters in newly written kids books do! And of course, in classic books, the percentage would be lower.

Approximately 4.5% of the overall US population identify as LGBT. ( source ) Among young parents and children, the percentage is much higher than that – only 66% of Gen Z identifies as straight. ( source ) 0.58% of all people may be transgender, but amongst people 18 – 24, it’s 0.66% ( source ). As many as 12% of children may have at least one LGBT parent. ( source )

Of 3,700 books received at the CCBC in 2017, 3.7% had LGBT content.  Of those books about half featured an LGBT primary character, about a quarter featured a secondary character, and a fifth had an LGBT family. ( Source )

Who Wrote It

It’s important to look not just at who the characters are in a children’s story, but also at who wrote that story. For example, of 340 books  about  Africans and African-Americans, only 29% of those were written by African-Americans.

When someone not of a culture writes about that culture, we’re more likely to get a stereotyped or superficial depiction of that cultural experience vs. the nuance we would experience in a book written by people from that background. “There’s a long history of majority-group authors (white, abled, straight, cisgender, male, etc.) writing outside their experience to tell diverse stories. Sometimes the characters and stories they create are wonderful! But … Even when portrayals of diverse characters by majority-group authors  are  respectfully and accurately done, there’s an extra degree of nuance and authority that comes with writing from lived experience. … For instance, I’m a wheelchair user. I’m intimately familiar with enduring and combating ableism, navigating an inaccessible world, exploring disabled identity … I can list a whole host of tiny everyday details about the physical and emotional reality of my disability that secondary research is unlikely to surface.  I have a lifetime of experiences — positive, negative, neutral, and complicated mixtures of all of the above — to draw from when I write a fuller, more authentic wheelchair-using character.” ( Source )

An example from popular media is Asian-American representation . Although we’ve made progress since the Fu Manchu and geisha days, the new stereotypes are of the “model minority — competitive, goal-oriented and hard-working (but, notably, lacking in creativity, charm, sex appeal and humor).” But now we have  a recent movie on Netflix, Always Be My Maybe which was written, directed, and starred in by people of Asian-American descent. “In its three-dimensional representations of Asians, the film subverts many stereotypes and tropes typically applied to Asians — making Asians feel seen in subtle but powerful ways.” ( Source . Also check out “ Why Always Be My Maybe ’s Asian American underachiever is groundbreaking ” and “ Always Be My Maybe  from an Asian-American Perspective: Details You Might Have Missed .”) 

What to Look For in Books about Diversity

In addition to considering the author’s background and experience, here are some tips for what else to look for, from The Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books , from Learning Through Literature that Offers Diverse Perspectives by Yokota, and Disability in Children’s Literature  by Crow.

• Look for stereotypical depictions – like Latino men in sombreros
• Look for tokenism – the one kid in a wheelchair who appears on one page
• Look for invisibility – what groups never appear in the books you read (examples: single parents, modern rural families, families with an incarcerated parent, people of Arab descent, service industry workers)
• Consider the author or illustrator’s background and perspective – what qualifies them to tell this particular story?
• Are cultural details accurate? current? Are details naturally integrated or shoe-horned in? Is the culture portrayed multi-dimensionally?
• How real are the  characters and their lifestyles – are they token characters or stereotypes, or fleshed out people working in a variety of jobs, with a variety of relationships and interests?
• Watch for loaded words: sexist words like firemen instead of firefighter, racist words like savage or barbarian, ableist words like crippled or lame
• Does the book approach diversity challenges only as individual challenges to be overcome or also as human rights issues – addressing social realities like denied access to public transport or housing, and other systematic oppression?
• Assess the appeal of the story and illustrations. Sometimes in our aim to expose our kids to diversity, we end up reading boring didactic books with sub-par illustrations, and the children learn to avoid or ignore “those kinds of books.” Above all else, choose good books that kids will like! Don’t feel like  every book on your shelf needs to teach a diversity message.

Some more things to consider:

How is Identity Relevant to the Story

Author Corinne Duyvis has a very helpful taxonomy of three different ways diverse identities can be included in books and other media:

• Issue books are where the identity (and the challenges of it) are the core of the story. So, if the protagonist is African-American, the story is about slavery, civil rights, or overcoming racism to excel in a white world. If there is a character with a disability or illness, the story often is how they heroically “overcome” their disability. We do need issue stories… a story about an LGBT teen coming out may be exactly the story an LGBT teen may need to read, and it may also be exactly the story a cis-het teen needs to read to understand and empathize with other’s experiences. But, they shouldn’t be the only stories told.
• There is incidental diversity – where the person “just happens” to be in a wheelchair, or “just happens” to be deaf. As Duyvis says “Why shouldn’t an Asian character expose a government conspiracy? An autistic boy become a werewolf? A lesbian girl start a school newspaper? And why shouldn’t they be able to do these things without their marginalized identity ever becoming an issue? Many of us do homework, hang out with friends, or play video games pretty much the same way anyone else would. Our lives don’t revolve around being marginalized, and it’s exhausting to only see ourselves reflected in characters whose entire role is to be  different .” So it’s exciting to see an increase in incidental diversity.
• Duyvis doesn’t name her third category, other than calling it a middle ground. I will call it identity, because the character’s race or gender or ability is a key part of their identity and affects how they move through the world no matter what adventure the story will take them on. As Duyvis says: “In real life, though, marginalized people  are  affected. …it’s not shameful to acknowledge that.  It’s a fact that ableism, homophobia, and racism influence countless aspects of people’s everyday lives. Micro-aggressions, stereotypes, internalized prejudice, flagrant bigotry, institutionalised discrimination… There are also other matters to consider: accessibility, hair or skin care, limited dating pools, communities, culture, etc. … There are many ways to incorporate the above elements into books … which can make characters and their backgrounds ring true to the very readers who may identify with them.” And inform those who are seeing them through the window of the book.

When choosing books about diversity, pay some attention to make sure each of these categories is represented.

Author Kim Hood says “… the more memorable characters in classics tended to have a disability that was cured in some way during the story, as if disability was a “burden” rather than a fact of life…  a few more modern [books] include … teens with a disability that also make them super heroes… In picture books, I’m happy to see more children with disabilities in illustrations. I sure would like to see more books that include kids and teens in substantial roles, rather than supporting roles for the sake of token inclusion, though. I suppose I want more  diverse  characters –  those that seem to jump off the page because they are so  interesting , and who  happen  to have a disability. I want there to be characters of all abilities, so that kids growing up today are surrounded by the notion that disability is just part of the fabric of normal life, which is exactly what it should be.”

What Role does the Diverse Character Play

Sidekick? Token? In need of rescue? Gay best friend? Sassy black woman who schools the other characters?

We need stories where people of all types play roles of all types.

“Books with kickass heroines teach both girls and boys about what it means to be female… Unyielding soldiers like …Katniss Everdeen, … brave brainiacs like  Hermione Granger, and more brave and bold individuals … act as role models for their girl readers, [and] serve an equally meaningful purpose for young male readers. … The way we educate [boys], the way we parent them …and the books we choose to share with them all have their effects on the type of men the young boys in our lives will grow up to be. If we want them to have respect for women, we should give them stories that feature healthy, stable, and equal relationships between young boys and girls. If we want them to believe women are strong enough on their own to make choices for themselves, we need to give them stories where the girl is the hero and the savior. Instead of exclusively sharing stories of strong boys riding off into the sunset to save damsels in distress, instead of narratives focusing solely on the plights of male adolescence, instead of a constant dichotomy that divides people into two groups, either strong men or weak women, we should be embracing, sharing, and talking about books that star young female heroines, too. It’s time to tell a new story.” ( Source )

Relatable Characters / Situations

While it’s great to have books that totally transport a child through a window into a completely different world, sometimes it’s helpful to find a bridge. For example, a book that shows a child starting school – your child remembers starting school, so can relate to the character, even if the character looks different from them. Or find books with multiple characters… some who are like your child and some who are different: “Make a special effort to find picture books featuring cross-ethnic friendships in particular… Researchers have noted that children under the age of 8 are strongly oriented towards their own racial or ethnic group, so seeing a character who looks like them gives them a character to identify with. Then, when they see that character interact with people from different races, the story functions as a source of indirect cross-ethnic contact for the child—with the potential to improve their racial attitudes.” ( Source )

Getting Kids to Read Diverse Books

Often kids look at a book about someone “not like them” and say “it’s not for me.” And I get that. I’m kind of ashamed to say that I sometimes do the same thing… I’ll see a movie featuring all African American characters, and think “it’s not for me.” Here’s the thing, I’m straight and cisgender, yet I watch and read stories with queer characters all the time. And I learn important things about the experience of LGBT people by doing that. So sometimes finding something that looks through that window  and  looks at issues of race and culture as well ends up being a window I look through. Right now, I’m watching Pose, which is about African-American and Latino gay and gender non-conforming characters. That’s a “look-alike” to things I am already in the habit of watching and reading.

Librarians often look for read-alikes. Ask someone what books (or media) they like, and seek out some that are similar in style or content (and may just happen to feature a protagonist that doesn’t look just like them).

This week, I brought two books home to my 8 year old son. One had a picture of a messy boy and a monster on the orange cover. The other had a sparkly cover with pink and purple and the word princess. Any guesses what he said? Yes, even raised in a very liberal household and community with flexible views on gender identity and expression, he still said “that book is for girls.” I said “you’re right, that the cover has lots of things our society markets as ‘girly’. But the reason I got it was because it was recommended by someone who said if you like Diary of a Wimpy Kid books , you’ll like this book. And they also recommended Big Nate which you love, so you can tell they have good taste. And , it’s by the same author as Dragonbreath!” He then cheerfully took on Harriet the Invincible, and really enjoyed it and asked to get more Hamster Princess books. (Although he did say he’ll read them at home, not where other kids might see. 😦 )

Try not to make assumptions about what your child wants to read. “The gender gatekeepers of books are often librarians, teachers and parents who make assumptions about which books are for girls and which books are for boys.” ( Source ) Author Phillip Pullman says “I’m against anything, from age-ranging to pinking and blueing, whose effect is to shut the door in the face of children who might enjoy coming in. No publisher should announce on the cover of any book the sort of readers the book would prefer. Let the readers decide for themselves.” ( Source )

So, do make a wide variety of books available and let your child choose a wide variety, however, try not push too hard on an agenda and go too far in managing what your kids read. “Kids should be free to read what they choose. … let a lot of that be self-directed…the more we try to proscribe kids’ reading habits, the more joy we suck out of it.” ( Source )

More tips on how to get boys to read “girls’ books.”

Talk it Over

After you read one of these great books with your kids, talk about it.

Ask them questions like: How are we the same as the people in the book? How are we different? Do they remind you of someone you know? How are they the same or different from that person? If you don’t know anyone like them, why not? What about their life experience is different from yours? What was easier for them to do than it would be for you? What was harder for them to do than it would be for you?

Resources for Learning More

In this post, I intentionally quoted from lots of great articles on this topic. Please click through to some of those “source” links above to read more in-depth.

In this section, I link to sources for book recommendations. At the top, I’ll list resources that cover several categories, then get more specific. (BTW, if you’d like recommendations for books and movies for grown-ups that provide windows into diverse lives, check out Seeking Out Diverse Media .)

Multi-Category

The Teaching for Change website includes  The Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books  and lots of booklists of recommended books that meet their criteria, on topics like culture and language , gender identity , economic class , and  family structures.

Diverse Book Finder  – a collection of more than 2000 children’s picture books featuring black and indigenous people and people of color, with a search tool. Also includes other diversities, such as faith, adoption, single parents, etc.

We Need Diverse Books has a pageful of links to other people’s lists of recommended books about various cultures, disability, and LGBTQIA stories.

Books for Littles  has books on disability rights, gender equality, racial justice, and wealth inequity. They have some great super-specific lists, like “ Don’t Yuck my Yum: Books that dismantle orientalism and food shaming ” and “Making Friends is Hard – Reassuring Books for Kids Who Don’t Fit In .”

Recommended Multicultural Books

The Colours of Us is a site all about multicultural kids’ books, and they have LOTS of recommended book lists, such as Hispanic Preschool Books and Asian Baby/Toddler Books . (They also have links to multicultural toys, art supplies, and clothes.) I especially like their  Multicultural Books for Babies and Toddlers . Babies and young toddlers LOVE books filled with pictures of babies and toddlers. These books include children of all ethnic backgrounds.

50 Multicultural Books Every Child Should Know . The Cooperative Children’s Book Center is the definitive source on statistics about multicultural books, so they know this field! Books by and about people of color and First/Native Nations individuals: African and African Americans, American Indians, Asian/Pacific and Asian Pacific Americans, and Latinos. Divided by age: preschool, 5 – 7, 7 – 9, 9 – 12.

Diverse voices: the 50 best culturally diverse children’s books.  From the Guardian, it focuses on the variety of cultures common in the U.K. so covers primarily Africa, the Middle East,  Europe, and the Caribbean. Categorized into preschool, early elementary, upper elementary, and teen.

African and African-American

Black Picture Books that Aren’t about Boycotts, Buses or Basketball . “Shine light on typically ignored aspects of black life.” Include stories from getting a haircut to becoming an astronaut, from travel across the segregated South to going fishing or from church hats to a New Orleans sanitation worker. (Also check out Ten Picture Books that Are Not About Oppression , which show diverse cultures.)

21 books every black child should read  is also a great source, plus, you can always check out all those multi-category and multi-cultural collections listed above.

Native American

Picture Books Portraying Contemporary Native Life . “One of the most persistent stereotypes about Native/First Nations people in North America is that they all lived long ago… talk about communities in the present tense.”

17 #ownvoices books about native Americans . Books written by and about American Indians and Canadian First Nations.

American Indians in Children’s Literature . Includes lists of recommended books including the first 10 Native American books to buy for an elementary school library.

Asian and Asian-American

Start with 13 Books that Celebrate All Things Asian , then read this article evaluating trends in Representations of Asians and Asian-Americans in Recent Picture-Books , which also recommends books, then check out 30 more Asian & Asian American Children’s Books , and the catalog of Lee & Low which is the top publisher of Asian-American kids’ books and published many of the books in those other lists.

12 Books to Help Children Understand Islamic Faith and Culture . Include stories of  Muslim kids living in the West, children living in the Arab world, folktales, and books that specifically teach important concepts of Islam.

9 Children’s Books that Celebrate Muslim Faith and Culture . All written by Muslim authors, all showing Islam in a positive light.

Muslim Life in Children’s Picture Books . Examines current trends, and includes recommendations.

Refugees and Immigrants

12 Books About Refugees . Books about refugees from many countries, in a variety of historical periods as well as the present day. About the challenges of the journey and experiences in new and unfamiliar places. These are picture books for elementary age children.

Welcome Immigrants! – and New Picture Books about Immigrants .

Books for Smart, Confident, and Courageous Girls . A Mighty Girl’s book section features over 3,000 girl-empowering books starring stellar Mighty Girl characters. Choose categories of interest to you, and then filter down to exactly what you’re looking for. You could start with their Top 100 Picture Books or something specific like Top Asian Pacific American books .

11 Books to Talk to Kids about Gender Expression  plus there are links to several more kids’ books about gender identity at the bottom of my post on Talking with Children about Gender Identity .

Rainbow Book List . From the GLBT Round Table of the American Library Association. They publish a list each year, which includes best books published in the past few years. Includes picture books for ages 3 through elementary, plus middle grade and YA.

30 Children’s Books with LGBT characters . 10 books each for pre-k to 3rd grade, 4th – 7th, and 8th grade and up. Includes queer parents and queer kids, both issue books and incidental books.

Diverse Family Structures

Several of the LGBT books above, plus…

Children’s Books to Embrace Diverse Families , 6 Children’s Books that Celebrate Family Diversity . How to Help Children Understand Diverse Families

Single Parents Children’s Books , Best Children’s Books with Single Parents

Picture Books about Divorce and Having Two Homes  and Preschool Children’s Books About Divorce .

Children’s Books About Special Needs . “Didactic books, or books that just simply explain a disability without a good story, are b-o-r-i-n-g, and as a consequence teach  nothing .” Here are engaging picture books that touch on a variety of (dis)abilities, including stuttering, visual impairment, wheelchair use, Down Syndrome, and more, including adapting baseball so a snake can play. Preschool and elementary level.

Disability Visibility for Kids from King County Libraries recommends 88 fiction and nonfiction titles featuring people living with a variety of disabilities, chronic conditions, and neurological diversities. Designed to promote understanding, acceptance and a celebration of differences! Ages 3-12.

Children’s Books: Portrayals of People with Disabilities . Separated into categories like deaf, speech disorders, traumatic brain injury. Search tool to find exactly what you’re looking for.

12 stereotype-busting children’s books starring disabled characters by Rebekah Gienapp. Include a range of characters with disabilities, both children and parents.

Children’s Books About Autism . For autistic children and for neurotypical children, include issue books, incidental books, and identity books. Focus is on books that approach autism as a difference (with its challenges AND its strengths) not as a disability in need of a cure.

Picture Books that Illuminate Poverty, Homelessness, and Hunger in America . “As America faces record poverty rates and increasing income disparities, it becomes more and more important that we take action in whatever ways we can. Nothing inspires action quite as much as a good story.” Also: 18 Children’s Books about Poverty and Hunger .

Here is a free printable PDF handout that is a shorter version of the information presented in this post.

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12 thoughts on “ children’s books as windows and mirrors ”.

Great post! We recently wrote about the same topic. So important:)

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Parents baffled by mistake in alphabet homework sheet aimed at children - can you spot it?

People have been left scratching their heads after trying to work out the mistake in a child's homework sheet - with many having to ask others for the answer. Can you find it?

• 10:53, 28 Feb 2024

Children's homework is getting increasingly difficult, and some generations may have noticed homework they received in high school is being dished out to children in elementary. For one class of students they received homework centred around the 27 letters of the alphabet, but some eagle-eyed pupils noted there was, in fact, 28 letters in their literacy homework instead.

Vinyldoctor shared the homework mishap, which some may label a brainteaser , on the One Job thread on Reddit . The post was captioned: "Teaching kids the alphabet with all 27 letters." The post was accompanied by a photo of the alphabet, surrounded by a planet, plants and clouds, all of which could be coloured in to make it a piece of art and literacy.

The alphabet was spread over five lines to fit the page, but this meant a tiny error almost went unnoticed for some. On the first line the letters "A, B, C, D, E" sat, while the second line continued "E, F, G, H, I, J", with the following lines listing the rest of the alphabet.

But did you spot the difference? The subtle error was the inclusion of two E's, but this blip went unnoticed by many, including the teacher who created the piece of homework, as well as some adults on Reddit. One commented: "That sadly took me way too long to find the mistake."

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Another admitted: "Went through it twice and thought it was right." While a third claimed they were still confused until they read the comments on the Reddit post in a search for clues. They shared: "Is it bad I couldn’t see it until I read this comment? There are two Es!"

A separate user commented: "I was looking for a missing letter, not an extra one", while another weighed in: "Took me three goes and the little song to see it." Another user tried their hand at making a similar conundrum, and wrote: "It's like those things where the

"The paragraph is formatted in such a way that you miss it at first glance." But this is not the first time a child's homework has foxed adults , as one was faced with a multiple choice question to find out "What is the closest time to midnight?" out of the following answers, "A. 11:55 am, B. 12:06 am, C. 11:50 am and D. 12:03am."

Many people on Twitter came to the conclusion D was the correct answer, though others insisted it was A as the question was regarding "proximity and not chronology". For those who want to test their brain power some more, we have plenty of quizzes and pub quiz questions to test your knowledge.

Did you spot the mistake? Let us know in the comments below.

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Belle Glade Woman Accused of Abusing Child Over Homework Mistakes as Released on Bond

A Florida woman is facing charges after being accused of physically abusing a girl for not correctly completing her homework. Margaret Gissome, 35, from Belle Glade, was arrested on allegations of striking the minor multiple times over homework answers.

On September 11, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office responded to a call from the Department of Children and Families concerning the incident. According to CBS12 , the arrest affidavit states that Gissome lost temper when the child gave incorrect answers, leading to physical assaults which resulted in a busted blood vessel in the left eye and a bruise on her lower lip.

As reported by WPBF , Gissome was released from Palm Beach County Jail on a $2,500 bond and has been ordered not to have contact with the victim or any minors unless the parents are aware of the charges against her. A previous domestic violence case from March 2023 involving Gissome was also mentioned, but that case has since been closed.

The alleged verbal and physical abuse emerged when Gissome reportedly told the child, "not to worry about your lip because your nose will be next," after punching her in the face. The child additionally reported that the abuse involved her siblings as well. In her statement obtained by WFLA , the child described being shaken and struck repeatedly by Gissome for the mistakes. The relationship between Gissome and the child was not immediately clarified in the reports.

Teachers and school officials became involved upon noticing the child's injuries, which later led to Gissome's arrest. The case has brought forth serious concerns about child abuse and the mechanisms in place to protect children from harm in their own homes. Gissome, who works in occupational care, was referred to as "Miss" by the girl involved in the incident.

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Tragic way Sven-Goran Eriksson's children reconnected with him during final days

Sven-Goran Erikkson opened up about how his battle with cancer tragically helped him rekindle his relationship with his children. Johan and Lina will support their father once more as they lay him to rest today

• 07:00, 13 Sep 2024
• Updated 07:33, 13 Sep 2024

As the world gathers today to say farewell to football legend Sven-Goran Eriksson , his children will be there while he is laid to rest in his home country of Sweden.

Football manager Sven died last month at the age of 76 following a battle with pancreatic cancer . Just days before his passing, he bravely opened up about his life and health struggles in an emotional documentary that left fans in tears.

As the world rallies to remember the legend, we look back at how his children, Johan, 45, and Lina, 37, helped their father during his final months. And how tragically, his illness brought the family back together.

The Swedish football manager admitted in his heartbreaking documentary 'Sven' that his relationship with his children wasn't always smooth, as his affair with Graziella Mancinelli while married to Ann-Christine Pettersson impacted his young family. Sven opened up in his documentary on how his tragic plight helped him reconnect with his children.

Never one to shy away from the spotlight, even for difficult conversations, Sven chronicled his life and final days in an emotional documentary which aired on Amazon. The sports icon left staff working on the project in tears as he walked into a room to film his final goodbye alone, without a cameraman.

Sven questioned his parenting during the breakdown of his marriage and told the camera: "When you get divorced, you feel bad - and I did. At that time I don't think I was a great dad. But before that and after that I guess I was okay. It's good to see that the children found the right way and have a good life. I am proud of them. Extremely proud."

Lina candidly spoke about reconnecting with her father and said it was difficult watching him battle cancer. "He's a very black-and-white person when it comes to how he's feeling. Everything's good, or it's s**t. Every time coming back to the house, I see the clear difference in deterioration. That's really, really hard to see.

"I think it has taken time to process and I think he has come a long way now than initially. It's only very recently that I've been able to reconnect with Dad and to have a very different relationship with him than I had had as a teenager. You realise the value of life and that what you thought was important is really not that important."

Lina also made another heartbreaking admission as she revealed: "It's hard to imagine life without him," before sharing her father's fears of his treatment being stopped if he shows signs of the side effects he's suffering.

"He really wants to continue with the treatment to try and stop the growth of the cancer as much as possible. So for him, any kind of side effect or challenge or anything like that, he just tries to fight it because he's so scared that they will stop the treatment for him."

Meanwhile, Sven's son Johan revealed the harrowing moment they were told about his father's health condition.

In the documentary, Johan said: "I had 10 missed calls from my sister, 'Dad's in the emergency room'. He's not in a good way. You can kind of tell when the doctor's in tears that… not good. Worst possible news."

At the start of the year, the former England manager said he had "at best a year" to live as he was being treated for terminal cancer .

Following the sad announcement of his death, Sven's children released a statement of their own which read: "Our father Sven-Goran Eriksson fell asleep peacefully in his home at Bjorkefors outside Sunne this morning. He has for a long time fought bravely with his illness, but now it has come to an end.

"Our thoughts go out to Sven-Goran's father Sven; girlfriend Yaniseth and her son Alcides; to his brother Lasse and wife Jumnong, as well as to all good friends and acquaintances in Sweden and around the world .

"Dad told us at the beginning of this year about his serious illness and received an amazing response from friends and football fans around Europe. He was invited to several football teams in England, Italy, Portugal and Sweden. They shared their love for football and for dad. It was unforgettable for both him and us. He expressed his appreciation and joy and stated that such beautiful words are usually only uttered when someone has died.

" 'I get to hear it while I'm alive and I'm incredibly grateful for that. The heart beats twice and the tears come. I have had the best job in the world and I was happy every day for long periods. It's been fantastic,' he said.

"We have shared his gratitude and got to experience the wonderful meetings between him, football and all his friends. We thank everyone for these positive memories and your support during his illness. We hope that you will remember Svennis as the good and positive person he always was in both public and at home with us. Lina and John Eriksson."

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