How do you motivate children to do their homework?

The best "punishment" for not doing the work is their grade. You need to make it very obvious that they are the ones who are in control of their own studying, and that if they don't work hard enough to pass, you are going to be sad when they fail, but you are not going to step in and do any of the work for them.

Be careful about threats and punishments to get your child to do homework. They may be less motivated to do it. It is almost better to not make them do it, let them fail for a brief period, and let them learn the lesson by themsevles. Then, if after say, five weeks, they still haven't learned a lesson, it's time to intervene.

• Have a set time each day when they must sit down and do schoolwork. This means no tv, no internet, no cellphones, no loud music (soft music is OK but no iPods or earphones because they do turn those up too loud and distract themselves). If they do not have homework that day (or if they claim that they don't), they still have to spend that time studying - have them read over their textbook and write down an outline of what they read into their notebook, or have them write out the important terms and definitions from the chapter, or have them recite what they have learned out loud to you. So long as they are spending that time studying, they'll learn something.
• Get a big family calendar. Write down every assignment's due date on this calendar - also include things like extracurricular activities, important events, and whatever else they need to plan ahead for! With a big visual cue in the kitchen or family room, they cannot say they didn't know something was due, or they forgot to study for a test.
• Bribe them! It's not as bad as it sounds - just as you work for a paycheck, kids need something to work for. If your kids are not motivated by the desire to get a good grade, then you have to come up with something else as a motivation. The only thing to watch out for here is the temptation to use "negative motivation" and take away something fun whenever they don't do well - that's not what I'm talking about, and it doesn't really work well anyhow. Psychological studies have proven that rewards help you change your bad habits faster and more permanently than the fear of punishment. Come up with some sort of reward with your kids - it could be a special movie night, or a small monitary reward for each good result, or a family trip - whatever they would want badly enough to work at their homework and "earn."

(2) - Don't think 'bribe', think 'positive reinforcement'. For most kids today computer, TV, X-box or Ipad time are major motivators so agree with your child that for each hour of completed homework time theycan have 30 minutes of 'media' time. But of course you have to monitor their performance - both in achieving the homework tasks and not over-running their reward time. If they've only earned 30 minutes 'media' time and the programme they are watching is 40 minutes then you have to turn it off (or record the rest) and get them back on task.


Rewards don't have to be this fancy though - studies have shown that even acknowledging someone works effectively as positive reinforcement, so a comments like, 'Well done! I'm really proud of you. That looks really good. Was it hard? Aren't you clever! Which part of it did you find hardest?' will motivate your child and strengthen their relationship with you