Is it true that today our children do a lot of homework? How do they affect the child’s health? We analyze how much time it is advisable to dedicate to doing homework, what are its benefits and its problems.

“Have you finished your homework?” This question is perhaps one of the most repeated by families during the school year. It is totally normal that obligations are somewhat tedious, both for children and for adults themselves, but they have to be done.

Why don’t our children get used to doing their tasks and we continually have to be on top of them to finish them? The causes of this fact can be multiple, but in this article we will focus on one of them: the quantity and quality of tasks marked for home.

The goal of homework

The performance of academic activities at home is something positive as long as they are of quality and in adequate quantities for the students.

The completion of tasks reinforces the individual performance of the contents carried out in the classroom and allows the student’s self-evaluation. On the other hand, homework, in its proper measure, provides the student with the dose of responsibility and autonomy of study that he will gradually need in higher courses.

Undoubtedly, the marked duties must fulfill a basic function: to motivate the student by letting him know that he is capable of doing them himself and to let him know the reason why they are necessary, thus providing a meaning and an educational purpose.

How much time is it advisable to dedicate to homework?

Studies carried out at Stanford University advice that homework should not exceed 10 minutes per educational level. That is, if our student is in the first level of Primary Education, these should not exceed 10 minutes and if he is in the sixth level, the maximum time spent must be 60 minutes.

Adapting the study time to the student is something fundamental. The child has to be able to maintain continuous attention during the completion of the task (in Primary Education) since if this is not the case, frustration and the feeling of inability to carry it out occurs.

In Secondary education, as the task time is longer, it is advisable to take 10-minute breaks when fatigue appears after around 60 minutes of continuous work.

Disconnection times

The working day of an adult usually consists of 8 hours. After these 8 hours of work, the person needs free time to “disconnect” from their work obligations by performing other tasks such as going out with friends, going to the movies, shopping, going to the park with the children, etc.

The child is not very different from the adult and after spending 7 hours at school and 2 more hours in activities related to their training, arriving home and having to do 3 hours of homework, more than something positive turns into torture. Since after those 3 hours it is time to bathe, have dinner and go to sleep and again the next morning everything starts again.

How do extra duties affect the health of my child and my family?

Too much homework causes stress, health problems and a considerable reduction in social and family life in the student.

In relation to stress, if the child is stressed, he does not perform and there is a blockage before which, as concerned parents, we exert more pressure to finish the tasks. What is achieved with this fact is that the environment becomes tense and that family relationships deteriorate.

Health problems refer to headaches, stomach problems, anxiety, and fatigue and on many occasions, although we try to fight against the clock, sleep deprivation.

Finally, if our family life ends up revolving around the completion of tasks and jobs that the child may have, we lose time talking, going on fun outings with friends or simply sharing moments outside of obligations.

Does my child have extra homework?

Many factors must be taken into account in relation to the time it takes each student to develop their tasks as we mentioned earlier. Not all students are the same and therefore not all work at the same speed.

We must bear in mind that our son’s life has more aspects to contemplate than just the academic one. If this prevents the development of the rest, we should talk with the teacher so that he can give us some advice about the completion of tasks and inform us about the academic evolution of our child, consider the volume of the tasks as well as professionally support us in the education of all areas of child development.

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