If your child consistently refuses to do homework or never brings it home it can lead to strife both at home and at school. It helps to create rules, boundaries and limitations as soon as your child begins school. Set a rule that says homework when they get, it must be brought home and begun at a certain time. Also create a unique consequence for not doing it. Whatever consequence you choose, ensure it’s unique and only lasts for 24 hours, or until your child next brings work home so they have the opportunity to redeem themselves.

Hope is important here, if a punishment lasts longer than a day, the child might feel trapped and helpless, which will further exacerbate the problem.

To manage this situation, you’re going to have to work with the teacher. It might be worthwhile creating a homework log that the child is responsible for keeping. This should list the homework assignments each day and be initialed by the teacher. You will need to check this every day and keep this up until such time as the behavior has been eradicated.

Forgetting to bring homework home, or the log should also result in punishment. This is also something you want to train your child out of. We can’t help forgetfulness sometimes, but there needs to be a consequence for it. There certainly are in adulthood and that’s what we are preparing them for.

Giving a child a homework routine is a good way of getting them into the habit of doing it. A popular mistake parents seem to make is by giving them a time when it must be completed. This isn’t such a good idea, because sometimes it’s going to take longer and they will feel a failure if it does, even if they have done great work. It might also force them to rush the assignment, which we don’t want either.

A better idea is to give them a begin time. After school is the best time of day. Give them a healthy snack then set them to work. Tell them they must get their work done, but not give them a time limit. Use the lure of play, going outside or other motivation for completing it. Don’t be afraid to use the climate here in Naples, parenting is about blackmail too. Tell them they can go outside in the sunshine once they have finished, and you have checked it. There’s nothing like the lure of play to get a child motivated.