She drags the bag downstairs and tips the contents onto the table. Then she disappears off upstairs and I only remember 40 minutes later. She is rational and logical she understands. Instead of refusing to do homework, she agrees it has to be done. One of her teachers used the phrase ‘passive non-compliance’ and it is an excellent way to describe her approach. No matter how many warnings I give, or the fact that we have been doing this for almost eight years, it’s always the same story.

My sixth classer is absolutely shocked and outraged every single evening. But it hasn’t made the homework dance any less tedious. I have since moved to a job much closer to home, where I have a much more flexible working arrangement. And really, who doesn’t want to come home from a gruelling 12-hour day to teach themselves long division so they can then teach a grumpy, overtired and hungry child, who has never been more certain about anything as they are about the fact that they absolutely do not want to learn long division tonight. I would drop them to the childminder at 6.30 am and collect them at 6 pm. I have one child in sixth class and one in first year, and I feel like we have been arguing about homework since the dawn of time.Īt its peak, I was working a job that was a 90-minute commute each way. OUR PRESIDENT MICHAEL D Higgins recently made headlines when he called for homework to be banned in Ireland, saying “People should be able to use their time for other creative things”.Īs a parent, I felt that this was such a welcome breath of fresh air.

Do your homework for you