Dialogue: Homework pitfalls for helpful parents

By SANDY BURGHAM

"Oh, I've won another speech cup," someone casually remarked to a friend of mine. "That's fantastic," said my friend, "so is this a Toastmasters' sort of thing?"

"Oh, good Lord no," she replied. "What I mean to say is that my son won the actual cup, all I did was write the speech."

You see her son is a mere mouthpiece for his mother's narrative.

It appears that the more effort she puts in, the further he goes, so now they are stuck with this little Cyrano de Bergerac-style arrangement. And this mother-and-son winning combo is not alone.

Meanwhile, across town my friend's daughter forgets to tell her mum about yet another assignment due in three days. While the girl was relaxed, her mum was livid.

"You haven't left me any time," she wailed to her daughter. "We'll have to ask for an extension."

As clusters of parents hang around outside classrooms to pick up their children, the conversations about projects and homework reveal it all.

"What did you get for your dinosaurs assignment?" asks one mum to another. "An A plus." "Wow. So will you be tackling the Aborigines in 3D as well? I thought of just doing it on PowerPoint."

Indeed, it appears in this age of busy kids with no windows in their diaries the parents are the ghostwriters of school homework and projects, channelling their creations through the children.

While the parental excuse seems to be that the kids are simply overloaded and find it difficult to plough through it all, I find it hard to believe that the amount of homework in the average primary school classroom has really increased that dramatically since we were children.

There seems to be a more probable reason for the parental urge to go above and beyond the call of duty and masquerade as their children after school: it's an easy way to feel like a good parent.

Not only does it provide the opportunity for self-congratulatory status as an involved parent, but also if the child gets a good mark, suddenly one feels like parent of the year.

As with nail-chewing, it's a habit that many parents prefer to underplay for fear of exposing a whole lot of other unresolved issues. Like the fact that they find it hard to balance their own schedules with those of the children.

There's work, household management and all-important leisure time to fit in, along with a relentless round of after-school activities that have now become the social norm.

The weekends are full of sport and birthday parties, leaving little time for kids to ponder homework challenges. Thus it's easier for all if parents just fast-forward the whole homework process by doing it. That way neither the parents nor the students fail.

But the line between being helpful and living vicariously through the kids is dangerously thin.

Stories abound of the suspicious overachievements of innocent and dumbfounded little 10-year-olds who seem to have little emotional ownership over their school projects.

Come science project time you can pick the child whose dad is an engineer: he's the one with the prototype of the Golden Gate Bridge with scale drawings and blueprints in the addendum.

A friend attended her kid's primary school annual drama event. It was an extravaganza worthy of repeat performances at the Aotea Centre.

It transpired that the school zone is a popular one for the entertainment, media, and artistic set. Among the parental volunteers there was almost a full crew from directors and producers down to props people - all of whom could be called in to give it that professional polish.

But while parents are sitting back enjoying the fruits of their labours, we should spare a thought to what this is doing to our children.

It possibly leaves them both slightly bewildered and maybe even a bit nervous as the competitive bar gets raised higher and higher.

Like the increase in quality, expense and frequency of children's birthday parties that I wrote about some time ago, one wonders if the overachievement of parental homeworkers will inadvertently put even more pressure on kids to outperform their natural capabilities.

And what about the poor children whose parents don't help? Are they disadvantaged?

We all love getting As. But getting some Cs, Ds or Es, and even a few "must try harders", can be tremendously effective wake-up calls for kids.

If we want our children to be able to stand on their own two feet one day, maybe we need to resist the temptation to keep pulling their strings.