Stepping Stones Occupational Therapy

26/02/2025

25/02/2025

We are so blessed to have this amazing programme on our doorstep in Bulawayo

27/09/2023

https://www.facebook.com/100064594156174/posts/687036986792767/?mibextid=CDWPTG

24/09/2023

https://www.facebook.com/100041655466428/posts/1052417836156722/?mibextid=Nif5oz

Homework: Unnecessary Overtime in Childhood

I want to start by stating an inconvenient truth. There is NO evidence of any academic benefit of homework in elementary school.

There is also no support that homework promotes good work habits or self-discipline. When those reasons fall short, adults may turn to “it prepares them for the future”. However, there is no need to “prepare” them for that. We do a lot of “preparing”: Preparing for kindergarten, preparing for middle school, preparing for the cruel adult world. Instead, we should be focusing on the child’s current developmental level and building skills appropriate for that level, not “preparing them” for a future developmental level.

To the best of my knowledge, homework has traditionally been meant to be a review of what was learned during the school day. It has evolved into hours of additional work after a child has already put in a 6 hour workday; or worthless counting, tracing or matching worksheets that could easily be done during their time in school. I remember in kindergarten my son brought home a worksheet to count the number of socks on a page. We did laundry together instead. That’s counting AND matching. “Let’s count all the socks that don’t have a match! Oh, look! 3 socks don’t have a match (again)!

The myth about homework is well documented in the research and summarized beautifully in Alfie Kohn’s work: https://alfiekohn.org/teaching/htips.htm

Another truth about homework is the amount of stress and power struggles it creates at home, with parents dealing with the challenge of trying to get an unwilling or spent child to pick themselves up again after spending so much energy earlier in the day in school. For our neurodivergent kids, this is especially true. There are many, many kids who hold it together in school in order to meet the expectations. When they get home, they are done! There are also many kids who don’t understand WHY they have to do “more work” when they already worked in school. Their mentality is simple and valid: Work is for school, not for home. Do adults take work home? Sometimes. Does that mean kids should? Absolutely not! Kids are not adults. Again, it’s a different developmental level and one we do not have to “prepare” them for.

So, even though there is no evidence to prove the value of homework for young children, parents are put in a difficult situation. Do I force the homework? Do I do it for them? Do I “opt out”? I am seeing more and more teachers limit the amount of homework going home (progress, but still not supported by the literature). However, I also hear horror stories of endless homework, meltdowns and power struggles to get the worksheets or ‘spelling words 10x each’ done.

My suggestion? Communication is key. I don’t agree with homework in elementary school, but I’ve always kept the mindset that the point of the pointless homework is to make sure the child understands the content. When my kids were either too busy with afterschool activities, family events or were just running on empty, I would do a ‘check-in’ with them to see where their energy level was. At any time, if it became clear that homework would not be a positive learning experience and more of a stressor than a help, I would alter the way we completed it. Could they just tell me the answers? Could we do it another way that brought the questions off the worksheet and into real life? Could I get it started for them and just have them finish? There was never one set way to attempt it, but whatever I did, I communicated the situation with the teacher. I didn’t try to write in my kids handwriting. I didn’t do the homework for them and just put it in their folder. I assessed my child’s ability to participate and communicated honestly with the teacher. That communication was always appreciated. If my child lost points for not completing the homework or received a consequence, that situation was addressed immediately and my decision was backed up with not only the literature but a more thorough explanation of the state of regulation my child was in and an explanation that the homework wasn’t worth dysregulating my kid at the end of their day.

Teachers need to stop giving homework in elementary school. Full stop. The research doesn’t support it. We know more now, so the “it’s what we’ve always done” argument doesn’t hold water anymore. If an administrator insists on it, that’s a great conversation for a staff meeting…with literature to back you up. That being said, I trust that parents and teachers can work together to assure that THE CHILD, the most important factor in this discussion, is understanding the content being taught in class, with or without the homework.

The majority of elementary school kids I have spoken to, and I’m willing to bet kids in general, think homework is “dumb”, “boring”, “annoying” or “not fair”. The research supports their desire to have less, if any. So, with this new knowledge that homework in elementary school does not improve academic achievement or study habits, and the understanding that homework is an additional stressor at home, the question becomes: What are we doing?

It's time to re-think homework.

What's your homework situation this year? Share your story in the comments!



Image description: Mom with hand on forehead looking frustrated sitting next to her child, who is wearing glasses, and has her arms folded and head down on the table. The child is lying on top of papers with a computer screen in front of her.

09/02/2023

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=137401582532200&id=100087870753308&mibextid=Nif5oz

20/01/2023

04/01/2023

I want to shout this from the rooftops to every single person who works with four-year-olds. And three-year-olds too! (And five- and six-year-olds, if you ask me and if you ask the evidence, but hey, let's start with four.)

Moving academics *earlier* does not make anyone better off. Anyone.

Not the child, who's being asked to do something developmentally inappropriate, and is learning that they're bad at it, and that school and academic work is no fun and terrible and a mismatch for their skill set. Lifelong lessons.

Not the adult, who's trying to force someone to do something they physically and mentally cannot do yet.

Not society, who is burning out their most valuable resource and what should be their most valued and protected members.

It benefits nobody to move academics earlier and earlier. Stop making* 4yos write and trace letters!

*There are occasional 4yos who want to play at drawing letters. I'm not saying to stand in the way of children playing. The word "making" speaks for itself, here. 😊

[Image description: A long quote over a dark purple background:
"A four-year-old will be a four-year-old only once. Concentrate on meeting his present needs. Don't foist future academics on him. If he's allowed to truly play now -- spontaneous play with room for running, leaping, ka-powing, crying, dancing, painting, spilling and creative problem-solving -- then he will be ready for academics later. When children gain social and emotional skills and confidence in the preschool years, academic learning naturally follows."
The quote is by Heather Shumaker, who wrote "It's OK Not To Share & Other Renegade Rules for Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids". End description.]

04/01/2023

I read a post in one of my favorite facebook groups the other day that made something so incredibly clear to me, that I sometimes struggle to put into words clearly enough for other parents and professionals to understand. So, I’m hoping to share that with you.

(The group is called The B Team, run by Lives in the Balance. It’s a group for understanding and moving through the Collaborative/Proactive Solutions process laid out by Dr. Ross Greene in his books, i.e., “The Explosive Child” and “Raising Human Beings” and “Lost At School”. All the books are about the Collaborative/Proactive Solutions process, they just give different types of examples of using the process to collaboratively solve problems with children. If you don’t know about those books or that problem-solving process, that’s a great resource for you! But I digress.)

The person explaining it was Zaidee Martin — who puts an immense amount of time into moderating that group and helping break things down with such incredible patience and wisdom. The topic of conversation was robot helpers — like Alexa and Siri. I think it could also apply to any and all inanimate objects…it’s just more noticeable with ones that talk back to you, or are supposed to be doing something! A Roomba or the self-checkout-line-machine might also fall into this category.

Sometimes, for example, I’ll ask Alexa to time how long I’m cooking something. And when the timer starts going off, I’ll say “Alexa, stop the timer.”

Sometimes Alexa doesn’t hear me say that. Sometimes Alexa will get confused and think I want to *start* a timer. Sometimes Alexa will pause the beeping timer to ask me what I said, and then go right back into beeping again.

Sometimes I can laugh this off, but sometimes I get mad at it.

(…someone might also get mad at a Roomba for getting stuck or for giving false error messages…or mad at the self-checkout-line-machine for blathering on about the bagging area…or mad at Siri for waking up and asking you to repeat that when you didn’t say anything to summon her…)

These things are just programming. They aren’t people; they are incapable of doing something “defiant”, or doing something “to make you mad”. All they do is literally respond to their programming. But sometimes we get frustrated with them anyway.

That is an indicator of OUR mindset, not anything about the robot. It’s an indicator that we’re a little tapped out right then. Or we’re in a rush, trying to get something done and this thing is supposed to be helping but instead it’s slowing us down. Or we were already pre-annoyed about something else and this is just one more annoyance. Or we’re hungry, or tired, or overstimulated, or, or, or…

Yet when the same thing is applied to children (or just relationships with other people), this is harder to keep in mind.

We start externalizing our interpretation of the situation. It’s not just that WE are frustrated, it’s that THEY are BEING FRUSTRATING.

But a child crying and “carrying on”…might elicit a response of empathy in their adults. Might elicit a response of annoyance from their adults. Might elicit a response of fear or overwhelm from their adults. Why? The crying and carrying on is exactly the same. It’s the story the adult is telling themself in their head, their interpretation of the situation, that is different.

That is a big responsibility and it’s also very empowering! It means that the story you are telling yourself in your head is a huge, important part of how the situation goes.

Sometimes it means you can shift from “She’s being terrible” to “She is overwhelmed” or “She’s disobeying me” to “She’s not ready to do this without physical help yet”. Sometimes you might not be able to get from totally unhelpful to totally rainbows-and-sunshine…maybe you can just land somewhere in the middle ground, like going from “He’s being a jerk” to “I’m exhausted and overwhelmed and he needs more than I can give him right now”, which, at very least, is an *honest* story to be telling yourself about the situation, and if you can start from an honest point, then you can find more honest solutions.

[Image description: A close-up shot of an Amazon Echo with text over it that reads, "Alexa, why are you like this??" End description.]

05/06/2022

Around half of four-year-olds were ‘not ready’ to start Reception last September, according to a new survey by education foundation Kindred Squared.

18/05/2022

Data show sharp decline in children’s speech and motor skills since the pandemic, while referrals for language therapy have doubled