Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom show here at A Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale in online business. Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey and I am on a mission to help work at home. Moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life. Toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry. And let’s do this!

Cara Harvey 00:00:44 Welcome to the purpose of your mom show. I have a treat for you. Today we’re doing a little throwback from the School Year Sanity event that was hosted back in July, and I thought it was timely because Joanne Cronin came on to talk all about homework.

Cara Harvey 00:00:55 And no matter when your kids started school, you’re probably in the thick of it. Now, Joanne gave such great tips and you’re going to hear me being coached at the end because I struggle with releasing the control here. But she gave great tips on how to create homework systems, how to not make homework are a problem, and how to get a little bit of sanity when the homework is making you feel like you’re failing as a parent and you’re done arguing. Show notes for this purpose. So if you want to also check out the replays, we’ll link them up over again. The event was back in July, but you can buy the replays. I think we have them still for $27 maybe. So if you want to snag the replays. We had four sessions that day. It was a great workshop day and I thought this one would be perfect for the end of September, when homework is probably starting to pile up and your kids are arguing and you’re tired of fighting, show notes are purpose driven and enjoy the episode.

Cara Harvey 00:01:44 All right, well, welcome back everyone to our afternoon sessions today on our school Year Sanity workshop. This morning was great. I hope you got a lot out of it. We have a great afternoon lined up for you. Joanne’s going to kick us off with and I was Joe and I was telling this morning I was like, I need homework help. My daughter is like going into fourth grade. And she’s like, mom, I’m gonna have all this homework. And I’m like, well, I don’t want to micromanage it. So I can’t wait to hear what Joanna to tell me. Oh, I have lots to say. Micromanaging all of it. and we were talking about that as well this morning at the session. People were expressing their excitement for this because they’re like the, distrust of like, well, my husband checked the homework. I’m not home when they get home, like, all those things, I was like, just wait, put a pin in it. We’re going to get there this afternoon.

Cara Harvey 00:02:23 I will be here the whole time, but I’m going to mute and I’m going to talk a little bit to Joanne to get us started today.

Joann Crohn 00:02:28 Okay. Well, thank you for having me. And welcome to everyone who is here and everyone who is watching this on the recording. Homework is one of my favorite things to talk about, because I approach it in more of a mind shift on what exactly homework is for, and what your role should be in it. I am a former teacher. I’ve taught fifth grade for many years before I went over and started my own business. No guilt mom. So I’ve seen both sides of the issue. I’ve seen the classroom side with what the teacher kind of wants. I’ve seen the parent side from going through it with my own kids. And let me tell you, I wish I could apologize to some of those parents about the homework that I assigned. When I was a teacher. I felt like I made some mistakes in that area, and from those mistakes, this is where my advice to you comes from.

Joann Crohn 00:03:24 And Kara, you’re nodding. So I’m thinking, like, you probably felt like you made some mistakes in the arena of homework when you were a teacher.

Cara Harvey 00:03:30 Oh my God, I think about that now as a parent, and I’m I my thoughts on homework have completely changed as a parent. And I am just like, wow, I can’t yeah, I it’s totally different. So different when you see it on this end. and I think about I taught high school too, so it wasn’t like a little bitty worksheet, like they were getting so much homework, and I just. Yeah. Oh, man. If I could go back.

Joann Crohn 00:03:56 So. Yes. So that’s we’re talking about how to create a homework routine that works. And I love to talk with you all when I’m presenting. So right now first assignment. There you go. There’s the teacher in me. First assignment post who you are and where you’re from. Tell me the age of your kids to in that chat. Like you could say.

Joann Crohn 00:04:17 I would say, hey, I’m from Gilbert, Arizona. My kids are 16 and 12. So post that in the chat and I’m going to get my screen share going right now with my my pretty yellow slides. I want to make them vibrant. I wanted to wake everybody up this morning. And also while you’re putting that in the chat, I’m just going to move my chat windows because when you start the screen share, everything kind of goes a little differently than you feel like it should. So put those things in the chat. We’re going to get going. I will come back to you and look at your answers. 14 year old twin boys in California. Julie, welcome from Pennsylvania. Of course. Cara. There she is. Kids going into second alley. You’re my alley, aren’t you? I say my alley because I see alley all the time in the morning in balance. I was wondering if that was you when you popped in. 11 and two. Melissa’s. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Oh, she’s right next to you, Cara.

Joann Crohn 00:05:16 ten and 11. So we are. Let’s talk homework. All the grade levels, because I am going to focus primarily on the basic skills, the things that, you know, kids in elementary school, how you can get them ready. But I have stuff for you. Middle school and high school parents as well. We’re just going to, like, build the foundation and grow from there. So I am Joanne Madden. I’m Joanne Crowe and I almost said my maiden name guys. I’m Joanne Crone. I have a master’s in education and I run no guilt mom. And when we’re talking about homework, who’s seen this at home? Who’s has seen their kids just completely losing it over their homework, crying. Maybe they’re telling themselves that they’re stupid, maybe that they’re on the floor because they don’t understand the requirements for a science project. Or perhaps you have avoiders for kids where they just refuse to do it. They don’t want to engage with it. They have a million excuses as to why they’re not going to do their homework right now.

Joann Crohn 00:06:17 And when you remind them and when you’re like, hey, when’s your homework do? They’re the ones who are pretty much pushing back and refusing to do it. Ali says, my son is an avoider. Yes, I would love to know the homework personalities of everyone else’s kids on here as well because I can, like, shape the whole presentation for you. I want to tell you my story. This was me when I first encountered homework as a parent. Now you may be like, oh look, you have a baby newborn. He wasn’t the one. It was my daughter who had just entered kindergarten not less than a week after I gave birth to my son, and I was here with this little newborn trying to still cook dinner because I have very high expectations, really lofty. And my daughter was at the kitchen table with this homework packet that they gave to kindergartners, and she was just losing it. She when she didn’t know a question in the homework packet, she would completely melt down. Be so hard on herself.

Joann Crohn 00:07:22 I remember going to the couch so often while I was juggling all the things and consoling her and telling her that yes, she is smart. Yes, she can figure this out. Yes, she can do it. And it was that experience that led me to believe that I had it totally wrong. As a classroom teacher, I. I honestly went into this thinking I would rock homework right from the beginning, from being a teacher, and I didn’t realize how much different it is, nor all the emotions involved in the homework process for parents. Until this happened with my daughter, Melissa, I was there with you. Yes yes yes yes. So wouldn’t it be amazing if your child just came home, took out their homework and got it done without you having to hover over them or to nag them to repeat it, or nag them to even start it, or nag them to stay focused on it. Like, is this what you want right now? Just tell me yes, right there in the comments.

Joann Crohn 00:08:29 If this is something you dream about in the homework process that it would look like this. Care is like I wish. Yes, this is what we all hope for. And I have to tell you guys, this is my reality right now. That daughter who was a kindergartener. She’s now a senior in high school. This is her senior year. They started up two and a half weeks ago. I know, Arizona is weird. Arizona is weird. My kids have been in school for that long already, but she is the one who is completely focused on her own homework. She drives it. I really don’t even know what she has going on for homework. And that is because as soon as that breakdown happened when she was a kindergartener, that’s when I started experimenting. That’s when I started figuring out, okay, how can she motivate herself? How can I take myself out of this homework equation so that I don’t have to be the one hovering over her to get it done? Because, guys, I had a newborn like I, I could not keep my sanity with a newborn with lack of sleep and all of the other body pains and have her work on homework.

Joann Crohn 00:09:42 So it was out of necessity that I developed this system, and now that she is a senior in high school is completely paid off. It is also paid off for my son. He is a seventh grader in junior high. He is now getting larger amounts of homework than he had an elementary school. He is the one who drives the homework and who gets it done. So this is going to work for you too. It is going to pay off incredibly when you switch to this method of doing homework, because homework in the elementary school levels at least, isn’t just a place to teach subject matter skills now for all. Like transparency, I actually don’t believe that elementary students should get homework like that is one of the big mind shifts that I made when I became a parent from when I was a teacher. When I was a teacher, I assigned homework, not knowing what went on at home, but as a parent, now, they shouldn’t get it. And the research backs up on this because there have been multiple studies about how kids have improved in, say, math.

Joann Crohn 00:10:53 For instance, elementary school students who have done homework at home and who have not done homework at home. And the results are really, really minimal. Like, there is not much difference. In fact, there’s a negative effect because of the relationship blocks that were put in place between the parent and the child because of getting that homework done. It is much better for kids at the elementary school level to be able to play at home, to be able to relax, to be able to unwind instead of doing homework. That said, if you do have a teacher who assigns homework, homework can teach not just the the like math skills, not just the reading skills. It can teach prioritization, it can teach time management, and it can also teach persistence. These are the things that I focused on when my kids were elementary school students. These were the skills they were working on when they did their homework. As an elementary schooler and when they were learning these skills, I always paid really close attention. So here is your first tip with homework.

Joann Crohn 00:12:06 Pay close attention to their emotions if they are becoming upset. If you feel like you have pushback against homework, if there is fighting associated with homework, it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. That was always my cue to back away and to either give my kids the chance just to, you know, calm down, sitting beside them, helping them through it, letting them change activities so that they weren’t getting so upset at the homework, and also contacting the teacher to say like, hey, my kid is not doing so well with homework right now. With the amount of homework and having that two way communication with you and the teacher, it really makes a world of difference. Because typically when my kids would have meltdowns like this over homework, I would tell the teacher and they would also say, it’s not worth it. That’s okay. They don’t have to do their homework. We will talk about it more in school, whatever subject matter that they were working on. So that is one of the big things that I want to impart to you.

Joann Crohn 00:13:12 If you don’t leave with anything else, just know that when you’re in elementary school or does homework, if they get too upset, if the emotions go like really get really intense, the homework is not worth it. Let them stop. Let them change activities, empathize with them, say like, oh my gosh, this is so hard. Let’s do something else. Let’s talk to the teacher and say, like, this is too much right now. Because one thing also I want to give to you is homework isn’t your job. It is not your job. It is not your job to make sure that your child does their homework every single night and completes it to the best of their ability. That isn’t your job as a parent. Your job as a parent is to be that calm and steady force to help your child recognize emotions of overwhelm, of frustration, and to be able to sit with them through that and to help them through that as well. If the homework isn’t done, that’s okay. That is so okay.

Joann Crohn 00:14:16 Just have that two way communication with the teacher and tell them what is going on at home. And every time I’ve done this, I just want to give you some reassurance. Every time I’ve done this, the teacher has always been like, oh my gosh, I don’t want that to happen at home. Don’t make them do their homework. We can come and we can talk about it as a class about this assignment. So just know that it’s not supposed to be your job. Now with that right now, who owns homework in your house? You or your kids? And when I say who owns homework, whose responsibility is it to get the homework done? Do you feel like you’re the driving force pushing to get it done? Or is it your kids who are the driving force pushing to get it done? Just put it in the chat. Me? My kids let me know because especially in elementary school, but middle school and high school, if the driving force isn’t your kids, that’s what we’re going to transition it to be.

Joann Crohn 00:15:20 If you are the one pushing to get it done, this is something that you can step back and take off your plate. I’m giving you the permission. In fact, you’re going to do this and it’s going to be the best for every single person in your Family because it is your kids job to do homework, not yours. I see. Definitely me to get it done now. That said, that’s not to say that you’re going to completely step back because as a parent, we’re coaches, we’re guides. We are teaching our kids the skills that they need for those like skills. I said before, the prioritization and the time management and the persistence. So instead of getting the homework done, your job then becomes more of a support role. What things do my kids need so that they could actually persist through homework, so that they could notice what they’re struggling with and work through it? How can I do this? And I’m going to give you right now three essential things that you can put in place today, maybe later on, because one of them may require a trip to target, but it’s going to be okay.

Joann Crohn 00:16:38 It’s not too big of a trip, but these are going to help your kids be more independent. So the first thing I want you to have in place is a homework box. Now that homework box, I have one right here. It could just be a regular school supply box that you get from anywhere. And in that homework box are the things that may typically impede getting homework done. There’s the things like, mom, I can’t find a pencil. I swear those pencils, they disappear, like all the time in our house. When my when my kids were in elementary school. And so the homework box has a pencil, a mom, I don’t have a pencil sharpener. It would always, always, always, always, always be a broken pencil every single time they tried to do homework. So they have the pencil sharpener. mom, I don’t have a glue stick. You have a glue stick in there too. You have scissors. Have a place where they have homework supplies. Now, I know that in the middle school years and high school years, there are working off Chromebooks sometimes, and a lot of their assignments are online sometimes for that in a homework box, maybe you have a slightly bigger box and you have one of those personal whiteboards or a dry erase marker.

Joann Crohn 00:17:51 This homework box is going to take a collaboration between you and your kids as to what they think they need at home for doing their homework. Now, there’s a couple things here, though, that make this not just your average homework box. So notice right here I have a list of what goes in the homework box. This list I went through with my kids and we would check to make sure that after homework everything was put back in a box. Nothing was left out. And having a list like this is really just handy. So they know also what needs to go in the box after homework. Time to a great routine to get into is just have your kids pack away their homework box, zip it up, and then put it in a place everybody knows where it is. It is a a great thing to have, especially if right now you are having that struggle about where supplies, I don’t know where the supplies is are. This is a technique that we used in elementary school too. So your kids teachers probably do stuff like this as well.

Joann Crohn 00:19:00 With the lists in the labeling. It makes a world of difference in the long run. In my course homework 911, which I’m going to share with you guys at the end, I give kids this print out of the box, so you could just print it and put it in the box just like that. So have a homework box for your kids so that they always know where they can get their supplies without you needing to run around the house finding stuff for them.

Cara Harvey 00:19:30 Take a quick second. So I want to wanna invite you to join one of my new favorite apps. It’s called Brain Club. I am all about trying to get my side hustle on. Right? And one of the things I hate doing is taking money out of my preplanned budget for tiny things that pop up, like the snack stand during football season, or the $10 you have to Venmo somewhere else because you need it for school. And I found Brain Club to literally fill that gap for me. Here’s what I do with it.

Cara Harvey 00:19:51 Every single day I go in, I earn between a dollar and $1.50. It takes me two minutes and I just fill in some surveys. Super simple. Very easy. I also will link it to my Amazon, my Walmart and my target account. So when I buy things anyway, I get cash back. It takes me about ten days, but I earn $10 and when I get my $10, I cash it to my Venmo Girl math. I’m using it all the places I want to share with you a $3 code to get started, because you need $10 to cash out. So let me give you $3. I’ll get $3 if you sign up. I really appreciate it. Go to a purpose driven romcom club, do it on your phone because it’s going to bring you up to the app so you can download it. It’s a really easy way to just get some side money going, so you don’t have to take it out of your regular budget and make some money for yourself. That’s a purpose driven club.

Joann Crohn 00:20:37 The second thing I want you to put in place is the power of choice. This little shift has made the biggest difference in parents who were, before running their own, running their kids homework routine to parents who now have their kids do the homework routine on their own before parents would say, okay, you need to come home after school. I need to just sit down at the kitchen table and we’ll have a quick snack, and then you’ll do your homework. Like, this is kind of how we were told as teachers, to give advice to parents, to how the homework should be done and to just take us back a little bit. When I was told that as a teacher, I didn’t have kids in my own. So I was saying that to parents because that was the advice I was given when I was trained as a teacher. Just to say, if you’re hearing this advice from teachers right now, take it with a grain of salt. Know that they mean their absolute best. They are doing their absolute best.

Joann Crohn 00:21:38 But in terms of that advice, it doesn’t work. What does work is to ask kids, when do you want to do your homework? Leaving it completely up to them changes the game, because it’s no longer you telling them to sit down or telling them to stop what they’re doing. It is them that decide. And what I’ve found in this is that they will decide times that are going to make you really uncomfortable, really uncomfortable because it’s going to go against what you want them to do. My daughter, for instance, she did not want to do homework right after school. She needs a cooldown period. She needed like an hour or two where she could just, you know, watch some shows on TV, unwind before she started on her homework, and she was able to tell me this as a kindergartner. She just said, I don’t want to do it right now. I’d rather do it after I watched shows. My son, when he started first grade, he wanted to do his homework in the morning where I was like.

Multiple Speakers 00:22:41 Oh my gosh, like, I don’t know how this is going to work in the morning, but.

Joann Crohn 00:22:47 Changing it to the morning and having him be in control of it, he did it. He got it done there. And then after a few years of that, he’s like, oh, it’s really too stressful for me to do it in the morning. I’m going to do it after school. And he changed on his own. There was no fighting with it. He got it done. So give your kids the power of choice. Let them decide when they’re going to do their homework. Let them decide where they’re going to do their homework and the order of events. I have this afterschool checklist we had when my kids were in elementary school. They created this. I just moved move the words around on the page. But after you create something like this with them telling you exactly when they want to do the things, you can create this and I have a template for you that’s available, like as a little bonus at the end.

Joann Crohn 00:23:39 So so wait for that one. So we have homework box to make sure that you are not the one hunting down supplies for all of your kids. You’re going to give your kids the power of choice, where you ask them when and where they want to do their homework, and then you can help them create this schedule. And I do want to say, this is not your job to enforce the schedule at all. This is your kids job. Because if they decide that it’s just not working for them, of course they can change their minds and decide to do their homework at another time. But this right here is not only showing that you are putting your trust in them to make their own decisions, to give them that autonomy and that power to control exactly what they want to do. but you’re also showing them that none of their choices are set in stone. If something’s not working for them, they always can go back and try something new. So it’s two important lessons in there. Third. One third thing to have in place is the timer trick.

Joann Crohn 00:24:43 my my son in particular, he I feel like is the child most like me where he just cannot sit still and focus for a very long amount of time if there is a frustrating task in front of him. He, his emotions go through the roof. he he gets frustrated very easily. He has really high emotions with it, and he needs breaks. We found this not only with homework, but like when asking him to do chores around the house. The dishes was one of these examples. And so I introduced him to the timer trick and all the timer trick is, is when your kids are confronted with a really kind of frustrated, overwhelming scenario where homework can be that overwhelming scenario. instead of looking at it as something like you have to do all at once, you pull out a timer, you set it for however many minutes they’re comfortable working at a time, so that maybe starting at five minutes, that maybe starting at ten minutes, set the timer and then they are working just for the amount of time on the timer.

Joann Crohn 00:25:50 That’s all they have to commit to you. It’s like, yes, this homework can be really, really big and scary, but I think I can work on it for five minutes. And what usually happens when you start using this timer trick and you put it in front of the kids, like I would actually right now, I would give my kids the phone. I would help them go to the clock app and go and set a timer right here. And I would give them my phone so that they are in control of the timer. So what this doesn’t look like is it doesn’t look like. Okay, I’m setting it for eight minutes. Oh. Oh. It’s not. It’s not the end of eight minutes yet. Nope. You have to go back and do your homework. You said you do it for eight minutes. That’s not what this looks like. What it does look like is. Here you go. You could set the timer for whatever time you want to set it for, and just try to work through that.

Joann Crohn 00:26:46 You step back, and.

Cara Harvey 00:26:47 That’s.

Joann Crohn 00:26:47 All you do. You just step back. You’re there for support. You don’t have to hover over them. They are the ones in control. And when you give kids control like that, you are going to be so surprised at what they do. A lot of the parents whose kids went through my homework 911 program and homework mastery, they actually the kids took over control of that timer, and the parents then saw the kids would then set the timer themselves and just start working. No nagging needed, no reminders needed because when you put kids in control, huge things happen where you can step back. They will really surprise you with this one. So that’s the three things the homework box, the power of choice, and the timer. And everything just went away. I just let me get that back up. I hit my computer and so my screen decided to leave me.

Multiple Speakers 00:27:50 There we go. Okay. We’re back, we’re back.

Joann Crohn 00:27:57 So just to tell you a few stories of how this has worked for other families.

Joann Crohn 00:28:02 My friend Ruth, her daughter Annie. She was really, really reluctant to doing homework. Like she would fight with Ruth every single night. It became really a point of conflict between the two of them. And so since we were friends at the time, I gave Ruth homework 911 for Annie. The cool thing is about, like, these things that I just taught you as a parent. It could be really hard to teach your kids. I mean, I think, Kara, you’d agree it is so much harder to teach your own kids than it is to teach kids in your classroom. Your kids will fight you. Your kids are pushed back against you. It doesn’t mean that you’re explaining it wrong or that you as a parent are doing a bad job. We as teachers have this as well with our own children like it is.

Cara Harvey 00:28:48 So.

Joann Crohn 00:28:49 Much harder. So what homework 901 does is it teaches kids directly by me. I’m the one teaching them how to do the timer trick. I’m the one teaching them how to do the homework box.

Joann Crohn 00:29:01 So it takes you out of the equation as the enforcer, and then you just get to kind of stand by and support them wherever they need help. So Annie took homework 911 and Ruth said the change was immediate in her. She started sitting down by herself to do her own homework. The fights disappeared and she said it was completely amazing because there was this tension that had existed in their house for so long, and having Annie take control over her own homework. It was a game changer. This is Tracey and her family. She was having so much trouble with homework and her son. Her son would come home and Tracy would be like, okay, when are you going to do your homework? When are you going to do your homework? And they would just get into fights every evening until he started homework 911. And Tracy’s role then became she would come home, he would come home and he would go straight up to his room. Sometimes he would even tell Tracy, okay, I’m going to have a snack right now, and then I’m going to play on my computer, and then I’m going to do my homework.

Joann Crohn 00:30:08 And Tracy at first was like,

Multiple Speakers 00:30:10 I don’t know. This feels really weird.

Joann Crohn 00:30:12 Like, what if he doesn’t do his homework? What if he doesn’t follow through? What if he doesn’t, like, do what he says he’s going to do? But she she let him do it. And she was amazed when an hour later, he came down. He’s like, my homework is all done. It’s finished. And that’s what I want you to have with homework