The Parenting Coach: My son won’t do his homework! How do I motivate him?

Q: My 11-year-old son refuses to do his homework, or he spends so much time on video games that he doesn’t have time to finish his homework before bed — or worse, he tells us he’s finished his homework when he hasn’t even started!

We have tried systems of rewards (like working toward a new video game after a month of completed homework), and also consequences (like no video games for a day if homework doesn’t get done the previous day). Nothing seems to work. Help!

A : I hear you. It’s hard to motivate our kids to do homework when it’s the last thing they want to do! It’s also so common – you are not alone. The issue feels high-stakes to us as parents because we worry that if our 11-year-old doesn’t learn to do his homework, he’s going to become a high school student who never learned to do his homework, gets low grades, and gets into a worse college than he might have if he had just learned to do his homework as an 11-year-old.

First, take a deep breath. Get outside, get some exercise, listen to some music, drink some water – do whatever you need to do to get out of your “emotion mind” and into your “wise mind” (to use two handy terms from dialectical behavior therapy).

And then, ideally, we want to address an ongoing issue like this in a low-stakes moment. For instance, on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning when there’s no homework that needs to be done right away, maybe over pancakes or an ice cream cone, you can say to your son, “I’ve noticed that most days we get into kind of a homework crunch. I don’t like being in conflict with you about this, and I wonder if you have any ideas about how you can get your homework done on time?”

Give your son some time to see if he has any solutions. If there’s something he suggests that seems worth trying, great! You have your answer; go ahead and try his suggestion. But if your son just shrugs and says some version of, “I don’t know, the homework is boring,” then you can gently come back with, “Have you thought about this, or have you thought about that?” “This” and “that” are possibilities only you can find, as they will be specific to your family and child, but since enticements and consequences haven’t yet worked, perhaps try a more structural approach, like, “What if you get one hour of video games when you get home, then you come into the kitchen and do your homework?”

Keep making suggestions until you can get some buy-in from him about a possible solution. Then try it. You might have to have this conversation a few times before you figure out together the right solution for getting homework done in a way that works for everyone.

Since your son is only 11, you might also consider that maybe it’s OK for him to get a low grade in a subject because of incomplete homework, to experience the natural consequence of his (in)action. When the grade comes in, you can again choose a low-stakes moment when you’re not upset and introduce the topic with, “Hey, you know, I noticed that you got a low grade in this particular subject. Why do you think that is?” Let him answer. If he understands that it’s because of his homework, he might be more open to collaborating on solutions and motivated to follow through on them.

The goal is to engage your son’s critical thinking skills. We learn through lived experience, by trial and error, and by talking to our caregivers about what worked and what didn’t work. As parents, we need to guide our children to their own best answers. If we simply put rules and behavior modification plans in place without engaging the child in the critical thinking process, we are depriving our children of the opportunity to learn for themselves.

Your son learning for himself that doing his homework results in a grade he can be proud of is what will create the long-term behavioral change you seek.