'Experiencing Teen Drama Overload'

[journeymom]

Interesting article!

Article on NPR

Getting to Calm: Cool-Headed Strategies for Parenting Tweens + Teens

[journeymom]

So in the NPR article they feature a scenario that's virtually the same as mine: I'm concerned about about my 15 year old daughter's homework habits. When dd says she's doing homework, sometimes she's actually on Facebook, Hulu, Youtube or simply texting like there's no tomorrow.

Kastner responds that this 'low-level lying' to get out of trouble is common and normal. [Me: doesn't make it alright. But I'll let that go for now.]

She says that whether kids are high or low achievers, academics are the one of the most common things for families to fight about.

Most teenagers are going to flip back and forth to Facebook while doing their homework, unless parents enforce an electronic-free policy -- as in, no phones, no TV, no social networking. Teenagers have a tough time -- just like adults -- fighting some of their temptations.

If the child is doing well academically, then leave it alone. It might take that child five hours to finish her homework rather than two. But she might say, "This is the way I want to do it because I can tolerate homework if I'm chatting with my friends online."

If your kids says they really need to go online to do homework, then she recommends you offer, for example, 90 minutes of electronic-free time. Then you know you have some high quality concentration.


And my laptop's about to die, but I'll just say that I like this a lot and will be implementing something like this with dd this year.

Thoughts? Objections? Agreements?

Edited to add, regarding the title of this thread (and the article), homework and dd's relationship with the internet is definitely the source of a fair amount of drama.

[2timestrouble]

Yeah, I agree, homework it use to be drama, sometimes still is but my problem is, like the article said, she still getting good grades
I read most of the article and I think part of what they say is what my mom have told me:"We must pick our battles"
Of course this is more easy said to do. And for the record I don't think my mom follow much this "rule" when I was a teen, or maybe she did but I just thought she didn't.
Anyway, thank you for the article, it was very interesting.

[bestjob]

Myself, I am all about focus and concentration for homework. When it is homework time, the social networks go off at our house. Well, see below.

If a kid is just drifting in and out of the project, then I am worried that the project hasn't been properly analyzed and broken down. An achievable portion of the project shouldn't be so long that the kid feels cut off from society.

After the project is broken down, the kids need to take some time to figure out the links between the parts. That can't be done without concentration. The networks need to be turned off.

On the other hand, dd and her friends use facebook to organize group work. That's not socalizing... that's using technology to make life easier.

[chiromamma]

MY DD goes to a "paperless" school. They do all their assignments other than math on googledocs. It's absolutely wonderful. Editing is more efficient, assignments can get turned in the night they are done. In addition, the teachers are often online and available to answer the kids questions via chat.
DD has learned to structure her homework time. She sets it up that once she finishes a paper, she'll FB or go on interesting sites for 15 minutes. Then she moves on to the next assignment.
Her teachers last year helped her come up with this system when she kept forgetting assignments because she was surfing or FB creeping.
Technology is a wonderful thing. I love it.
I think those of us who grew up without it, need to realize that it's essential to our kids' lives and future success. We just need to support them in managing their use of it.