10 year old sits with his homework open and waits for me to get home

moss_hammock_58986 Oct 2026

My son is in class 5. He's home by 4.30, has eaten, and his books are out on the table. Then he waits. When I walk in around 7 he has done maybe one line, and the moment I sit down beside him he finishes half the work in twenty minutes without asking me a single thing. So it isn't that he can't. There is family at home in the afternoon, but nobody there does homework with him and he knows it. And with a two year old in the house, the evening is not exactly calm by the time I'm back. I've read the usual advice. 'Make a routine': we have one, he sits inside it and waits. 'Reward him for starting': tried that, he negotiated. I'm not after a chart. I'd like to hear from anyone whose child started working alone around this age, and what changed, even if it was something small.

1 comment

cinnamon_sandal_90587 Oct 2026
My son is 17 now. Around that age he did something similar, and what eventually helped had more to do with us than with him. We stopped sitting down next to him when we got home. One of us would sit at the same table with our own work, laptop or bills or whatever, and answer only if he asked. The first week he asked constantly. By the third, he'd usually started before we sat down, because waiting no longer produced a helper. I can't say it would work for yours, and it took longer than a reward chart would have. It was the only change that held for us.