When homework becomes a nightly battle, what should parents do?
The first instinct is often to push harder: explain the problem again, correct the mistakes, insist that the assignment gets finished, or find another way to teach the material. But sometimes the most useful thing homework can do is show you where your child is getting stuck.
Instead of treating homework as another test your child must pass, treat it as information.
That was one of the strongest themes in a conversation between special education attorney Frances Shefter and educator, attorney, and parent Meg Shah: homework can help parents see learning gaps, identify ineffective supports, and ask better questions at school—without turning the evening into a power struggle.
Homework Should Be a Checkpoint, Not a Battle
If your child does not know how to complete an assignment, spending an hour correcting every mistake may not solve the underlying problem.
Your child may have misunderstood the concept. They may be using a different strategy than the one you learned in school. They may understand the concept but struggle with executive functioning, reading, writing, or another part of the task.
The important question is not simply, “Did you finish the homework?”
It is: What did this assignment tell us about what your child can and cannot do independently?
That same question matters when reviewing whether your child’s IEP goals actually match their needs. A goal should address the actual skill your child needs to develop—not simply give them more work in an area where they are already struggling.
If your child repeatedly gets stuck, consider documenting the pattern rather than fighting through it every night. What type of problem causes difficulty? How much help was needed? How long did the assignment take? Was the child able to explain the concept verbally even though writing it was difficult?
Those details can give the school far more useful information than a perfectly corrected homework sheet.
Ask What Skill the Assignment Is Actually Measuring
A child can struggle with an assignment for reasons that have little to do with the skill the teacher intended to assess.
For example, imagine a student who understands a grade-level story when it is read aloud but cannot independently decode the text. If the goal of the assignment is reading comprehension, forcing the child to independently read every word may create a barrier that prevents them from showing what they actually understand.
That is where accommodations can matter.
Audiobooks, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, graphic organizers, sentence starters, and other tools may help remove a barrier while the student continues developing the underlying skill. Parents should look closely at whether their child’s IEP accommodations actually match their needs and the task the student is being asked to complete.
The question Frances raised during the conversation is simple but powerful: What are we actually assessing?
Reading and reading comprehension are related, but they are not identical. Generating an idea and physically writing it with correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation are also different skills.
When one barrier prevents a child from demonstrating another ability, the team should understand exactly what is getting in the way.
An Accommodation Is Only Useful If the Child Knows How to Use It
Writing “provide a graphic organizer” into an IEP may sound specific. It is not necessarily enough.
Which graphic organizer?
When is it used?
Who teaches the student how to use it?
Will the student practice with the same structure consistently enough that using it eventually becomes familiar?
Frances and Meg emphasized that simply handing a child a tool does not mean the child knows how to use it effectively. Parents can use the same questions when reviewing whether supplementary aids and services actually match their needs.
Consistency matters. A useful support should become part of the student’s learning system rather than something that appears only during an assessment or changes every week.
Learning Gaps Need to Be Broken Into Smaller Skills
“Reading” is not one skill.
A struggling reader may have difficulty with phonics, decoding, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, or several areas at once.
The same principle applies to math, writing, executive functioning, and other academic skills.
If the gap between where a child is performing and where the curriculum expects them to be is large, trying to attack everything simultaneously can leave everyone overwhelmed.
Instead, identify the foundational problem and break the path forward into smaller steps.
A student can still need access to grade-level material while also receiving targeted instruction designed to close an underlying learning gap. Those two goals serve different purposes.
Parents should also compare what they are seeing at home with the school’s data and their child’s IEP progress reports. If the same difficulties continue quarter after quarter, that pattern is important information.
If you are seeing a persistent disconnect between the homework coming home, the progress being reported, and what your child can actually do independently, you can Start with a Free Case Analysis [Link 5] to determine whether Shefter Law may be able to help you identify an appropriate next step.
Do Not Hide the Struggle From the Teacher
One unintended consequence of parents reteaching and correcting every homework problem is that the final assignment may no longer show the teacher what happened at home.
If your child could not complete five problems independently but eventually finished them after 45 minutes of parent instruction, the completed worksheet tells only part of the story.
Instead, consider communicating the problem factually:
“We worked on this for 20 minutes. These are the problems they could complete independently. We got stuck here, and I did not want to teach a different strategy than the one you are using in class.”
That gives the teacher something actionable.
It can also help parents recognize what should happen when your child isn’t making progress instead of simply repeating the same approach and hoping more practice will eventually fix the problem.
As Meg put it, homework can become “information gathering.” Parents can act like detectives: identify the pattern, document it, and bring the information back to the people responsible for teaching the skill.
Protect the Parent-Child Relationship
There is another reason not to turn every incorrect homework problem into a confrontation: the cost can extend beyond the assignment.
Once homework becomes associated with nightly conflict, a child may begin resisting not only homework but learning itself.
Sometimes the better approach is to change the conversation.
Instead of:
“You need to finish your math.”
Try:
“Show me what you’re learning. Can you teach me how your teacher showed you to do this?”
Now the child becomes the expert, and the parent gets a chance to see the strategy being used at school.
Routine can help too. Short work periods, predictable breaks, consistent materials, and realistic stopping points may reduce conflict—particularly for children with attention or executive functioning difficulties.
Three hours of homework for a young child should not automatically be treated as evidence that the child needs to try harder. It may be evidence that something else needs closer examination.
Find the Support That Matches the Actual Problem
Not every homework problem requires the same professional.
A child who primarily needs help organizing assignments may benefit from executive functioning support.
A student with a significant decoding gap may need a professional with specialized reading training.
If the difficulty involves producing or distinguishing speech sounds, a speech-language pathologist may need to be part of the conversation.
And sometimes what appears to be an academic problem is being intensified by anxiety, perfectionism, or another emotional barrier.
Before adding more tutoring hours, identify the problem you are actually trying to solve.
If you understand the concern but are unsure what to request from the school, an IEP/504 Strategy Session can help parents identify issues, questions, and possible next steps.
When the concern is specifically whether the written IEP, evaluations, progress information, or proposed plan reflects what your child needs, an IEP Document Review Strategy Session provides a more document-focused review.
And when an upcoming meeting involves significant disagreements about goals, services, accommodations, progress, or other important decisions, families may want to learn when support from an IEP meeting attorney could be appropriate.
Homework Can Tell You Something Important
Parents are not expected to become their child’s teacher after school.
Homework can instead be a window into how your child learns.
Notice where they succeed independently. Notice where they stop. Notice what type of explanation helps. Notice whether the same problem appears repeatedly.
Then bring that information back to the team.
The goal is not a perfectly completed worksheet. The goal is understanding what your child needs in order to learn, participate, and make progress—while protecting their relationship with learning and your relationship with them.
If homework struggles are part of a larger concern about your child’s IEP, accommodations, services, or progress, Start with a Free Case Analysis to see whether Shefter Law may be able to help.