The Self-Driven Child

by William Stixrud

  The Homework Wars

  “I dread the time between dinner and bedtime because all we do is fight,” said one parent.

  “It’s like a war zone,” said another.

  “It’s World War Three in our house every night.”

  It startles us how often war metaphors are invoked when parents talk about their kids’ nightly homework. To give you some idea of the scale of the Homework Wars, all three of the parents quoted above said those things to Bill in the same week. That’s why we’ve found that there’s no better forum to explore parents’ doubts and questions about the parent-as-consultant model than the fraught space of homework. And so while this chapter is about homework, it’s really about much more.

  There are three main reasons why fighting about homework doesn’t make sense.

  First, you may find yourself enforcing rules and attitudes you don’t really believe in. One dad was horrified to find himself telling his ten-year-old daughter how very important it was to memorize all the state capitals—even though, as he put it, “I made it through college and law school, but gun to my head, I have no idea what the capital of Wyoming is.” (It’s Cheyenne. But please don’t test us on the other forty-nine.) Parents commonly feel responsible for policing homework without thinking about the underlying goal: to raise curious, self-directed learners.

  Second, when parents work harder than their kids to solve their problems, their kids get weaker, not stronger. If you spend ninety-five units of energy trying to help your child be successful, he or she will spend five units of energy. If you become frustrated or anxious and raise the ante, spending ninety-eight units of energy in clamping down even harder, your child will respond accordingly, and spend just two units. In Jonah’s case, he had a tutor, a therapist, and a school counselor who communicated regularly with his parents about his missed assignments. Jonah took no steps himself. This counterproductive dynamic will not change until the energy changes, which often happens when a parent, fully exasperated, says, “I can’t take this anymore. You’re on your own.”

  If you act as if it’s your job to see that your child does his homework, practices the piano, or plays a sport, you reinforce the mistaken belief that somebody other than he is responsible for getting his work done. He doesn’t have to think about it because, on some level, he knows that eventually someone will “make” him do it.

  Third, and this is perhaps the most critical point, you can’t force a kid to do something he’s dead set against. Buying into the idea that you should and must try will just end up frustrating you when it doesn’t work.

  You’ve probably heard of the Serenity Prayer, the one that goes like this: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” It’s a good thing to keep in mind as a parent. We have a coda that spells things out even more clearly:

  You can’t make your kids do something against their will.

  You can’t make your kids want something they don’t want.

  You can’t make your kids not want what they want.

  It’s okay, at least right now, for them to want what they want and not want what they don’t want.

  When we make the point in lectures that you can’t make someone do something against his will, many people will nod their heads in agreement, as if this were completely obvious. But others will vehemently disagree. (A psychologist in Bill’s practice said, “Don’t tell that to my kids!”) This question of enforcement can evoke an intensely emotional reaction. When Bill said this to a group of teachers and tutors, one teacher angrily argued, “Of course you can. I make my kids do things all the time.” But this isn’t really true. Suppose your child doesn’t want to eat what he is served and you set about to “make him.” What do you do? Do you force the child’s mouth open, put food in it, and move his jaws up and down? If you do, who’s really eating? The child isn’t eating—he’s being force-fed. With homework, if a child truly resists your attempts to get him to work, what are you going to do? Prop his eyes open, move the book in front of his face? Even if this were possible and actually worked, would it be good for him? Would he actually learn?

  Ned had a student whose mom insisted that she apply to the University of Chicago if she didn’t get into her first choice school. “But Mom,” she said, “I don’t even like Chicago.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the mom. “It’s a very good school.”

  “I won’t apply,” said the daughter.

  “I’ll send in an application for you. I’ll have your older sister write the essays,” said the mom.

  Thankfully, the girl got into her first choice before anyone’s resolve was put to the test, but we worry about the ongoing dynamic in that family.

  At times, we can stop children and teenagers from doing things we don’t want them to do by physically restraining them or coming up with onerous consequences. We can physically do things to them, like carry them to the dentist’s office kicking and screaming. We can try to reframe the proposition in an effort to get their cooperation or buy in. And we can try to motivate them by offering incentives or making threats. But the reality is that you can’t really make them do anything. We do not live in the totalitarian world of A Clockwork Orange, where people’s behavior can be controlled by hooking them up to machines. The best we can do is make it unpleasant enough so that they will comply. Even if this method sometimes seems to work in the short term, it doesn’t work at all in the long term. It’s like fear—a short-term motivator that will get you to run fast, but with negative long-term implications, because who can really live that way?

  Coming to peace with the reality that you can’t make your kid do things is liberating. You can take the pressure off. The next time you find yourself trying to force your child to do something, you might stop and remind yourself, “Something’s wrong with this picture. I’m acting like I can make my child do this, and I actually can’t.”

  This is the message Bill conveyed to Jonah’s parents. He explained that their attempts to assert control triggered Jonah’s determination to reassert his own control, even if it meant doing the opposite of what was in his own best interest. By communicating to Jonah that he was ultimately responsible for his homework, his parents would release him from the reflex to fight tooth and nail against any display of dominance. Bill also wanted Jonah’s parents to understand that just because they were worried about some of his choices didn’t mean they had to constantly project a tone of disapproval. They could—and should—have fun and relax with him without thinking that every minute of their time together needed to signal the gravity of the situation.

  “So what are you saying?” his parents asked. “That we should just let him fail?”

  Their question reflects a common misconception. Parents tend to think there are two ways to be: autocratic or permissive. Autocratic parenting places a premium on obedience, and permissive parents emphasize the importance of their child’s happiness and attempt to fulfill their child’s desires to make them happy.

  But virtually all child development experts, including influential psychologists and authors like Madeline Levine and Laurence Steinberg, have advocated a third option: authoritative parenting. This entails being supportive, but not controlling. Authoritative parents want their kids to cooperate because they like and respect them, and want kids to learn from their own experiences. At least sixty years of research has validated the fact that authoritative parenting is the most effective approach.2 It emphasizes self-direction and values maturity over obedience. It’s a style that sends the message, “I am going to do everything I can to help you be successful, but I’m not going to try to force you to do things because I say so.” Authoritative parents don’t give their children free rein. They enforce limits, and say when they don’t feel right about something, but they are not controlling. With authoritative parenting, the chi
ld’s developing brain doesn’t spend enormous amounts of energy resisting what’s often in their own best interest.

  Jonah’s parents took Bill’s advice, though it was not easy. Instead of asking, “Do you have homework tonight?” his mom started saying, “Is there anything you’d like help with tonight? I’d like to know, so I can plan my evening.” She made it clear that she was willing to do what she could to help, and that she’d set aside time to help him if he wanted help. She made sure there was a quiet room for him to study without distractions. She offered to hire a tutor or an older high school kid to come over and help. (Many children who fight their parents during homework time will work eagerly for a tutor or a high school student, who can be employed at relatively low cost as a homework tutor.) But Jonah’s parents also said, “What we’re not willing to do is to act like it’s our job to make you work—because we’ll weaken you if we do.” And as you’ll see when we pick Jonah’s story back up, it worked.

  Why the Brain Likes the Consultant Model

  Some parents who are familiar with research on brain development say, “How could I possibly trust my kid to be responsible for his education? His brain isn’t mature yet.” This is true at some level—his sense of judgment is still developing. But that’s just it: he needs room to develop. Kids need responsibility more than they deserve it. For most adolescents, and even for younger kids, waiting until they are mature enough to get all their homework done and to turn it in on time before giving up the enforcer role means you’ve waited too long. As we mentioned, the parts of the prefrontal cortex that regulate emotions don’t mature until you reach your early thirties, but we’d be hard pressed to find a parent who would want to wait that long to let their “kids” make their own decisions.

  The brain develops according to how it’s used. By giving your child the opportunity to make decisions for herself while still young, you will help her brain build the circuits that are necessary for resilience in the face of stress. A small experience of control over her circumstances, such as choosing her own clothing or decorating her own room, will activate her prefrontal cortex and condition it to respond effectively.3 Strengthened by this sense of control, the brain’s Pilot grows stronger, rather than ceding power to the Lion Fighter at the first hint of stress. By giving your five-year-old the ability to wear clashing clothes if she chooses, you will be helping her to cope better in every situation, including those she can’t control, such as where she’s seated in a testing room, or when someone breaks up with her.

  Granted, the path to an activated prefrontal cortex is sometimes painful (and not just visually). Remember the motivational saying “Anything worth doing well is worth doing badly first”? Well, there’s a famous model that says there are four stages of competency,4 which is another (albeit more long-winded) way of saying the same thing:

  Stage 1: Unconsciously incompetent. This is the kid who thinks, “I’m fine. I don’t need to study math, I’ve got this.” In reality, he hasn’t a clue. This is when it’s easiest to get off track as a consultant. You can see the doomed test ahead, and you want to help him avoid the failure. But once you have offered help and he has made it clear that he doesn’t want it, you really can’t enlighten him as to his incompetence, nor should you. To be clear, this kid will bomb. . . . But then he’ll move on, and if you can help him get the message that a failure is nothing more than a temporary stumble to learn from, he will have learned a valuable lesson.

  Stage 2: Consciously incompetent. The kid now thinks, “Okay, wow. That was harder than I thought. I guess I need to study math.” He still doesn’t have a handle on the material, but he knows that. He’ll usually take the next step and, you know, study.

  Stage 3: Consciously competent. The kid thinks, “I’ve studied really hard, I know my math, this test will be fine.” He’s right. We’re delighted when our kids get here. This is the dream, people.

  Stage 4: Unconsciously competent. Fast-forward twenty years, and that kid is now a parent. He’s been doing math for so long that he doesn’t even have to think about it anymore. He can’t really understand why his daughter is struggling so much with something that’s become like breathing to him. (Incidentally, this is why older kids often make better tutors than parents. They learned their times tables not so long ago themselves, so they remember all the steps it took before it really sunk in.) Kids might become unconsciously competent in some areas—like reading or tying their shoelaces—while they’re still living at home, but for the most part, you don’t need to worry about Stage 4 except to note when you yourself might be in it.

  We want our kids to get to Stage 3, the consciously competent stage, but we can’t do that without letting them graduate through the other stages on their own. You shouldn’t be absent during this process; you should be standing behind them, offering support and guidance the whole time.

  With some kids, taking a step back the way Jonah’s parents did is enough. Once the kids have control over their schoolwork, they rise to the occasion. Many will flounder at first, as Jonah did. His day-to-day relationship with his parents improved, but his poor performance continued for several months. Then one day he met with his guidance counselor, who pointed out that he would need to plan for an extra year of high school as he wasn’t meeting the requirements for graduation. This got Jonah’s attention. It meant he wouldn’t be graduating with his friends. He started paying more attention to schoolwork, and asked his parents for help. He actually went to night school on top of his regular school day for two years in order to graduate on time. He went on to be successful in college as a psychology major, something his parents would at one time have hardly believed possible.

  There’s another moral to Jonah’s story. Teachers can teach, coaches can coach, guidance counselors can outline graduation requirements, but there’s one thing only parents can do: love their kids unconditionally and provide them with a safe base at home. For children who are stressed at school or in other parts of their lives, home should be a safe haven, a place to rest and recover. When kids feel that they are deeply loved even when they’re struggling, it builds resilience. Battling your child about due dates and lost work sheets invites school stress to take root at home. So instead of nagging, arguing, and constant reminding, we recommend repeating the mantra, “I love you too much to fight with you about your homework.”

  Think of kids yelling out “I’m on base” during games of tag to prove they are safe to rest and regroup. When home is a safe base, kids and teens feel freer to explore the possibilities away from home in healthy ways. They’ll return periodically, checking back in for reassurance and security. Without that sense of security, teens will tend to swing in two different directions: folding in on themselves, or leaving home every chance they get, desperate to create a safe base somewhere else. The dots connect themselves: if there’s a lot of stress at home, kids are much more susceptible to risky behavior.

  One parent said recently that deciding not to fight “lowered the temperature in our house by twenty degrees.” Because it takes two to fight, fights don’t usually last very long if you decide you won’t give in to it. As a famed psychiatrist put it, “Choosing not to fight takes the sail out of a child’s wind.”5

  Over the years, dozens of parents have told us that the safe base idea and the message “I love you too much to fight with you about your homework” have radically transformed their family lives.

  In my first few months working as a neuropsychologist, I saw two kids with ADHD in the same week. One was a bright second-grade girl who would not go outside to play on school days until she had finished her homework. The other was a bright second-semester college freshman who had flunked three of his four first-semester courses, largely because he did very little work and eventually stopped going to class (which his parents only learned after he was placed on academic probation). When I saw him in late March, his parents said that, by their son’s report, he was doing much better,
attending all his classes, going to the library every night, and seeking out his professors for extra help. When I spoke to him one-on-one, I found out that in fact he hadn’t been to a class in three weeks and would probably fail all his courses.

  As I talked more with this boy and his parents, I learned that like many kids with ADHD, he had needed extensive tutoring and extra supervision through much of his school career and that he generally resisted doing schoolwork until someone—parent, teacher, tutor, or coach—got on him. He had spent much of the incredible energy with which adolescents are blessed resisting others’ attempts to get him to do what he did not want to do—or, to put it another way, resisting what was probably in his own best interest.

  The difference in attitude and performance of these two kids was not a matter of brain maturation or emotional maturity (she was eight and he was nineteen), and while ADHD is what brought them to my office, that diagnosis is beside the point here. The real issue was the internalized sense of who’s responsible for what. The girl accurately saw her homework as her responsibility and willingly did it, further strengthening her sense of mastery and autonomy. Throughout his life the boy saw homework as something that was being forced on him and that he didn’t need to think about because someone eventually would get on him about it. This mindset didn’t translate into college success. He had a very low sense of control regarding his own academic life, accompanied by a lot of anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and emerging depression. He did get back on track eventually. But it took time and a break from school until he determined that he was ready to try again.

  —Bill

  “But . . .”: The Challenge of Parent as Consultant

  We recognize the parent-as-consultant model is easier said than done. We hear plenty from parents who, even though they’re philosophically on board, experience situations in which they find themselves inching from consultant to policeman. Here are some of the most common concerns and how we respond: