How much should I help my teen with late assignments?
If your teen’s school uses assignment portals (for example: Schoology, Google Classroom, etc.), you may be all too familiar with daily emails about late, incomplete, or missing assignments. Chances are if you are reading this, you are also familiar with the ensuing arguments, excuses, and denials that result from your teen. No matter how much you try, it’s the same day after day…
Checking the parent portal throughout the day can raise your agitation as you see grades posted throughout the school day. This builds and builds until you see your teen at the end of the school day and their first experience with you is an explosive “WHY ARE YOU BEHIND ON SO MANY ASSIGNMENTS?!”
What can parents do?
Have regular times that you check the parent portal with your teen: Keep yourself within your own limits by having a regular time to check the portal with your teen. Whether it is immediately after school or at the end of the evening, having a routine and sticking with it helps to keep big emotions from building up throughout the day and allows for you and your teen to develop a plan for addressing the problems together.
Consider which goals are most important: Sometimes the anxiety to have your teens’ grades be high enough for them to get into college overshadows the parenting goal of trying to teach your teen how to responsibly take care of their workload. Hopefully your teen will one day be able to manage these tasks by themselves. Giving them the opportunity to work through managing assignments–rather than doing it for them–gives them experience at a developmentally appropriate level. You’ll still be there to catch them if they fall too far behind (the importance of having regular check-ins), but it helps them to face their challenges themselves.
Address excuses together: “The teacher hasn’t put in the grade yet!” “I already turned it in,” “You don’t trust me!” and any number of other answers to deflect responsibility show up. Rather than letting these comments derail the task at hand, work together to address the problems. Have your student email the teacher and CC you to ask when a missing assignment may be graded (you can even write the email together). Some teachers are sometimes behind, but often teachers will respond back with constructive feedback about missing assignments or other behaviors that need to be addressed. Making it into a team effort will ultimately help your teen be held accountable at both home and school-and helps to avoid them keeping you in the dark about what is going on at school. At the same time, you are positioning your teen to be the one in direct contact with the teacher about handling their own problems.
Consider if you need help in getting your family routine changed: Dedicated changes to getting a new structure in place take time, consistency, and often have bumps in the road. Holding yourself and your teen accountable sometimes takes outside support, especially if you and your teen consistently find yourself ending up in arguments without making any progress. You can find help with our team here.
By: Curt Widhalm LMFT #47333