Should I let my son hand in homework when I can see three wrong answers?
Parenting"If you already know the answers, why am I doing it?" My ten-year-old said that after I rubbed out the third answer on his fractions sheet. He had asked me to check one question. I checked the whole page.
His teacher had written that the homework should take about twenty minutes. We had been at the kitchen table for forty-five. I could see he was mixing up two steps, and I wanted to catch it before tomorrow's lesson. He wanted to put the sheet in his bag and finish the cardboard robot he'd started.
Last week he lost two marks on another sheet and was upset. That's part of why I stepped in. But tonight he pushed the pencil toward me and said, "Just make it right, then." I told him I wasn't going to do his homework. From his side, I had already started.
I don't know whether this teacher uses the sheets to spot gaps or counts every mark toward a grade. I can ask, but the sheet is due tomorrow. Would you offer one last explanation, let him submit what he understands, or insist that he work through the mistakes? How would you undo the takeover without pretending the wrong answers are right?