I mentioned in a prior post (see here) that the Monster has homework on a nightly basis.

Now, I like that he has homework – it’s something that will get him in good position for when he does finally get back into a more mainstreamed environment.

Adaptations (or the lack thereof) aside, the amount of homework somewhat rises and falls on a day-to-day basis.  This week is a very light one – he has a page a night, for example, of fairly straight forward pre-reading exercises – but some nights end up being quite heavy with writing and reading and pre-math.

Pre-math is his strong suite, since he loves to count.  Getting him to do it is fairly easy, but keeping him on track and from rushing through it is a problem now and again.  Letters aren’t far behind, and he’s starting to recognize combinations together when he’s asked to do so.

Our biggest problem comes in when he doesn’t want to do the homework, and what kid does?  His expressive verbal skills aren’t up to the task of telling us why he’s not in the mood to do it, and his receptive verbal skills aren’t at the level where he’s going to understand why we’re pushing him to get it done.  There is no rhyme or reason to when he’s going to fight or suddenly stop paying attention in the middle…

For some tasks, we’ve found taping his homework to an easel and having him do it mostly-vertically has been a help, since he apparently likes to work on a white-board rather than with pen-and-paper tasks… but that’s not always a solution to the problem.  At some point, he’s going to have to learn to write at a desk like a normal child… and that includes doing his homework there…