My five year old's problems

Considering I couldn’t be bothered to write earlier I bet you were not expecting a post so soon! I only wanted to raise a concern of mine which has gotten me very upset tonight; it’s about my son Joshua and homework. Homework is supposed to be good for children and I think it’s a good thing, but when your 5 year old is crying because he “cant” do it – well let’s just say I don’t like homework right now.

Joshua’s homework was to go around this racetrack made out of ovals, in the ovals were words (like can, get, got etc.) and if you knew the word you could colour it in green but if you sounded it out you coloured it in orange. Joshua started off well but then all of a sudden he changed and couldn’t do it, he cried because he didn’t know the words. Now he is a soft child, I will admit that but I know the difference between crocodile tears because he can’t be bothered and real tears. These were real, I have never seen him get so upset over his homework before and I know he had the easier one as well (Thanks to one of the mums posting the homework on Facebook for another mum).

I wanted to cry myself because no child should be upset over homework, its all about learning but he honestly thought he wasn’t capable. He is capable, ok so he has some issues like he is easily distracted but that’s something I can control! What I can’t control is his lack of confidence in himself, which is weird because if you take him to playzone (big soft play area for kids) he will happily run off. He does football on a Saturday because I wanted to build his confidence and the first day he was off quite happily.

I wonder to myself if him moving house and school had an affect on him. His old school was lovely but there is some huge differences, like they didn’t do homework and they also had children who didn’t know English. So were they concentrating on the other children to get them to the same standard that those who need a little bit of help got left behind? I worry that’s a reason the fact that whilst half the class needed to learn English that those who knew English were left to their own devices, which in turn caused Joshua to be easily distracted (because whose telling them off when they concentrate on the other kids) and then he was left not doing any work.

I also feel like I need to do more, we do what the new school asks, the homework and reading. Nothing more though, so now I need to come up with something to help him improve but words are not my strong point.

I am going to stop now, purely because I feel if I don’t I will break!