Getting homework done has been a particular problem. My daughter would find the most creative ways to avoid doing the homework, or delay its completion. She would manage to make 20 minutes of homework last 1 and ½ hours, and then become frustrated and whine a lot, which just about drove me nuts. My daughter had suddenly become a problem child! I knew I needed to solve this problem fast, before it became an entrenched problem.
I tried a number of things before finding the right "equation" for getting her to do her homework. Telling her she would lose her allowance if she didn't do her homework didn't have any effect on her. Nagging her didn't help at all. Losing telephone privileges didn't have any effect on her. Reasoning with her didn't help any. Helping her do the work probably rewarded her behavior because she got my undivided attention. I was getting frustrated about how to solve this problem when I finally found the way that worked.
It may help to analyze why some of these things did not work. The reason taking the allowance away didn't work, is because my daughter doesn't care to spend it. She tends to collect it, and is thrilled to have $12.00. She thinks she is "rich" so, who needs more? (Don't you wish $12.00 would make you feel wealthy?) She is lucky, money doesn't really mean much to her. At six years of age, she also doesn't care to talk on the phone all that much, but I am betting that will change when she gets a little older!
I started to "retrain" her study habits by making it clear that she must do her homework as soon as she got home. If it weren't completed before her favorite show came on (The Simpsons) she would not be allowed to watch it. If she acted out while doing her work, I made her stand in the corner. (I only had to do that once.) I encouraged her to do work ahead of time rather than leave it to the last minute. (She is a great procrastinator!) This meant she freed up time to do fun things, so on those nights she had freed up, I rewarded her with something she liked - going to Sonic, for example.
