Parent Child Homework Fights: Ending the Daily Battle

In my therapy practice, we often talk about issues between parents and children, including areas of conflict that have deteriorated to the point where outside help is sought. As in individual or couples counseling, everyday situations that lead to conflict are discussed, and then explored on a deeper emotional level. One of the many high-conflict situations that comes up with school-age children is parent child homework fights. As a parent, I like to share my experience dealing with my kids in situations that reflect what clients are dealing with in their own lives.

Some kids don’t like math. Some kids don’t like homework. Many kids don’t like the combination of math and homework. My daughter is one of these kids. When it came time to do her homework, she would put up a massive fight, screaming and crying and yelling at me. No matter how much I tried to calmly explain to her that the homework needed to be done, that at the very least an effort needed to be made, and that she was capable of doing anything she set her mind to, things didn’t change. Our dinner table homework sessions almost always ended with arguing and anger and tears. And my daughter didn’t feel so great either.

Uncovering the Root of Parent-Child Homework Struggles

At first her anger triggered my anger. Here I was, trying to be a good parent, helping her with a difficult subject, being encouraging and patient, and what did I get? Intense, physical, slamming-hands-on-the-table anger. Her anger made me so angry I wanted to overwhelm her anger with my anger. But then I had an insight. I realized that she felt bad about herself because she didn’t get math. Her older brother is a math whiz, he made it look easy. For my daughter, it was like pushing a giant boulder up a mountain.

I realized that this anger was a defense mechanism—much like the protective emotional reactions we explore when zooming out to observe emotional patterns. When confronted with a subject she couldn’t grasp, it made her feel ashamed and like a failure, so she lashed out at me, poking and prodding and pushing me to get so angry with her so that we would have a blow-out fight, ending with me sending her to her room, and thus she wouldn’t have to do her homework after all. Pretty clever actually.

Changing the Reaction: De-escalating Parent-Child Anger

So I came back with a plan of my own. I redoubled my efforts at patience. I became the Buddha of Beginning Geometry. No matter how mad she got at me, I never lost my cool. Okay, that’s a lie. When she stabbed me with a pencil (supposedly an accident) I did get pretty pissed off. But overall, I was pleased with my new reaction to her protests. I imagined myself as a machine built to transform anger into love, yelling into peace, and I tried to take all of her frustration and rage and shame and channel it into myself and then let it flow peacefully away. My main takeaway from this was that instead of trying to change her behavior, I tried to change mine.

Her behavior was predicated on having me to oppose her. Everything she was doing was in opposition to me. I was the one making her do something she didn’t want to do, so she fought back against me. My response to this at first was to counter attack her resistance with a show of parental force. To force her feelings to change due to the logic of the situation. To dominate her emotionally and impose my will. My anger could be bigger than her anger.

Removing Opposition to Resolve Conflict

But the solution ended up being to remove the resistance—a core strategy in resolving parent child conflict. At first it was hard not to reflect her anger at me back at her, no matter how justified I felt. She would scream and protest in the same old way, but instead of hitting the tennis ball of anger back to her I just let it bounce past me. Over and over again. It was hard at first, but over time it got easier. Without my anger to feed off, her anger withered. Her rage lost steam. Nobody was returning her serve.

As the anger faded, the resistance to homework dwindled. The walls of anger she had built up to protect herself came down, and she started to open up and try. She began to grasp some of the math concepts she had struggled with so much before. Her multiplication tables became something she was proud to show me her progress in. A worksheet that used to take two hours of struggle became a task we could knock out in fifteen minutes. Eventually she would come home from school and take out her math homework and complete it on her own (cue angels singing).

This process took so long I didn’t really notice it was happening. It was only at the end that I realized how far we had come. The lesson I learned was that when you find yourself in opposition with someone in a relationship, whether with your child, parent, spouse or partner, sometimes the best way to affect change is to remove the opposition. I don’t mean giving up. I don’t mean internalizing your resentment while letting the other person win. I mean truly trying to let those feelings of anger and resentment dissipate. By changing your approach you can change the whole situation. You will be surprised how much the people in your life will be willing to change when they see you making your own effort to change first. Addressing these patterns through targeted strategies for parent child homework fights can transform conflict into long-term connection.