A homework assignment that should take 30 minutes stretches into an hour … or an hour and a half … or two hours.
Chris: Chris gets up for a drink. Sharpens a pencil that was already sharp. Stares out the window. Forgets what the directions said. Mom sits down next to him to help him stay on task, but every few minutes she finds herself saying, “Keep going,” or “It’s ok, you can do this.”
Sarah: Sarah’s pattern looks completely different. She gets started on her own. She knows what she’s being asked to do. Her work is tidy and accurate, and, as usual, she’ll get a good grade on it when she turns it in. But everything takes forever. A worksheet that seems as though it should take 20 minutes takes an hour. Writing a book report consumes an entire evening.
Both parents might describe the problem the same way: Homework takes too long.
But what is happening underneath can be very different.
Homework serves many purposes, from previewing new material to practicing previously learned skills. Here, we’re focusing primarily on assignments students are expected to complete using knowledge or skills they have already been taught—solving math problems, answering questions about a reading assignment or writing a book report.
When those assignments consistently take much longer than expected, it is worth looking beyond the homework itself.
Homework Is More Than an Academic Task
We tend to think of math homework as being about math and a book report as being about reading and writing. Of course they are. But completing either assignment also depends on a complex set of cognitive skills.
Cognitive skills are the mental processes we use to take in, understand, organize, store, retrieve and use information. They are the underlying infrastructure for learning.
To complete even a relatively straightforward homework assignment, a student may need to focus and maintain attention, screen out distractions, remember instructions, retrieve previously learned information, process information efficiently, shift between different parts of the task, organize ideas, solve problems, monitor progress and keep working toward a goal.
When those cognitive processes are working efficiently, much of this happens without our thinking about it. When one or more of them is less efficient, however, the same assignment can require much more time and mental effort.
Some of the Cognitive Skills Homework Depends On
There isn’t a single “homework skill.” What we might jokingly call “dyshomeworkia”—difficulty with homework—can involve a variety of cognitive demands. Different assignments make different demands, and cognitive skills work together rather than one at a time. But several types of cognitive skills are particularly easy to see in homework.
Attention.
Homework requires several kinds of attention. Sustained attention enables us to stay focused over time. Selective attention helps us focus on what matters while screening out distractions. Flexible attention allows us to shift our focus appropriately as the demands of a task change or as we switch from one subject to another.
A student who has difficulty sustaining attention may repeatedly drift away from an assignment and need to be redirected. A student with weak selective attention may be pulled away by noises, activity around them—or thoughts that have nothing to do with the homework. Difficulty shifting attention can make moving from one part of an assignment to another surprisingly effortful.
Working Memory.
Working memory enables us to hold information in mind while doing something with it. A student uses working memory to remember the directions while completing an assignment, keep track of the steps in a math problem, or hold an idea in mind while turning it into a sentence.
When working memory is overloaded, students may repeatedly return to the directions, lose their place, forget what they intended to do next or have to repeat steps they have already completed. All of that adds time.
Processing Speed.
Sometimes the issue isn’t distraction or forgetting at all. A student may understand the material, work independently and produce accurate work—but process information more slowly.
Reading and interpreting directions, recognizing what a problem requires, retrieving an answer, deciding what to write and producing the response all take time. Small differences in processing speed and efficiency can accumulate over a lengthy assignment.
Importantly, speed and understanding are not the same thing. Working slowly does not necessarily mean a student doesn’t understand the material or isn’t trying hard enough.
Long-term memory and retrieval.
Practice homework generally assumes that students can access information and skills they have already learned. When facts, vocabulary, procedures or other knowledge can be retrieved efficiently, they are readily available for the task at hand.
When retrieval is less efficient, students may need to reconstruct a procedure, search for information, refer repeatedly to examples or essentially relearn something they have previously been taught. That increases both the time and cognitive effort the assignment requires.
Higher-order cognitive processes.
As assignments become more complex, planning, organization, reasoning, problem-solving and self-monitoring become increasingly important.
Consider a book report. The student needs to understand the assignment, decide what to include, retrieve relevant information, organize ideas, determine where to begin, create a sequence for completing the work, monitor progress and revise the final product. Knowing the book is only part of what the assignment requires.
Cognitive Skills Work Together
It can be tempting to see a particular behavior and try to identify the cognitive skill responsible for it.
A child keeps leaving the table: attention.
A child repeatedly asks what they’re supposed to do: working memory.
A child works slowly: processing speed.
But cognition isn’t that simple.
Cognitive skills work as an integrated system, and most homework tasks require many of them at the same time. Writing a book report, for example, can draw on attention, working memory, long-term memory and retrieval, processing speed, cognitive flexibility, reasoning, planning, organization and self-monitoring.
A weakness in one area can also place greater demands on others. And sometimes what looks like a problem with one cognitive skill may actually reflect difficulties elsewhere in the system.
That’s why “homework takes forever” describes the problem, but doesn’t explain what is causing it. Two students with exactly the same apparent problem may have very different patterns of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
Understanding that distinction matters because different underlying challenges may call for different kinds of support.
Strategies for Making Homework More Manageable
Here are some things that parents may want to try to help their child deal with their “dyshomeworkia,”
- Reducing distractions can help a student stay focused.
- Breaking a long assignment into smaller pieces can reduce the demands on attention and working memory.
- Written directions can help a student who has difficulty keeping multiple steps in mind.
- Movement breaks (brain breaks) may help a student maintain focus over a long work period.
- Extra time can allow a student who processes more slowly to demonstrate what they know.
- Pre-planning assignments with them.
- Using a visual timer as a reference (not to rush them).
These strategies can be useful and entirely appropriate. They can reduce frustration, help students complete their work and make evenings more manageable for everyone.
For more practical ideas, our free Homework Heroes resource offers strategies parents can use to make homework time more manageable.
Making Homework More Manageable vs. Making It Easier
But it is important to distinguish between working around a cognitive weakness and strengthening the underlying cognitive skill. These strategies can make homework more manageable. But that isn’t necessarily the same as making the underlying task easier for the learner.
Removing distractions may make it easier for someone with weak selective attention to focus, but removing the distractions does not necessarily make selective attention stronger. Giving a student extra time may allow them to compensate for slower processing, but it doesn’t increase processing speed.
Accommodations and strategies have an important role. The question is whether the goal is to make today’s homework more manageable, strengthen the underlying capacity for future learning—or both.
Cognitive Skills Can Be Developed
Cognitive strengths and weaknesses aren’t simply something we have to identify and work around forever. Cognitive skills can develop through experience and can also be strengthened through appropriately designed cognitive training.
Cognitive training is different from tutoring or additional academic practice. If math homework takes too long, more practice doing math may be appropriate if the student hasn’t mastered the math. But if the student understands the math and underlying cognitive inefficiencies are making the work unusually difficult or time-consuming, more math practice doesn’t necessarily address the source of the difficulty.
Cognitive training focuses instead on developing the mental capacities involved in learning and performance.
And because cognitive skills work together, comprehensive cognitive training goes beyond exercising a single skill in isolation. It challenges multiple cognitive processes and the ways they must work together as tasks become increasingly complex.
Strengthening those underlying capacities can help make learning itself more efficient.
Look Beneath the Homework
Think again about the two students we started with.
One needs a parent sitting nearby and repeatedly redirecting them to the assignment. The other works independently, knows the material and earns good grades—but takes twice as long as expected to finish.
Both families may say, “Homework takes forever.”
But that description doesn’t tell us why.
Rather than simply asking, “How can we get this homework done faster?”, it may be more useful to ask “What is making this task require so much time and effort?”
Sometimes the answer is academic. Sometimes the environment is part of the problem. Sometimes the assignment itself is unreasonable. But sometimes the difficulty lies in the cognitive infrastructure the student is relying on to do the work.
Understanding what is happening underneath the homework can help parents move beyond managing tonight’s assignment to thinking about what could make learning easier tomorrow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my child take so long to finish homework?
Homework depends on more than understanding the academic material. Completing an assignment can require sustained and selective attention, working memory, processing speed, long-term memory and retrieval, cognitive flexibility, planning and other higher-order cognitive skills. When one or more of these skills is less efficient, homework may require significantly more time and effort, even when a student understands the material.
Does taking a long time to do homework mean my child has a learning problem?
Not necessarily. Some students work slowly because they are still learning the academic material, while others understand it but require more time because of the cognitive demands involved in completing the work. Distractions, fatigue, the difficulty or length of an assignment and other factors can also affect homework time. Looking at patterns across assignments and over time can be more useful than drawing conclusions from how long a particular assignment takes.
What cognitive skills can affect how long homework takes?
Many cognitive skills can affect homework, including attention, working memory, processing speed, long-term memory and retrieval, cognitive flexibility, reasoning, planning and self-monitoring. These skills work together rather than independently, and different assignments place different demands on them. That is why two students whose homework takes equally long may have very different patterns of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.
How can I help my child finish homework more efficiently?
Reducing distractions, breaking longer assignments into manageable chunks, providing written directions, using appropriate movement breaks, pre-planning larger assignments and allowing sufficient time can all help make homework more manageable. The most helpful strategy depends on what is making the task difficult, so paying attention to where your child gets stuck or slows down can be as important as watching the clock.
Can cognitive skills that make homework difficult be improved?
Yes. Cognitive skills are not fixed and can be developed. Cognitive training differs from tutoring or additional academic practice because it focuses on strengthening the underlying mental capacities involved in learning and performance. Because cognitive skills work together, comprehensive cognitive training develops multiple cognitive processes and how they function together rather than focusing only on a single isolated skill.
