This Mom Says She

A new parenting trend on TikTok begs the question: is homework optional? For some parents, that seems to be the case as some moms and dads are coming forward to announce that they are not making their kids do homework when they get home from school.

After an emotional homework session, one mom decided that all the fighting and tears were not worth the trouble, noting that she emailed her son’s teacher to tell him that he would not be participating in homework this year.

“For any parents that might not know this, and I just recently learned this, is that you can actually opt out of homework for your children,” Arizona mom, @cayleyxox said in her now-viral TikTok.

For context, her son goes to a charter school so this “opt out” news might not apply to all.

“I didn’t know that until recently, and I just sent my son’s kindergarten teacher a cute little email saying, ‘I’m sorry, based on the stress, mental, physical anxiety it’s causing my kid, we are done. We are done opting out for the rest of the year.’”

She then shared the moment when she decided to make this change.

“On the first week of school … he got this packet. It’s for August. It doesn’t look like it’s all that bad, but it’s about 15 to 20 pages double-sided. You do the math. We have been working on it and trying to work on it to the best of our abilities, and it is causing him so much mental, physical stress,” she shared.

“This morning I had him sit down. I felt so guilty for this. We were sitting down, I told him, ‘You can’t even watch a show this morning. You can’t do anything. It’s going to be radio silence until you sit here and eat your breakfast and finish at least one or two pages of this. Because you’re way behind.’ This is so much work for him. I started crying. He started crying. It was an emotional mess.”

She attributes the stress of homework to her son’s sudden lack of interest in going to school at all.

“I felt so guilty dropping him off at school. He didn’t want to be there. For the last two weeks, he’s told me he doesn’t even like school and doesn’t want to be there anymore, which hurts my mama heart because you were five. Five. You were in kindergarten. The only thing that you should be worried about is learning and what time snack time is,” she said.

Cayley then wonders what kind of message having kids to homework actually sends, noting that she wants to teach her kids to “work to live not live to work.”

“What are we teaching kids? What are we teaching them? That, ‘Oh, yeah, here you go. You’re going to go to work and you’re going to be paid salary, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t finish your work in the eight to ten hours that you’re there Monday through Friday. You’re going to bring that work home and you’re going to do that on your own time.’”

“No … not up in here. We are not teaching our children that. Work to live. We don’t live to work … In this household, we’re done doing homework. I want my kids to love school. I want him to love to learn. I want him to have fun. I want to enjoy it …”

The TikTok mom was met with mixed responses. Some users agreed with her take while others argued that she’s teaching her kid to be entitled.

“I hear this, but then I think how 50% of the population has a 7th grade reading level in the USA,” one user wrote.

“I would maybe find some strategies to motivate him to get his homework done. Positive incentives, goals, make it a game. Use fun pens etc. You have to put in the work to make it fun,’ another suggested.

Another noted, “I’m gonna play devils advocate, as a teacher mama who also hates homework because we have busy extracurriculars! Sometimes it’s less about ‘they need to be doing work’ and more about ‘sit with your kids And read to/with them, study spelling words, or do some math problems? Show them you are interested in what they are learning, and I promise the benefits will multiply!!”

The OP replied, “That’s a great point I personally am just ranting to the internet I’m respectful of his teacher and her doing as she feels best and will never speak down but things will be modified as needed”

Several TikTok users wanted an update, asking how her son’s teacher responded to her email regarding the homework boycott. Things didn’t exactly go well.

During a face-to-face interaction at school pick-up, Cayley and the teacher discussed the email.

According to Cayley, her son’s teacher noted she had never received a complaint about homework to which she replied that she wasn’t complaining but rather “addressing the situation that’s no longer gonna work for their family.”

They went back and forth about the amount of work with the teacher trying to negotiate how much the kid could do. The OP did not back down but opted for a reading log of 15-20 minutes of reading per night.

“No more f**king packets are happening in this house. That’s for damn sure,” she concluded.

Cayley is not alone in this thinking. Besides the hundreds of moms who supported her in her comment section, another mom on TikTok also shared that her children will not be doing homework.

TikTok mom (@phillybee12) also shared that if her kids are doing well in school, she will not have her kids doing homework.

“We don’t do homework. Yesterday … I get a phone call from [my daughter’s] teacher. She’s calling to tell me how well my daughter’s been doing in class for the last week and tells me that her grades are good. I said, ‘Well, I just want to let you know while we’re on the phone, we don’t do homework.’ It is at this point in time that three other women inside the viewing room turn and look at me,” she beings, imitating confused glares.

“Like I’m some kind of psycho for not doing homework. Well, as long as the grades are good, we don’t do homework. They’re in school for seven hours. I’m not gonna have them come home and push homework. They go to sports. They sit at home with us. They talk. They play on their phones. We watch a movie together, whatever it is, it’s not homework. So until their grades are bad, we’re not a homework family. Are you a homework family?”

Is homework optional? Or are parents setting their kids up for an entitlement mindset?