Revisit homework habits for a successful school year
8/25/2025 by Hanna Mulholland, L.I.C.S.W., M.S.W., and Megan Cassidy, Ph.D., L.P.
With school approaching, it's a good opportunity for kids and families to review goals and habits. Family and community support are essential for children's academic success.
Here are some tips for establishing habits to help your child with common school-related issues, in and out of the classroom.
Get enough sleep
Getting the right amount of rest (9–11 hours for kids ages 6–13 and 8–10 hours for older kids), is the single most important building block for school success. Kids do best with consistent wake-up times and bedtimes.
Good sleep hygiene involves removing screens from bedrooms and turning off electronic devices at least one hour before bedtime.
You can:
- Model these screen habits.
- Help your kids establish and maintain routines that eliminate screens from bedtime and the bedroom. Positive sleep hygiene practices will support improved sleep for the whole family.
Manage stress
Kids of all ages may feel anxious about making friends, doing well in school and finding success in their activities.
You can:
- Praise effort, not performance. Let your child know you don’t expect perfection, and model learning from mistakes. Help your child set realistic goals in order to have a healthy perspective.
- Offer reassurance that you have confidence in your child’s ability to manage the situation. Remembering past successes, such as when your daughter did well on a test or your son made a new friend, can boost confidence and calm nerves.
- Prepare your child by talking through challenging scenarios that might arise at school.
- Use routines such as family meals to stay connected and provide opportunities to discuss your child's successes and challenges.
Encourage a healthy body image
Many students feel pressure to look a certain way. Media images, peers and caregivers may affect their feelings about their bodies. Make your influence a positive one.
You can:
- Focus on what your child’s body does for them, not how it looks.
- Validate the difficulty of living in a world that emphasizes appearance as a measure of worth.
- Encourage and model healthy eating habits, physical activity and positive friendships to help your child develop a positive self-image.
Be aware of bullying
Bullying is more common than adults think. A child who is being bullied may have worsening grades or show less interest in going to school. Children who bully are modeling learned behavior.
Children should be encouraged to talk with a trusted adult if they see bullying or other unsafe behavior happening at school or online. Prejudice-based bullying is common and particularly harmful.
You can:
- Check in with your child about how students treat one another at school.
- Promote respect on and offline by discussing and modeling the importance of diverse perspectives.
Maintain a homework routine and practice time management
Work with your child to identify a homework routine, including a consistent time and place.
You can help your child:
- Avoid the distractions of phones or TV.
- Prioritize assignments based on due dates and how much effort they require.
- For some kids, completing an assignment they enjoy the least works best. Others gain a sense of accomplishment by first completing assignments they like best.
- Kids also benefit from breaking large assignments into smaller, more manageable tasks and using to-do lists.
- Encourage your child to speak with teachers when questions arise. Having a homework buddy can build self-sufficiency and confidence.
- Create a schedule to balance academic, extracurricular and social activities. Identify which tasks they need help with and what can be done independently.
Create a family media plan
Screen time consumes much of our days. Phones, tablets and video games compete with other important activities. Excessive screen usage decreases creativity and overall productivity.
You can:
- Create a family media plan to make sure enough time is available for other important activities, such as sleep, exercise, homework and play.
- Identify “screen-free” zones such as mealtimes, while driving or during specific activities. Instead, use that time to check in on the ups and downs of your child's day.
Assess parenting values
As your family navigates through the school years, remember that the ultimate goal of parenting is to raise independent, responsible adults. To do that, children need support and encouragement. But they also need opportunities to make their own decisions — and their own mistakes. Believe it or not, your child wants to talk with you about tough stuff and have honest, meaningful conversations.
You can:
- Set aside time to connect on the little things and the big things.
- Encourage the next steps in learning independence.
- Be the “safety net” that catches them when they inevitably make mistakes.
Stay up to date with well-child exams
Well-child exams aren't just for infants and toddlers. Review Mayo Clinic's recommended child and adolescent exam schedule to make sure your child is immunized and has met developmental milestones. At these exams, your primary care clinician should assess your child's nutrition, safety and emotional well-being.
Hannah Mulholland, L.I.C.S.W., M.S.W., and Megan Cassidy, Ph.D., L.P., are clinicians serving children and adolescents in Primary Care in Rochester and Kasson's Division of Integrated Behavioral Health.