Why do parents do their kids' projects for them?

Many teachers encourage parents to work with their children on class projects. Doing so usually ensures the child learns more from the exercise.

Yeah, let's hear you repeat that when 1st graders show up to science fairs with fully functioning volcanoes or models of the solar system. Like the kids even know who Copernicus was...I remember in grade school when some of my classmates proclaimed that their parents did entire projects for them.

Since my kids are old I haven't had to do a science project in years....but I remember them.

On behalf of many parents let me state, that quite a few of us parents HATE science projects. Most teachers want parents to help but not do science projects. Where parents draw the line between help and too much help is impossible to determine.

I have a couple suggestions:

Don't grade the project. Its just not fair to do.

Give choices of projects don't leave the whole thing open ended.

If you want to grade the kid, let him write about it or explain it school.

Or best, have groups of kids do the project in school!

One of my worst parenting memories was walking my daughter to school with the beatifully modeled bridge project that we had done. As we saw more of her classmates projects made out of sticks, clay and household objects I realized that I had done way too much.

I hope she learned a lot fromthe process but I should have made her do more.

I wish my parents hadn't done this. Now I have no work ethic and I am a grown man who is unemployed and spends his days on letsrun and eats his farts. Let this be a warning to all.

Because it's a pain in the ass getting your kid to work on the project. Hours and hours of whining and moaning usually causes the parent to breakdown and complete the project singlehandedly.

Because pointless projects, or busy work, gets in the way of important subjects and learning. Stop assigning these pointless time bandits and I'll stop doing them. My kids has more important stuff to do than make diaromas. Tip: if a shoebox is involved, it's a bad idea.

Next.

My best friend just bought one of these to store her expo makers in while she's walking around the classroom.

www.waistrunner.com

Because everyone uses grades as a proxy for past performance, and an indicator for future performance. If I want my kid to have the best options going forward he needs the best grades first.

That's how the world works Jack. Somehow teachers never figure that out.

Are you posting this or is your mom, Mrs. McCringleberry, doing this for you?Just wondering.

HingIe McCringleberry wrote:

I wish my parents hadn't done this. Now I have no work ethic and I am a grown man who is unemployed and spends his days on letsrun and eats his farts. Let this be a warning to all.

You bring up a good issue. What the hell do you do with these space gobbling projects after you finish them. Which rare ones (if any) gets stored and which one's are saved for a year(?) and then secretly tossed?

Parents deserve better than having to endure the school science project fiasco!

That's a good story! I think you weren't alone. Many of us felt a twinge of guilt thinking that we may have helped too much. (Most of us though might have been a bit less obvious about it)

Mr. Roebling wrote:

One of my worst parenting memories was walking my daughter to school with the beatifully modeled bridge project that we had done. As we saw more of her classmates projects made out of sticks, clay and household objects I realized that I had done way too much.

I hope she learned a lot fromthe process but I should have made her do more.

benne there done that wrote:

Because it's a pain in the ass getting your kid to work on the project. Hours and hours of whining and moaning usually causes the parent to breakdown and complete the project singlehandedly.

Plus, if you let them do it on their own, the result is going to be complete crap.

So they can brag to other parents about what good parents they are.

There are many possible answers ranging from damaging micromanagement to wise use of the apprenticeship model of teaching and learning.

Conundrum wrote:

You bring up a good issue. What the hell do you do with these space gobbling projects after you finish them. Which rare ones (if any) gets stored and which one's are saved for a year(?) and then secretly tossed?

Parents deserve better than having to endure the school science project fiasco!

You make sure you do a great job with your first kid's projects. You'll be a bit of a try hard anyways because it's your first kid. You find a dry spot in the basement and store it. Then you reuse it a few years later for your next kid. Spray a little Fabreeze and no one is the wiser.

That's an old school style of a project. Schools are starting to get rid of that and focusing on this now:

http://bie.org/about/what_pbl

This tends to happens during the school day and parents have minimal involvement until the final day where they would show up as audience to see what their kids created in a PBL project.

Since this is LetsRUN, I ask the OP why teachers allow ANYONE to decrease RECESS?

We all know you need to RUN some of the energy out of the kids before you can get them to focus.

As to your question, kids just are not good at open ended work. Eventually, they have to learn how to define the size of a project. The time to do that is NOT elementary school.

Elementary school is the time to learn to work as hard as they can until RECESS.

Because these projects are pretty meaningless and there are a lot of other way more fun and useful things that take up your time as a family.

Then it comes crunch time, and you are not going to make your kid be the only kid in the class that didn't do the project - after all it is not a 7 year old's fault that his parents decided to go camping for the weekend instead of staying home to let her do her project.

So you pitch in and get the damn thing done, and along the way you try to teach your kid some useful things as you work together.