How to Help a Child Who Cries Over Homework: A Teacher’s Advice for a Mom in China
At 9:47 on a Tuesday night, a message appeared from a number I didn’t have saved.
“Please help this kid in China.”
My first thought was that someone had sent it to the wrong person. Then the sender wrote a little more, in careful English, explaining that her sister is a friend of my cousin, and that the boy in the photo was her son — seven, in second grade — who cried every evening over homework. She sent a photo. The boy sat at a small wooden desk, his head resting on his arm, a math worksheet in front of him. The paper was smudged with eraser marks. His eyes were red.
His name was Junhao.
I’m not a child psychologist. I taught elementary school for six years, and now I work with kids who need extra help, but I normally meet them in person, not through a phone screen. Still, his mother was asking. So we set up a video call for the next evening.
When Junhao appeared, he didn’t look happy to be there. He had the haircut a lot of Chinese schoolkids have — short on the sides, a little longer on top — and he was wearing a blue fleece jacket, even though it was warm enough to leave the windows open. His mother sat next to him and nudged his shoulder. “Say hello to the teacher,” she said in Chinese. Junhao looked down at the table.
I asked him in Chinese, “Can you show me the back of your eraser?”
He looked surprised, but he picked up a white eraser and turned it over. It was covered in small bites, like a tiny animal had been chewing on it.
“Ah,” I said. “Yours is a gnawed eraser. That’s the best kind.”
He almost smiled. Then he asked, “Are you going to make me do math?”
“No,” I said. “Not for a while. First, I need you to show me the most annoying problem on that worksheet.”
He flipped through the pages and pointed to a word problem about pears. It was the last one, and it had two multi-step calculations. “This one,” he said. “Because I already know I’ll get it wrong.”
I asked him to read it out loud. He did. I asked him what he thought the first step was. He guessed, quietly, and I said, “Okay, let’s see if that works.” We worked through it together. His mother pressed her lips together, but she didn’t stop us. When we got an answer, he looked at the screen suspiciously, as if waiting for me to move on to the next ten problems.
“That’s all for today,” I said.
After the call, his mother typed a long message: “The school sends homework to parents, not to students. The teacher says every wrong answer will affect his middle school. I do not want him to be left behind. But every night we fight. Please help this kid in China.”
I didn’t have an easy answer. There isn’t one. But there are a few things I know from working with kids who are drowning in work.
The first is that when a child cries before starting a task, the task is too big for the part of the brain that handles “getting started.” It doesn’t matter if you believe the task should be easy. The child’s brain is not lazy. It’s overwhelmed. So the job of the adult is to shrink the task into something the child can actually approach. One problem — not ten. The first five minutes — not “until it’s done.” A timer set for eight minutes — not an open-ended countdown.
The second is that a child who says “I’m stupid” is not asking for more practice. He is asking for proof that the adults around him see something besides his mistakes. So I asked his mother to tell me one thing Junhao was good at that had nothing to do with school. She paused, then said, “He can name every kind of dinosaur. He knows which ones eat plants and which ones eat meat.”
Good. That was the handle.
I suggested she try a few things for the next ten days. Not a big plan, just small adjustments.
Before homework, let him spend ten minutes outside or doing something physical. A short bike ride, a game of tag, even a quick run around the courtyard. Kids focus better after moving their bodies, and it gives them a chance to let out the restless energy first.
Then, when it was time for homework, sit beside him with a kitchen timer. Say, “We’re going to do only the odd-numbered problems, and we’re going to finish before this timer goes off.” If he doesn’t make it, at least say, “We made it through three. That’s more than yesterday.”
When he starts to say “I can’t,” ask him to show you one thing he’s sure about first. It can be as small as “this is a plus sign” or “the answer is bigger than four.” It changes the conversation from “I can’t” to “here is what I see.”
And if he’s truly stuck on one problem, circle it and move on. Write a small note in the workbook: “Junhao tried this, but he ran out of energy. We’re coming back to it tomorrow.” He is seven. The world will not end if he loses a point tonight. His belief that he can learn, however, will end if every night becomes a battle.
I also told her about the “wrong answer” trick. It sounds too simple, but it works. Do a math problem wrong on purpose — make it an obvious mistake, like 12 + 3 = 14. Ask Junhao to be the teacher and explain what happened. When kids get to correct an adult, they stop feeling like the one who can’t. For a few minutes, they’re the one who knows something.
Two weeks later, I got another message. It was a voice memo, not text. She said, “Today he did not cry.” Then there was a pause. “He still says he doesn’t like math. But he said it in a normal voice.”
I asked if she had done something different. She said she gave him the timer and told him they only needed to do five problems. He chose the five easiest ones, and after those, he asked if he could do one more. She said, “No, stop while you’re ahead.” She laughed. I laughed too.
We scheduled another video call for the following week. When Junhao appeared, he was wearing the same blue fleece jacket. He held up a piece of paper with a drawing of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Under it, he had written, in shaky English, “This is the boss dinosaur. It can eat math books.”
It isn’t a perfect ending. There will still be hard nights. The pressure from school won’t disappear because his mother gave him a timer a few times. The teacher will still send messages to the parent group, and Junhao may still fall behind on some tests. His mother will still worry, and sometimes she’ll push too hard again. That is what happens when you raise a child inside a system that measures everything.
But the message that started with “Please help this kid in China” has shifted. The kid in China is still there, still struggling with some of the same homework. But he knows the eraser on his desk tells a story. He knows there is an adult who asked to see his eraser before asking to see his grades. And his mother knows that help can be as small as letting him stop while he’s ahead.
That’s not the complete solution. But it’s a real one, and it’s enough for now.
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