How Do I Approach My Kid Who Refuses To Do Work They Call ‘Too Easy’
It’s 7:12 on a Tuesday night, I’m folding grass-stained soccer uniforms on one end of the kitchen table, and my 10-year-old Leo is staring down a half-crumpled multiplication practice sheet on the other end. A half-eaten peanut butter cracker oozes crumbs next to his notebook, and we have 40 minutes before we need to leave for swimming lessons. I check the sheet: 20 2-digit by 1-digit multiplication problems. Leo aced his quiz on this last week. “You haven’t filled in a single answer,” I say, not trying to be sharp, just tired. He crosses his arms over his hoodie. “It’s stupid. I already know this. I’m not doing it.”
I used to go straight to frustration in these moments. Last semester, when he refused to fill out his daily reading log because he said writing down the pages he read took longer than the reading itself, I threatened to take away his weekend Roblox time. We ended up with him crying at the table 20 minutes past bedtime, and I emailed his teacher a groveling apology the next morning. I left that interaction convinced he was just being stubborn, trying to get out of any work that didn’t feel fun. This time, I stopped mid-fold, the sock I was holding still inside out, and sat down next to him instead of leaning over the table.
“It really feels like a waste of time, huh?” I said. He nodded so hard his glasses slid down his nose. “We did this for three days straight last week. Mrs. Henderson even said I got every single problem right on the quiz. Why do I have to do it again?”
I first suggested the easiest adjustment I could think of: “What if you do every other problem? That’s 10 problems, still enough to remind you how to do it, and we cut the time in half.” He shook his head. “Still stupid.” Alright, I thought, let’s try something else. I thought about what he cares about more than anything right now: designing his own video game, the one he’s been mapping out on notebook paper after school every day. “What if we skip the sheet then,” I said. “You need to practice multiplying, right? So make up five multiplication problems that you actually need for your game. That counts as practice.”
His whole demeanor shifted. He sat up, pushed the crumpled sheet aside, and grabbed his own game design notebook. First he did the easy one: 8 levels, 12 enemies each, how many total? He crunched that in 30 seconds. Then he made a harder one: each enemy can drop 1, 2, or 3 coins, what’s the maximum number of coins you can get in the whole game? By the time he finished, it had been 12 minutes, about the same time it would have taken him to do the worksheet, and he wasn’t even upset about it. I slipped a quick note to Mrs. Henderson the next morning explaining what we did, and she wrote back 10 minutes later saying that was totally fine—she assigned the practice to kids who still need to build speed, she doesn’t require it for kids who already have the skill down.
That interaction made me realize how often we default to “do the work because it’s assigned” when kids push back on easy work. Most of the time, it’s not that they’re being defiant. They’re old enough to tell when work is just filler, and mindless repetition feels more frustrating to them than risking getting in trouble. Punishing them for that just makes them associate school work with being forced to do things that don’t make sense, which doesn’t help anyone.
What I’ve started doing now, when this comes up, is three small things that don’t take extra time or require a big meeting with the teacher. First, I pause before I open my mouth to threaten consequences. I just ask that one question: “What’s bugging you about this?” Nine times out of ten, the answer isn’t “I don’t want to do work,” it’s “This is boring, I already get it.” Second, I offer a small bounded adjustment instead of letting them skip all of it or fighting to force the original assignment. It could be doing every third problem, writing two sentences instead of five, or swapping the worksheet for five problems tied to their hobby like we did. It meets the teacher’s requirement of practice, and it meets the kid’s need to not waste time. Third, I always loop the teacher in with a quick 1-sentence email or note. I’ve never had a teacher say no to a reasonable adjustment, because most of them assign filler work to hit a requirement, not because they want to make kids miserable.
It doesn’t work every time. Two weeks ago, Leo refused to do a 10-question word sort that he said was “baby work.” We tried two different adjustments, and he still sat there grumpy for 20 minutes, and I ended up letting him go to bed without finishing it, and I owned that to the teacher the next day. Some days, the kid is just tired, or the assignment is truly unnecessary, and that’s okay.
This approach doesn’t eliminate all the after-dinner homework fights. But it turns most of them from screaming matches into small problem-solving moments, which is way better for everyone. I still don’t always get it right, and some nights I’m too tired to negotiate and just say “do the worksheet anyway.” But for the most part, it’s a whole lot better than the old way we were doing it.
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