If you ask me what is the single unsolved problems causing the most challenging episodes in North American households on a nightly basis, September through May, the answer is homework. Here's the tricky part about homework. That's not even something that the parents have anything to do with. That's something that the folks at school are assigning, and that the parents are on the hook for dealing with. But the approach for dealing with that is exactly the same. We've got to figure out what specific homework assignments the child is having difficulty doing, what's getting in the child's way, and solve those problems collaboratively. We can't treat homework as if it is this global thing, because if the kid is having difficulty working on the term paper for English, writing the definitions for the spelling words, and completing the word problems on the math worksheet, while it would be tempting to talk with the kid about difficulty completing homework, if you go at it globally you're actually going to solve nothing. We have to treat them as separate unsolved problems. Difficulty working on the term paper for English is its own unsolved problem. Difficulty completing the definitions on the spelling words, its own unsolved problems. Difficulty completing the word problems in math, its own unsolved problem. Those are completely different things that are getting in the kid's way. What's the answer to solving the unsolved problem of homework? Make sure that you are talking about each specific homework problem the child is having difficult, figure out what's getting in the kid's way, and figuring out collaboratively how you are going to solve it. Homework, though it is a very common problem, is really no different in terms of how you approach it, than teeth brushing, bed making, coming in from playing outside, you name it. The approach is exactly the same. Three steps. Solving the problem collaboratively.