Getting my little bother to do his homework

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Hi,
My brother is 13 years old, and he hates doing his homework. I have to sit down with him every single day for several hours to make him do simple tasks I could do in 5 minutes. He can't concentrate, and he complains all the time.
Any ideas on how to motivate him? I've tried telling him that if he just sits down and gets it done, he can go and do other stuff, but he just doesn't seem to get it.
Help me!

Yeah, that stuff never worked for me either. I'm 22 (almost 23) and still don't do my homework. Sorry, I don't know if there's a good answer. I blame the teachers for assigning boring, pointless homework.

"Getting my little bother to do his homework"

Freudian slip?

homework sucks, i always did it in school, even though i found it hell boring, not really sure how to help you there. hopefully someone else can help you. I graduated from school 7 years ago, and i feel like i was stupider in school 7 years ago, then now ... lol

Letting him blow it off might be the best thing for him. Seriously.

From what you describe, he's clearly not learning effectively this way. Trying to shove the material into his brain by brute force will result in a lot of misery and very little learning. He'd likely learn a lot more if he was free to spend those hours on something he actually enjoyed.

(And no, keeping his grades up isn't worth sucking all of the joy out of his middle school years, and despite what the average teacher might think, it really isn't reasonable for a 13 year old to spend multiple hours per day on schoolwork in addition to normal school hours.)

This is absolutely true. Grades are meaningless in middle school. Even in high school they aren't as important as you might think. And college...
School has been torture for me, and I've been wondering all along if it's really worth it. But I'm so far into it, I hate to give up now.

I would advise trying to find the quietest, least distracting room you can; no outside distractions means less diverted attention away from homework. Perhaps a reward system might help as well; for every page of homework done (or something like that), he gets half an hour doing video games, watching tv, gets a candy bar, whatever he likes (and you approve of, of course).

Homework sucks though.

Also, if he has trouble staying organized, try to help him do so and work out a system for him to stay as neat and organized as possible. Sometimes being disorganized and/or confused about what I am supposed to do for a certain class is all it takes to frustrate me and make me want to toss my work aside and say "screw it"

I've always hated homework. That's why I wished I was little again because I had no homework. First time I remember doing homework was when I was eight. Mom would give me work to do because she was trying to teach me stuff as much as possible so she could get me out of that school I was in and put me in a new school. She told me they keep me in that school if I don't do my school work. But it was so boring because I knew how to do it but I guess my mother was trying to impress my teacher so she would see I am not low IQ as the other kids in her class.


When I was in my new school I always had homework because I hardly got anything done. I never got free time, I rarely did when I was nine because I was too distracted to do my school work. At home, my mother always had to have me do my homework in the den where it was quiet and sometimes she had my brothers leave the room and go upstairs to watch TV and play elsewhere. Mom even had to watch me to keep me on task. If she saw me dozing off, she tell me to work and it get my attention.


Andrea: Shouldn't your parents be the ones helping him, not you? I don't know how old you are but I figured you're still a child yourself. The parents should be getting their kid to do homework and not expect their other child to do all the work. If you're just babysitting, that's different but they should be doing the work when they're home.