If the hours between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM are the most stressful part of your day, you are not alone.
For many parents of children with dyslexia, homework time isn’t just about math sheets or ELA assignments—it’s an emotional minefield.
It often involves tears (yours and theirs), shutting down, avoidance behaviors, and sheer exhaustion.
As reading specialists, one of the first things we tell parents is this: The battle isn’t happening because your child is lazy, and it isn’t happening because you aren’t trying hard enough.
The battle is happening because your child’s brain has been working overtime all day. To help manage homework without the tears, we have to change the strategy from “enforcing” to focusing on what’s really important.
The truth is, for dyslexic kids who are reading substantially below grade level, not all homework is useful. Dyslexic kids should be reading as much as possible at home. Homework is meant to be a review, and if it’s too hard for your child it means they are missing the basics. If they can read for 20 minutes a day at home AND complete their homework, that’s good too. But the reading should come first. Consider this your permission to deprioritize some homework and reprioritize actual reading (ideally with a parent close by, listening and helping if necessary).
Here is a fact-based guide to surviving homework and preserving your relationship with your child.
1. Understand the “Cognitive Cost”
Before you even open the backpack, it is helpful to remember the science of what your child is experiencing.
For a neurotypical reader, decoding words is automatic. For a dyslexic student, reading requires manual, conscious effort in the brain’s frontal lobe. By the time they get home, they are suffering from cognitive fatigue. They have run a mental marathon while their peers walked a 5K.
The Strategy: Give them a brain break immediately after school. Don’t dive straight into homework. They need protein, hydration, and 30 to 60 minutes of sensory decompression (legos, playing outside, doing art) to replenish their reserves before asking their brain to start more academic work.
2. Prioritize Actual Reading
If your child is dyslexic, nothing is more important than actual reading. Children typically spend some time at school reading, but it’s rarely enough. Try to encourage and support reading time at home. Students who read at least 20 minutes a day improve much faster than their peers.
The Strategy: Whatever you can do to get them to read. Family reading time is a great idea. If your child sees you reading they will be more interested in reading themselves. Start a D.E.A.R. Time (Drop Everything And Read)! Encourage your kids to read to pets, younger siblings, or grandparents. Pick a fun new place to read (at a park on a blanket, in a handmade fort with a flashlight, on a train. If your child is still resistant, tell them you will start the book and they can read every other page. When you read, be animated and engaging so kids see that reading is entertaining and not a chore. They will model what you do!
3. Embrace Assistive Technology Early
You do not need to wait for high school to use technology. If your child is staring at a blank page, introduce tools that bypass the struggle.
The Strategy:
Speech-to-Text: Most tablets and laptops have a “dictation” button (the microphone icon). Let your child speak their essay drafts. Once that is done, they can re-read and revise.
Audiobooks/Text-to-Speech: If they have a chapter to read for history class, let them listen to it while following along with the text. This is called “ear reading,” and it is a valid way to absorb content without the exhaustion of decoding.
4. The Quality Over Quantity Rule
Dyslexic students often work much more slowly than their peers. A math worksheet that takes a classmate 15 minutes might take your child 45 minutes, considering all the reading involved. Spending almost 3 hours on homework for a 3rd grader is rarely productive; it usually leads to burnout.
The Strategy: Speak to your child’s teacher about creating homework that is at your child’s level. If that doesn’t work, set a time limit. If the teacher assigns a four-page language arts worksheet, but your child can only finish two pages in a reasonable amount of time (e.g., 30 minutes), stop there. Write a note to the teacher: “Jack worked hard for 30 minutes on this assignment. We stopped here.”
5. Stop Trying to Be Their Tutor
This is the hardest one. When you see your child struggle to read a word, the instinct is to jump in and teach: “Sound it out!”
But unless you are trained in Orton-Gillingham or structured literacy, this can backfire. English rules are complex, and “helping” can sometimes confuse a child who is learning specific rules in their intervention sessions.
The Strategy: If your child is stuck on a specific word during homework, stay silent for a few seconds and see if they can read it on their own. Be patient. It can sometimes take a few seconds for a student to process all the different parts of a word. In addition, they sometimes need time to read it wrong a few times before it comes out correctly. Self-corrections mean students are learning! If they are still struggling you can tell them the word. Homework is for reinforcing what they already know, not for teaching them to read. Leave the reading remediation to the experts.
When to Seek Help
Homework struggles are often the “canary in the coal mine.” If your child is spending every afternoon in distress, or if you find yourself doing the work for them just to make the crying stop, it may be a sign that their foundational reading gaps are too wide for them to bridge alone.
At The Reading Guru, we specialize in closing those gaps. By using evidence-based Orton-Gillingham instruction, we help students build the decoding skills and fluency they need to eventually tackle homework with independence.
Is homework a nightly battle in your house? Book a free 15-minute consultation today to discuss your child’s reading challenges and how we can help.
