“I'm still waking up, and I'm nursing Saylor, and now here comes Jaxon every single night.”
A TikTok mom is going viral after making a controversial confession about her kids’ homework.
Lottie Weaver, a mom of three who boasts 2.5 million followers on the social media platform, admitted in a TikTok video that she gives her kids homework answers when they’re tired, frustrated or overwhelmed.
Her contentious take had many teachers fuming in the comment section.
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“I have a confession to make and if you are my kids’ school teacher, just keep swiping,” she said at the beginning of the video, published Aug. 12.
@lottie..weaver I don’t do ALL the homework but some 😅 #momlife #girlmom #parenting #school #daughter ♬ original sound - ✨Lottie✨
“After the kids have been at school all day, done their work, been on their best behavior and they come home with homework, sometimes I give them the answers to their homework,” she continued.
She went on to clarify that her kids have good grades and turn in all of their assignments on time.
“When I can tell that they’re getting antsy, fidgety, annoyed (or) they’re, like, over it, I give them the answers,” she added before further admitting to doing a lot of her kids’ projects.
“Our jobs as parents is to help them,” she argued in the video. “Mama’s here to help.”
Weaver, who also shared the video on her Instagram page, described homework as “one of the worst things about parenthood.”
“They have already spent seven hours worrying about school — we’re just trying to enjoy our evenings,” Weaver, who resides in Arizona, said of her confession in an interview with Today, published Aug. 21.
While she admits that some homework is good for kids, she believes in ridding her kids of the extra work whenever they seem hungry, tired or unfocused.
“They want to crawl out of their skin, but they have to sit down and group numbers or read a paragraph about why ‘Sally doesn’t want to go to the store,’” she told Today.
TikTok mom’s confession sparks hot debate in the comments
As you can imagine, many parents and teachers shared conflicting opinions on Weaver’s confession.
While some agreed with Weaver, others were quick to argue that there’s a big difference between helping kids with homework and doing it for them — and some even provided alternative ways to assist them.
“How about taking a break instead and then trying again later?” one user commented under her TikTok video.
“(Your0 job as a parent is also to prepare ur kids for life. There’s nothing wrong with letting your kid struggle with their homework and you frequently doing it for them is only a disservice to their future,” another user wrote.
“Teacher opinion here. I would way rather a student have incomplete HW that they did themself than just be given answers,” a teacher argued.
But not all teachers were against Weaver’s opinion.
“Elementary teacher here, and I am VERY anti-homework. It’s teaching kids that’s it’s okay to take work home once they’re grown and working real jobs, which is NOT okay,” another teacher wrote.
After-school restraint collapse is a real thing, experts say
While talking to Today, Weaver clarified that her kids do most of the homework and she only steps in when they’ve hit a dead-end.
That dead-end is often referred to as “restraint collapse” — and it’s something we all experience.
According to Roberts Academy, “after-school restraint collapse refers to the emotional release children experience when they come home after a long day of school.”
It often comes as a result of suppressing those emotions all day long as they try their best to behave.
“They get to the point where they just don’t have the energy to keep this restraint, and it feels like a big bubble that needs to burst,” says parenting educator Andrea Loewen Nair, per Today’s Parent.
Registered psychologists Tammy Schamuhn and Tania Johnson, who co-founded The Institute of Child Psychology, argued that homework after school only exacerbates the problem.
“Kids before high school don’t need a lot of homework anyway, and I pretty much limit it to flash cards before bed for like 5 minutes for math and reading,” Schamuhn said on their “The Child Psych Podcast.”
Johnson added that she sets a timer for 15 minutes when it comes time for her kids to do homework.
“And whatever we don’t get done, I will send a note to your teacher saying that it was outside of our homework time frame,” she said on the podcast.
They also argued that restraint collapse that occurs at home is a good — and healthy — sign.
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“Just a reminder that when they can do that with you, it’s because you are their safe person, you are a safe place,” Johnson added.
