{"id":6879,"date":"2026-03-26T06:26:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T06:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=6879"},"modified":"2026-03-26T06:27:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T06:27:01","slug":"mom-explains-why-her-1st-graders-second-day-of-school-homework-already-crushed-his-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=6879","title":{"rendered":"Mom explains why her 1st grader\u2019s second-day of school homework already crushed his spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cHe already doesn\u2019t get home from school until 4 pm. Then he had to sit still for another hour plus to complete more work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debates about homework<\/a> are nothing new, but the ability of parents to find support for homework<\/a> woes from thousands of other parents is a fairly recent phenomenon. A mom named Cassi Nelson shared a post about her first grader\u2019s homework<\/a> and it quickly went viral. Nelson shared that her son had come home from his second day of school with four pages of homework<\/a>, which she showed him tearfully working on at their kitchen counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c<\/del>He already doesn\u2019t get home from school until 4 pm,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThen he had to sit still for another hour plus to complete more work. I had to clear out the kitchen<\/a> so he could focus. His little legs kept bouncing up and down, he was bursting with so much energy just wanting to go play. Then he broke my heart when he looked up at me with his big teary doe eyes and asked\u2026. \u2018Mommy when you were little did you get distracted a lot too?!\u2019 Yes sweet baby, mommy sure did too! I don\u2019t know how ppl expect little children to sit at school all day long and then ALSO come home to sit and do MORE work too\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson tells Upworthy that she was \u201cshocked\u201d that kindergarteners and first graders have homework, much less the amount they were expected to do. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have homework like this when we were in these younger grades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expert opinion and research is somewhat mixed on the homework front<\/a>, but there isn\u2019t any conclusive evidence that homework is universally beneficial for students and too much homework can actually be harmful.<\/a> As a standard, the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) support a limit on homework of \u201c10 minutes of homework per grade level.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that as a guide, a first grader shouldn\u2019t have more than 10 minutes of homework on any given school day, but it\u2019s not unusual for young kids to have two or three times the recommended limit of homework.<\/a> That can be stressful for both kids and parents, cutting into valuable family time and limiting kids\u2019 time to decompress, play and freely engage in imaginative activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"homework,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As Nelson concluded, \u201cIt\u2019s breaking their spirit and it robs them of what little fun and family time they have when they come home after a long day of school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most parents and even most teachers in the comments agreed with her that four pages of homework is too much for a first grader, especially on only the second day of school:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoor little man. Children below a certain grade should not be given homework! Small children have a hard time sitting still for a long period of time yet alone expected to sit and do hours of homework, for what??? They are SMALL CHILDREN! Let them snack, play, laugh and all the other fun things when they get home. You are only a child once, they don\u2019t need that taken away from them. Let them embrace their inner creativity, imagination, recipes, etc.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis breaks my spirit. Our schools are huge scams. You\u2019re exactly right Cassi. Homework is ridiculous. Kids til the age of 10 primarily learn through real life situations and play scenarios.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hate that for him! My little one has ADHD and doing homework after sitting in class all day is very stressful to him and makes him hate school. They are in school for 7 hours they shouldn\u2019t have homework. That definitely takes away any kind of family time and that\u2019s why kids never spend time with parents anymore because they have all this homework to do after being gone all day.I feel that if it can\u2019t be done in the 7 hours they have the kids then it should wait until the next school day.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t make them do homework at home when they are that little. It\u2019s not fair!They are at school allllll day! And it\u2019s already sooooo much for their little bodies and brains! I\u2019ve never had a teacher upset about it either.. and even if I did oh well!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat breaks my heart. 4 pages is absolutely ridiculous for young kids. My daughter is going into 2nd grade next month, the 2 years in school it was always 1 page of homework sometimes back and front if it was math. And to read.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t send homework home with my students , 8 hours a day is enough for little minds to be going . They need and deserve a break,\u201d a teacher wrote. \u201cAs a second grade teacher, I don\u2019t believe in sending homework home. I do send a reading log home and ask that they complete an hour of reading for the entire month, but I understand they are just kids and need to be kids!\u201d another added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was in this boat with my son\u2026conversation with the principal and teachers helped dramatically!! It\u2019s too much and we have to advocate for them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson was blown away by the response to her post, which has been shared on Facebook over 89,000 times. \u201cI NEVER thought me sharing my thoughts openly about how my heart hurt watching my little guy struggle would connect to so many others worldwide going through the same thing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many parents shared that excessive homework is one of the reasons they decided to homeschool their children, which Nelson took to heart. The week after sharing her viral homework post, she shared that they had had their first day of homeschooling. It was \u201cA HUGE SUCCESS!!!!\u201d she wrote, with her son getting far more work done in a far shorter amount of time, sitting for classes for just 1 hour and 45 minutes total.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nelson tells Upworthy she was totally intimidated to try homeschooling. \u201cI seriously thought there was no way,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I knew I had to set my fear aside and just take the leap for my kids. I told myself I\u2019d figure it out one way or another. And here we are three days in and it\u2019s been the easiest and best choice I\u2019ve ever made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homeschooling is not the right solution for every family, however, so the question of homework remains an important issue for kids, parents, teachers, and schools to work out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHe already doesn\u2019t get home from school until 4 pm. Then he had to sit still for another hour plus to complete more work.\u201d Debates<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/657168684_1411154064378914_7489600343771863708_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6881,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6879\/revisions\/6881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}