Helping with homework without doing it: three prompts for parents

September, just past seven, the new school year is under way, and there is an open exercise book on the table where nothing has happened for twenty minutes. The temptation runs two ways: you dictate the answer, or an AI dictates it. Both end the same way, with the homework finished and nobody any wiser.

One distinction changes everything: as a solver, AI is weak. As an explainer and a question-asker, it is genuinely good. A parent's job is not to have the answer, it is to hold the moment while the child looks for it. Before any of this, a thirty second check: what counts as allowed is set by the school, and the rule often differs from subject to subject.

Three prompts for the kitchen table

My son is in Year 6 and does not understand simplifying fractions. Explain it to me in three different ways: once with an everyday example, once with a drawing we can copy onto paper, and once in three short sentences. Do not solve any exercise, I only want to understand how to explain it to him.

You are coaching a Year 6 pupil on simplifying fractions. Ask one question at a time and wait for the answer before moving on. If he gets it wrong, do not give the solution, ask a smaller question that gets him closer. After five questions, tell me in two sentences what has landed and what has not.

Here is my son's answer, typed out exactly as he wrote it: [PASTE HERE]. Do not say what is right or wrong. Mark only the three places worth looking at again, and for each one write a question he can answer himself.

Meanwhile you do your part, which is small and decisive: sit nearby without reading over the screen, ask at the end to have the whole thing explained back to you, because whoever can explain it has understood it, set a time limit before you start, and close the laptop the moment the exercise is done. The AI comes in to explain and leaves. The homework was done by your child.