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

“He already doesn’t get home from school until 4 pm,” she wrote. “Then he had to sit still for another hour plus to complete more work. I had to clear out the kitchen 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… “Mommy when you were little did you get distracted a lot too?!” Yes sweet baby, mommy sure did too! I don’t 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….”

Nelson tells Upworthy that she felt “shocked” that kindergarteners and first graders have homework, much less the amount expected of them. “We didn’t have homework like this when we were in these younger grades.”

What experts actually recommend

Expert opinion and research is somewhat mixed on the homework front, but there is no conclusive evidence that homework is universally beneficial for students and too much homework can actually be harmful. As a standard, the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Parent Teacher Association........

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