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Here are some of the signs that may signal that you can no longer help with your student's homework:

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if she is studying theoretical physics.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if he took apart all the electronics in the house and built a robot to clean his room.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if she is working on a paper involving either the word "electromagnetism" or "thermodynamics."

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if he started school in a Mandarin immersion program in kindergarten three months ago.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if she is working part time answering math problems on the Internet.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if he is taking classes at the local college in 7th grade.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if she is consulting with NASA after school.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if next to his soccer trophies he has a Pulitzer Prize.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if when you explain the birds and the bees, she asks you to explain the evolutionary implications regarding genetic diversity of species that reproduce asexually.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework when you find him pretending to read a comic book and discover he is, in fact, reading James Joyce or Kafka.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework when it turns out that her email buddy Steve is the same "Steve" that wrote A Brief History of Time.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework when he picks you up and sits you on the kitchen counter so you can look him in the eye.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework when you can no longer pronounce her spelling words - let alone spell them.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework when his teacher asks you to stop "helping" (using emphatic air quotes) him with his homework.

  • You may be done helping your child with homework if she is on the honor roll and you can't remember whether that would be "roll" or "role."

Of course, you are never really done helping your children with their homework, but the day when you can no longer answer their questions is likely to come sooner than you think. How well do you remember trigonometry, really?

Parents, however, will always have a role to play in shepherding their children through school. Even if you can't help with the math, you can help them manage their time and have a quiet place to study. You can't get off the hook just because you can't remember how to factor a quadratic equation.
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