If you ever worried about why your child was coming home with hours upon hours of homework each night, Bunmi Laditan — the mom behind The Honest Toddler blog [1] — can not only relate, but she can also serve as a reminder that you have the power to put a stop to it.

"My kid is done with homework," she wrote in a heated Facebook post that has since been removed [2]. "I just sent an email to her school letting her know she's all done. I said 'drastically reduce' but I was trying to be polite because she's finished."

She noted how her 10-year-old daughter, Maya — who is in school from 8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. and still has two to three hours of homework each evening — "loves learning" but has become more and more stressed by school. She's developed chest pains, and she's begun waking up before dawn worrying about her workload.

"How does homework until 6:30, then dinner, then an hour to relax (or finish the homework) before bed make any sense at all?" she asked. "Is family time not important? Is time spent just being a child relaxing at home not important?"

She continued:

Children need downtime after school the same way adults need downtime after work. They need to play with their siblings. They need to bond with their parents in a relaxed atmosphere, not one where everyone is stressed about fractions because — SURPRISE — I'm not a teacher. Children need time to just enjoy their childhoods or is that just for the weekends . . . although we also do homework on Sundays.

So, after consulting a tutor and a therapist, Bunmi sent an email to Maya's teachers that let them know she wasn't going to allow her daughter to get wrapped up in the pressures of unnecessary homework [3] any longer.

She's not yet certain how the school will react but is prepared to homeschool if necessary. She'll have to hire a tutor and find a group of parents doing the same thing, "but I have no choice at this point," she wrote.

"We all want our children to grow up and succeed in the world. While I believe in education, I don't believe for one second that academics should consume a child's life. I don't care if she goes to Harvard one day," she said. "My kid needs to be a kid."