We're just a few months away from midterms, mom and dad! Perhaps your kid is a solid student and always brings home the As. Congratulations! But for many more parents out there, it's a struggle to get kids to focus and buckle down at homework time.

The truth is, as parents, we can sometimes be just as anxious about our child's grades as he is himself. If you have report card day circled in red on your family calendar, why not consider doing a few things differently this year and taking the pressure of everyone. Here are three ways to encourage your child to get good grades, without the battle.

If there's one thing I'm dreading about school being back in session again, it's homework. I do not relish the drama of trying to coax and coerce my son to sit and down and just get it done already!

I've vowed up and down that we will NOT have battles like we did last year, but I know we will if I don't make some changes. One of those changes is establishing a designated homework space. This means no just plopping down wherever he feels like, but creating a space for the sole purpose of homework that will suddenly make homework more enticing than video games or playing outside with his friends. Okay, I'm not delusional, but I'm hoping it will at least make things a little better. Here are some tips for setting up a homework station for your kid.

Do your children have designated spaces for homework? What tips would add?

Image via woodleywonderworks/Flickr

The following is a sponsored post from InkJoy.

We all want our kids to get good grades. How else can we brag about them at dinner parties will we feel like they're being prepped for the real world? Now the big question is: how far would you go to make sure it happens? Here's hoping you'd draw the line before you get to this mom's level.

Pennsylvania cops say Catherine Venusto actually hacked into the computers at her kids' school so she could change their grades. Well, hacked is giving her a little too much credit. A former secretary of the district, apparently Venusto had a password. But still ...

Tiger Mom who? Looks like there's a new recipe for raising the smartest kids on the block. 

For the past 19 years, six children from the Kogut family have made straight A's. That's right! They scored A's in every subject they took at Marley Middle School in Glen Burnie, Maryland.

No, my son didn't hijack my computer and write that headline, it's true, according to researchers. A new study says that, with the exception of the last couple of years of high school, homework provides few, if any, benefits to students; it may even impede their learning.

So all of that time I spend trying to coerce my second grader to sit down and complete his assignments, and all the breath I expend trying to explain why homework is so important to his future is all a big waste? Yes, say Australian researchers who included 10,000 children in their study. They concluded that children could be better served spending that homework time doing something else more beneficial. They even went so far as to say that only students in senior high should do homework.

While most kids are focused on what apps they can convince their parents to let them download, a 10-year-old from Denver was determined to create one of his own. Fifth grader Daniel Chao wasn't quite sure what kind of app he wanted to make, but after brainstorming with his parents he zeroed in on one of the biggest challenges fifth graders face -- homework.

His parents helped a little with contracts and such, but almost all of the work was his, he told CBS Denver. He did have to submit his proposal to Apple under his dad's name because the company only accepts them from those 18 and above, but based on the passion and intelligence of Daniel, here, Apple might want to rethink that policy.

It’s 12:00 a.m., and when most children are all snuggly buggly wuggly in their widdle beds getting lots of shuteye for their big days at school tomorrow, mine is still awake. Apparently, her class got in trouble today for excessive chattiness and in a brazen show of authoritative take-that-ness, her teacher slammed them with — wait for it — 60 definitions and 60 sentences. On top of science homework and algebra equations, Girl Child’s whole night has been spent with her face stuck in a dictionary and a marble composition book leading up to now, the stroke of midnight. I am not amused.