WASHINGTON, D.C. – The movement of parents opting their children out of school requirements is expanding from standardized tests to homework for younger students.

Chicago area mother Sara Youngblood-Ochoa told The Washington Post she simply put an end to homework for her first-grade son after repeated frustrations working with the youngster after school proved it wasn’t worth it.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

“I looked at him and said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ He said no, and I said, ‘I don’t either,’” Youngblood-Ochoa said.

“It took a load off our afternoons and made it easier for him to do after-school activities that he wanted to do,” she said. “If there’s something our son is struggling in, we’ll absolutely do the work. But after eight hours at a desk, to make him sit down and do more seems silly.”

Earlier this month, a Texas teacher’s decision to eliminate homework this school year prompted sighs of relief and applause from parents, many of whom believe the focus on extra work is grinding down students, particularly young students, and eroding their natural creativity and curiosity.

A Fort Worth parent posted an image to Facebook of a note she received from the teacher that announced an end to homework and instead encouraged parents to “eat dinner as a family, read together, play outside, and get your child to bed early.”

Since the post went up August 16, its received more than 73,000 shares and spawned numerous news stories on the role of homework in public schools.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

“It’s really important, especially for young kids, to play. Playing is a cornerstone of learning,” said Erica Reischer, clinical psychologist and author of the book “What Great Parents Do.” “Playing is learning. That’s it. Parents need to protect that space.”

[xyz-ihs snippet=”NEW-In-Article-Rev-Content-Widget”]

Harris M. Cooper, professor at Duke University who studies the impact of homework, believes that after school lessons should last no more than 10 to 20 minutes and suggests that parents speak with teachers who assign more than that.

“Parents should be watching their child, especially for signs of fatigue and frustration,” he told the Post. If the homework seems overwhelming, parents should “talk with the teacher. Because if enough parents have the same concern, a good educator will modify their practices.”

Alfie Kohn, educator lecturer and author of “The Homework Myth,” told the Boston Globe there’s a lack of research to support the notion that homework helps elementary students, and he believes the issue is tied to standardized testing and the national Common Core education standards, both of which have been rejected by many parents.

In many schools, kids “have to defeat people as if education were an Olympic sport,” he said.

“It’s the whole top-down, corporate-style, test-driven approach … which also manifests itself in high-stakes testing and Common Core, with one-size-fits-all standards – which explains why there’s this push to make kids work harder.”

“No research has found any benefit to any kind of homework below the high school level,” Kohn said. “Why do we persist in making kids swallow this modern cod liver oil and work a ‘second shift?’”

Boston College psychology researcher Peter Gray recently noted in the American Journal of Play that “children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities” with piano lessons, homework, after-school sports and other things to keep them busy.

“We just don’t trust children, and we do not trust them to decide how to spend their time, so we attempt to keep them busy,” Kohn said. “We force them to be constructive until their heads hit the pillow. We can binge on Netflix or update on Facebook. But children — no, no! School must reach its long arm into the home and compel them to be constructive.”

Regardless, parents like Hartford, Conn. Kindergarten mother Cara Paiuk are putting a stop to it in favor of letting her kids be kids, and it seems more parents across the country are doing the same.

“To see my children … playing together in the couple hours after school and before bedtime, that is so important for conflict resolution, learning how to play with different age groups,” she told the Post. “To take time away from that to do homework doesn’t do it for me.”