The "H" Word

There are not many things in this world that really drive me crazy or make me complain, but there are other things that I feel like will be the death of me.  I generally try to find ways to enjoy time I spend with the kids, even if whatever it is we are doing is not enjoyable on its own.  Like when we have to wait for a long time, we play “Simon Says” or “Mother May I?” If I’m with the big kids, they usually show me funny memes or some other funny stuff they follow.  But there is one thing in particular that I just can’t seem to get over…it drives me absolutely crazy…and that is the dreaded “H” word….Homework!!!

I remember a time I looked forward to doing homework with the kids; it was a time before I actually had kids old enough to do homework.  In my mind, I thought it was going to be like a rite of passage and something we could do together.  When our oldest first entered Pre-K, he was so cute…he had his little lunch bag, he had his little backpack, he had fat crayons and a fat pencil.  One day he finally brought home his first little homework assignment.  It was just the cutest thing ever.  But I will tell you, that cute sure did not stay cute for long.  It did not take much time to figure out that that little Pre-K kid was a perfectionist.  Something as simple as tracing the letters of his name quickly turned into tears and drama.  He would attempt to trace each letter, perfectly, following each straight line and carefully rounding out each curve of each letter.  If you have ever watched a four-year-old try to do anything perfectly, it doesn’t usually end well.  When he would make a mistake, he would erase.  And erase.  And erase.  He would erase until there were holes worn into his paper and there were holes worn into my nerves.  It ended up it was just one of those things…I couldn’t fix it, I couldn’t change it, I couldn’t stop it.  It was night after night of tracing and erasing.

Like any other kid phase, the one of tracing and erasing eventually passed and we moved on to sounding out words, then reading for x amount of minutes per night, then spelling words and  vocabulary sentences, multiplication facts and science terms.  There were the nights of the dreaded “new math.” The kids were asking me questions about number bonds, number cubes, and what’s three different ways I can solve this problem? I mean, I got really used to saying things like, “Honey, I just don’t know”….and the kid was in fourth grade!

Now, not all of our kids have been perfectionists like our first kid.  Nope, I had prepared myself for one thing as each next kid would get to that phase. But then you end up having the kid that finishes all their homework in class, the kid that could care less if their tracing matches the lines, the kid that loses their homework, the kid that “doesn’t have any” homework but does it sloppily the morning of school, the kid that cries through their homework, and the kid that stares at their homework for three hours then at 9:00 at night finally says, “I need help!” My goodness, I don’t know if it is just me, but I do not have as much of a loving, giving heart at 9:00 as I did earlier in the evening, like at 6:00, 7:00, or even 8:00.

At some point we entered into the phase of studying.  You gotta love a kid that says, “I don’t know how I failed that test, I studied!” When I asked when and how because I was with you all evening long, and they would tell me they looked over it right before the test.  Geez!  That’s when we realized we needed to teach the kids some good ol’ fashioned studying habits like I call out the information/questions and you answer it.  It doesn’t take very much of that for a kid to see they better go back and really read over that information again.

Another fun part of doing homework is when the kids enter upper math…algebra or my very favorite, geometry.  When I was a teenager sitting through these classes, barely getting by, knowing I would never EVER need any of this in real-life, it never ever dawned on me I would one day be sitting next to a tired and frustrated teenager trying to google “quadratic equation” or trying to figure out how to enter a proof into the google search bar and hoping it shows me the steps and theorems!  If there was one part of high school I did not want to relive, it would be my math classes…and here I am, night after night.  It’s like the movie “Groundhog Day” except it really never ends.  Every now and again I might remember how to do a problem or formula.  I get all excited and I show them, and nine times out of ten I hear, “That’s not how she showed us in class!” AAAGGGHHHH!!!!

I really think I have watched more Kahn Academy videos than probably most recent high school graduates.

Our current phase is a mixture of all of these (jealous, right?).  We have everything from balancing equations, writing proofs, analyzing novels, and critically thinking about geospatial data to a daily reader and sight words.  Some nights we are so wrapped up with one kid trying to figure out if something is a dominate or recessive trait that I don’t fill out the form showing the other kid read for 20 minutes. I am telling you, our first grader reads at least three books a night, but according to the reading chart I’m supposed to fill out for her class, she hasn’t read a book since last month!

I would guess the hectic evenings may be more or less hectic depending on how many kids you have in school, but again, I don’t think I’m alone on this one.  Kids doing homework is stressful!  I’m not saying I disagree with it (ok, maybe I do), I’m just saying it is stressful!

I have not really found a way to enjoy homework.  I do enjoy when a kid raises a grade from one grading period to the next or they have some big a-ha moment right there at the dining room table, but actually enjoying homework, not so much.  I would love to leave you with some words of wisdom or my own a-ha….but I’ve googled that and have not found the answer yet!