The vast majority of school days, Mommy is the one in charge of homework. To be fair, as a stay-at-home mother, doing homework with the kidlets is part of the job description and I am certainly not complaining about that fact (at least for today). When you start with preschool homework of writing a letter or number a few times and gradually work your way up to double-checking fourth grade math word problems, you have slowly adjusted to the challenge. It is not as if you've been up and fed to the wolves or anything.
Well, today my poor husband was fed to the wolves. It was a wacky school day schedule, with one kidlet following normal hours, one kidlet needing to be picked up early to go to a doctor's appointment, and one kidlet staying after school for choir practice. Unfortunately the doctor kidlet and the normal school hours kidlet overlapped, and Pig and I had to split the parenting duties. He drove Rooster to her appointment while I stayed behind to make sure Pig Jr. was picked up on time and to pray that Pig returned with the car before I had to go pick up Horse. Since Rooster missed more than half of the school day, she brought her missed work and homework with her to the allergist's office, thus working on her assignments under the frazzled eyes of her father.
Now I have spent the past four years (five, if you count preschool) and counting working on homework with the kidlets. Even with all of those years of experience under my belt, first grade homework with Rooster is still quite the challenge. I can honestly say that I thought it might be easier for Pig to handle helping her while she did not have her siblings to disrupt the flow. Clearly, I was mistaken.
I have no idea what transpired between my two family members when they were doing homework while waiting to see the doctor. I do know they were unable to finish everything because scissors and glue had not been put in Rooster's bag before they left. Quite frankly, I think Pig should have been grateful for that fact. Keeping Rooster's glue and scissor abuse under control is complicated enough in the confines of our house, let alone in a waiting room somewhere. I do know that when they arrived home just before I had to leave to go pick up my eldest child, Pig seemed overwhelmed. I suspect he was also frustrated that he had to finish up homework duty while I returned to the elementary school. I reminded him that I do homework duty with her almost every day. He grunted that I don't have to deal with cutting and pasting letters everyday, and left it implied that I had forced him to deal with the brunt of the year's homework burden by leaving him in charge of the cutting and pasting while going to pick up Horse.
I have the sneaky suspicion he is looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.
I also wonder why teachers assign cutting letters out of newspapers and magazines to glue into spelling words. It's almost as if they are training the next generation of blackmailers or kidnappers. Seriously, is there any other real-life application for cut and pasted letters? That's not how I write shopping lists, to do lists, my reading list, or just about any other list I can imagine. I certainly do not write letters to my friends and family members that way. So why do they need the practice? My kidlets already cut up magazines and catalogs at home until my living room is littered with tiny scraps of paper, and they are masters of the glue stick.
Anyway, I'm grateful it's not just me that struggles with my little lady and her homework. Pig can at least be glad he held his own today. Even a draw is better than losing the homework battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment