My oldest entered kindergarten this year full of excitement about homework, of all things. The hubs and I assured him that once it started, it would suck the life out of his little 6-year-old body.
I also didn’t realize it would suck the life out of my 31-year-old body. In what universe do 5- and 6-year-olds perform well in the classroom for 6 hours plus an additional hour of homework? Beyond that–can I be honest with ya’ll for a second? I totally suck at doing homework with my kid. I would rather stick hot forks in my eyeballs than listen to him sound out the same fucking word that was just in the last sentence.
I pass it off on my spawn-of-Satan wonderful mother-in-law whenever I can. You see she picks him up from school 2 days a week. This is a blessing that I am very grateful for–assuming that I can be in and out of her house in 2.5 minutes or less, with minimal eye contact and even less conversation. I had the hubs talk to her about starting homework with our little scholar after school as an alternative to letting him play angry birds on her phone for 2 hours before I pick him up.
The truth is: I don’t really don’t care (too much) about the screen time at her house. I care way more about the fact that I have just worked a 7 hour day with co-workers that are frankly less educated than my 6-year-old. The math worksheets are humbling, to say the least. It makes me feel like a failure when the instructions on the kindergarten math homework are so complex that I have to read the instructions 3 times in order to explain the problem to my kid.
I am a pretty smart woman; I am college educated and I have a ‘big girl job,’ but if kindergarten homework is this hard, what is 1st grade going to be like? Additionally, if I have to spend my evenings after work helping with homework, cooking dinner, folding laundry and doing dishes… then when am I going to have time to play candy crush or Facebook-stalk my ex from high school?
I just can’t force myself to be the happy mom that loves doing math homework and can’t wait to jump into reading with my kid (who quite frankly sucks at reading) after I get home from working. I would much rather be the mom that welcomes her kid home from school with a snack and sends him outside to play with his friends.
Since being the ‘go outside and play’ mom doesn’t seem to be an option, maybe we should start a support group for moms that hate homework.
I will supply the wine.
Allison Taylor is a mom of 2 boys, who works full time in addition to her own blog. She is tired all of the time! You can find her blog at www.familyvacationsus.com or follow on Facebook or on Twitter.