Apparently there is some misunderstanding on my daughter’s part about the exact meaning of this adjective, because when I check on her five minutes later, she is hard at work turning the whole page green. Elephants, Lions, Giraffes; they are all the color of grass. When I ask her what she thinks she’s doing, she claims not to understand what I mean. Mind you, this is the girl who has colored several thousands of pictures during her short life. I know: the evidence creeps like a fungus all over my house. There are pictures in the dining room, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Some are in frames, some are in a folder hiding behind the couch, and many have been sent overseas where family members can do with them as they please.
This girl colors with a vengeance; it comes as natural to her as breathing. But suddenly, when it’s homework, she forgets how. I patiently explain to her that homework is homework; whether you have to color a picture or write a Doctoral Thesis, it all paves the road to success. Hypocrite that I am, I temporarily choose to forget how much I hated it back in the day; now it’s my turn to nag, and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.
After I’ve carefully copied the original drawing on a new piece of paper (much bigger this time, I’ll show her) we move on to her English assignment. There is quite a bit of it, and it carries us past dinner and uncomfortably close to bedtime. Since when does she have this much homework? I have a sneaking suspicion that this is, shall we say, extra stuff, sent home for the heck of it, and that the teacher doesn’t intend for her to finish all of it. But no, my daughter won’t hear of it: “We have to do it all, mom! Really!” Suspicious mother that I am, I think she’s lying. Nonetheless, I relent: what if she’s right, and by some fluke this six-year-old actually has two hours’ worth of homework to do? Besides, if she doesn’t finish, I’ll feel as guilty as if I was back in first grade myself, and this was my own personal homework.
I am fully aware that this should be the other way around. The mother should make the child feel guilty, so the child will follow all parental instructions to the letter and not give the parents any trouble. I have never mastered this trick, but my daughter is a natural. It must have skipped a generation, because I find myself sandwiched between two guilt-inducing geniuses. Lucky me.
So she writes words on the pages, fills in missing letters, circles the ones that have been misspelled. She doesn’t miss a beat. She’s obviously some kind of prodigy for knowing that Cat is not spelled with two t’s. After the green-page-debacle, faith in her brainpower is restored. My daughter is smart; she’s going to go through first grade without any problems. High school will be a breeze, Harvard, here we come! She will be a lawyer, she will be a doctor, and she will be a famous artist in her spare time. There is nothing she can’t do. Until she comes upon the picture of a fish. There is an arrow pointing to the top, accompanied by “blank-I-N”…
”SIN!” she writes enthusiastically. Oh well.
Does your child hate homework too? check out homeworkspot, infoplease, or Discovery
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