Parentella

In reading the New York Magazine‘s article, Why Parents Hate Parenting, I was struck by this passage:

“I’m going to count to three.”

It’s a weekday evening, and the mother in this videotape, a trim brunette with her hair in a bun and glasses propped up on her head, has already worked a full day and made dinner. Now she is approaching her 8-year-old son, the oldest of two, who’s seated at the computer in the den, absorbed in a movie. At issue is his homework, which he still hasn’t done.

“One. Two …”

This clip is from a study conducted by UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families, which earned a front-page story in the Sunday Times this May …

“I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy.

“No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.”

Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, the director of research in this study, has watched this scene many times. The reason she believes it’s so powerful is because it shows how painfully parents experience the pressure of making their children do their schoolwork. They seem to feel this pressure even more acutely than their children feel it themselves.

Exactly. Homework has evolved into a test of our parenting skills. The involved parents are the ones that make sure their children’s homework is done, that will teach whatever our children don’t understand about the assignment, that will enforce the teacher’s orders and rules without question. The uninvolved parents that don’t care about their child’s education will not go to such efforts.

Whether or not this is actually true, it is the assumption that a lot of parents have.  I am one of them. Since I’m not often on school grounds (due to working full-time, as the sole income provider for my girls), I am overly concerned of how I am perceived by my daughters’ teachers.

The scene described above is similar to what I could describe about homework battles in my own home.

When I pick them up at their after-school program, one of the first questions I ask is, “did you finish your homework?” 9 times out of 10, the answer is no. So I tell them to finish it when we get home while I make dinner.

We arrive home anytime between 6 & 7. I get dinner started, and tell the girls to finish their homework. My 9-year-old might look very busy writing something, but when I have a minute to check while a sauce simmers or the oven is heating, I see that it’s not homework at all. It’s a drawing or a letter to a friend or any number of other things. I try to get back her back on task, but then I have to leave her again to finish dinner.

If there is still homework to be done after dinner, I tell them to finish while I wash the dishes. It seems they have the majority of questions when I am in the middle of loading the dishwasher or something, so sometimes, they need to wait. So they find other things to do while they’re waiting, and then it’s like the scene in the New York article – they don’t want to do it on my timetable, they want to do it on theirs.

As it is, I rarely give my children the “help” they want – which is to say, they just want me to tell them the answers. I ask them, “what do you think the answer is?” I may have to guide them a little more to find the right answer. (And when it comes to my soon-to-be 8th grader’s math homework, I often don’t know the right answer without googling the type of problem and finding the right formula and doing the math myself. Even then, I’ve been known to get it wrong.)

Sometimes, when they say they want my help, they’re talking about things that are non-homework related. They’re talking about their friendship dramas, or they want to tell me something funny that happened at lunch.  They just want to talk to me.

Instead, I feel the need to be the enforcer. I’m basically saying to them,  “Your feelings don’t matter. Sharing something with me isn’t nearly as important as your spelling assignment to write each word three times.”

Of course, writing a spelling word three times is not more important than having a conversation.  A seemingly trivial conversation about what her best friend said can easily develop into a conversation about trust or empathy or simply a shared moment of laughter.

Last year,  I surrendered in the homework battles with my then 4th grader. After I was reminded that elementary school report cards do not necessarily make or break or child’s future, I opted for those moments of laughter and good conversation.

At my first parent-teacher conference after I waved the white flag, the teacher (of course) commented on the missing homework assignments. I told her the truth; that I was no longer playing the enforcer, and that our home life was better for it. She informed that some grades would suffer because of it, and I acknowledged that.

After that, sometimes the motivation for better grades worked for my daughter, and sometimes they didn’t. When she asked for my help, I would happily give it. And some of my fondest memories of her 4th grade year were our mock spelling bees. Every Thursday, before her spelling test on Friday, I would test her orally. She made up different people to play for each word, and it was all a lot of fun.

Still, that’s the only spelling homework she did all week. She stopped writing the words three times, and I stopped yelling at her to do it already.

Now I know that some parents and teachers will be concerned that I’m not properly teaching my child about responsibilities. I disagree. She had consequences for not doing the homework, and those came through in her grades. I just didn’t feel the need for a double consequence at home. (Isn’t that known as double jeopardy, anyhow?)

With my older daughter, it is a little bit different. She is more self-motivated because she has aspirations to go a performing arts high school that will require her to maintain a certain GPA. She is old enough to know what’s at stake here, and old enough to take on the responsibilities, and/or suffer the consequences. She knows I am here to help in any way I can. And she knows how to check the school website for how she’s doing. The only time I went above and beyond was when she was afraid to talk to one teacher about how to get extra credit, so I emailed the teacher instead and got the information, and printed the worksheets. Still, it was up to her to complete them and turn them in.

I will not be the enforcer this coming school year. I will stick to my role as parent; there to help and guide, there to remind them of possible consequences, and then taking that step back to let them take the fall or the bow that they have earned.

April McCaffery is the single mother to two daughters, going into 5th and 8th grade.