It seems these days that my life is centered around the following questions, in no particular order.
- What’s for dinner, Honey? Mommy, I’m starving!
- Where are the clean diapers?
- Whaddya mean you want an eraser and why do I have to re-do my homework?
And so the days fly by like those old movies where the calender pages just fly off into oblivion. Seemingly, my mind is flying with it. I have taken to making a weekly menu to help keep track of the all important question of what’s for dinner. It helps with the grocery shopping too. 
I’m not embarrassed to admit that I have to mark on the calendar when I’ve done a load of diapers. The instructions say no longer than three days between washings, and I can’t always remember what happened three hours ago. So if you see a little ‘D’ on my calendar, no you know why. It is a true testament to my diaper pail for keeping the odors at bay! If you happen to be in the market, I’m loving my Safety 1st Step On Diaper Pail, it was one of the cheapest, and since it’s small usually when it’s full, is a good time to wash… AHA! Mommy wisdom at it’s finest. Unless, of course, I’m feeling lazy and keep cramming them in there anyway.
Then comes the homework. It’s first grade and it’s getting harder. I know at the beginning of the year, the teacher told us to resist temptation to do the work ourselves, and I nodded and agreed alongside every other parent in the room. Man oh man is it HARD to let my child turn in homework that is an absolute mess. Spelling words all willy-nilly, letters and punctuation appear at random and as the space allows. Add drawings and coloring to the mix and it’s an eye-popping experience to be sure. I try to contain myself, I really do. But sometimes I just can’t! I’ve set the following guidelines for myself: as long as the general directions have been followed, LET IT BE! If and only IF the directions were not followed, do I step in with the eraser and we re-read the directions and she starts over again. Her biggest struggle is with reading homework where she has to do any kind of re-telling. She wants to copy sentences verbatim from the book, and I don’t want that to become a habit. Is it wrong for me to make her do it over when she does this? We never get her homework back from the teacher, so I’m flying blind on this one.
Dinner and diapers are easier by far!
Dinner and Diapers and Homework, Oh My! It really is great to be a Mommy!
Homework time gets worse the older they get! My biggest problem is that they teach math differently than when I was a kid. I always struggled with math but this stuff, it makes no sense so I can’t even help or pretend to help. They do something called ‘take-ways’ and when I saw what it really was, it was some messed up form of long division.
Brace yourself for the next few years and just let her figure it out. I know its tough but pretty soon, she’ll bring home stuff you won’t understand so it’ll be easier to ignore it
Math is a big fear of mine, she is good at it so far… One more thing to worry about. Yay! I’m gonna have to learn to let it go.
Yep, let it go. This math stuff they teach is so different than when we were kids. I just gave up and walk away. I just check it now to make sure its done. I leave it to his teachers to make sure the work he does is right or wrong, I figure he needs to figure this out to take the tests so better just to leave him alone and let him do it himself.
BTW – you just gave me an idea for a blog post
Happy to be of service!