The ball, The Chain, The Homework

                                                      

Ack!  As we review the limp and rather stained lunch box, assess how many inches from the floor the bottoms of Mr The King's jeans are now rising, and search for last year's pencils in the folds of the couch and car, our thoughts turn to the most harrowing of all back-to-school revelations...here comes HOMEWORK!

Unlike many of you, I have not been pulling out workbooks all summer and preventing the draining of the brain.  Mr The King has been spoiled in true style with wading pools and grandparent visits, bicycles, playdates, squirt guns, barbeques, baseball, popsicles, concerts and water parks...and he's realizing that it's all about to come crashing to an end.

"I'm not going to grade 3.  Won't be there.  Can't make me...I'm not scared of school...I'm scared of TEACHERS!"

Hmmm...you know,  I think I am too!  I'm already stressing (privately) about how we'll get our student shackled to the table and get down to business.  Second Grade homework was a bit of a Gong Show.  He didn't bring it home half the time,  and when he was forced to pull it out of his backpack and uncrumple it, he looked at it in horror as if it were his toothbrush (whole other story).  I'm talking 45 minutes of 'process' for a 15 minute task.  Am I alone here?  Many children I know have much more of a work ethic.  I liked the accomplishment of homework,  my husband just didn't bother arguing with his parents,  and most of my friends' kids are much more task-friendly than our guy.   Much, though not all, of his learning problems are about this unwillingness to just plain Work.

This year needs to be very different.  I need to give homework a solid spot in our schedule and I need to work it around the school day, dinner, soccer practice, cub scouts....somewhere before bedtime...hmmmm...when do you pull out the homework chair and play prison guard?  Am I being overdramatic?