Last year, Kai’s teacher told the kindergarten parents that the kids had optional homework. This was presented as an “opportunity” offered by the school so the kids could get a little extra instruction in math and reading. We were given a URL and a password and urged to log on to the sites with our kids. The teachers could track our progress. This was something that we were supposed to do to enrich our child’s education and reinforce what he or she was learning in the classroom blah blah yadda yadda.
I would like to tell you that I did it, that I arranged a special time each day for Kai and me to sit down at the computer and read or do math problems, that while we were at it, he shared about his day at school, that we practiced taking turns and saying his “L” words, that we drank hot cocoa and giggled together and talked and the nature of the Universe.
But that would be a lie. I did not, not one time, not ever did I even attempt to do this extra work with Kai.
I think his teacher was surprised with me, because if there’s one word you might use to describe my relationship with Kai and school, it’s “involved.” I’m always around. I sent no fewer than 15 e-mails during the first week of school alone.
But I can’t quite bring myself to care about homework. I can’t. I just can’t bring myself to corral a boy (with ADHD, no less!) to sit back down at a table for yet another half hour of lessons, of nagging him over and over to just finish up already, counting off in the system I use to signal to him that I need him to pay attention to me: Kai do your homework 1. Kai do your homework 2. Kai do your—thanks, pal. Good job.
Monica pressed me on the “optional homework” when she saw I hadn’t logged on to the web site at all. I don’t remember what I said to her, but it was along the lines of, “What, I don’t do enough for him?”
Which is why, I’m super depressed about what came home in Kai’s backpack last week: homework. The non-optional kind.
Oh, my god, you guys. Kill me now.
:::
Kai is expected to do about 30 minutes of homework each day. I don’t know when we’ll do this. In the car on the way home from speech therapy? Before dinner when I let him have some iPad time as a reward for holding it together all day? After the bath when I’m ready to be off the clock?
None of those options sound good to me, and, frankly, I resent that the school has seen fit to add to my responsibilities, because make no mistake, it’s my job to make sure this homework thing happens.
At the parent education night I went to, Kai’s new teacher told us what was expected of the students vis a vis homework.
I raised my hand.
“I would like to ask a question of the group,” I said. “I’m new to the whole homework thing—does anyone have any tips for making it go smoothly?”
One mom pounced.
“Consistency,” she said, slapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other. She had a fiery, intense look about her as she began to explain her system of dry-erase boards and personal responsibility.
My mouth went a little dry.
Another mom suggested that I put Kai in a room with minimal distractions.
I nodded politely, but for Kai, the most distracting thing is his own brain.
Another mom suggested I break out the stemware.
Duh.
The rest of the parents looked at me with what bordered on pity, but I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps, they felt sorry for Kai that I hadn’t made him do his optional homework last year and had thereby ruined his future. Or maybe it was because I had not yet resigned myself to my fate.
The next day, Kai came home with a sheet of words he was supposed to practice.
“What’s this?” I asked him. “Are you supposed to work on these tonight?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Those words are too tricky for me. Those are for YOU to work on.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“But I’m not in first grade,” I said.
“You’re great at reading, though,” Kai replied, and absconded to the other room to watch Dora with Ryan.
I found out later that Kai was supposed to memorize those words and that he would be assessed on the following Monday.
“The day of the field trip?” I asked the teacher.
She frowned, clearly having forgotten that the kids would be at the planetarium. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Well, maybe we’ll be able to do it before we go.”
“Well then we’ll work on these over the weekend,” I assured her, because I supposed that was the appropriate thing to say.
I doubted very much the assessment would happen, but I dutifully hauled the words with us on a weekend trip to Portland. I brought them out of Kai’s backpack after the flight attendant made us turn off the iPads for takeoff, but I couldn’t get Kai to care about them.
I couldn’t really blame him.
After all, I was having a tough time caring about them, too.
I put the sheet back in his backpack, pulling out a book we could read together instead and, when we reached 10,000 feet, I let him turn his iPad back on.
I vowed we’d work on the words the next day.
I’d like to tell you that we did exactly that.
But it would be a lie.