The evening crunch
One of the hardest things about being a working parent with school age children is that often you don’t have the afternoon hours to supervise homework.
Even though kids may go to some after school care where they’re supposed to be doing homework, let’s face it, until they are older, and, sometimes not even then, they don’t always recognize when the work is complete, or, study thoroughly for a test.
So, that leaves the evening hours for checking over homework as needed, taking care of younger siblings, and, getting dinner on the table. Oh yeah, the housework thing, too.
Sometimes, its not pretty. It gets even worse when there’s an evening activity on top of that.
Talk about “over scheduled” kids all you want, but, as they get older, the fact is that they have things they need to do on weekday evenings. Some of them are by choice, while others might not be, but, either way, it makes an already hectic time worse.
We’ve had some late nights recently, but, I’m glad to say we’ve at least gotten the kindergartener to bed on time in the middle of all of it. On top of that, I was gone for 3 weekdays last week traveling for work, and, we’re still trying to catch up on odds and ends.
For now, I think all we can do right now is try to stick to a schedule, and, plan ahead as much as we can.
I like being busy, but, I do hope there’s a day in my future when I don’t have to weigh whether or not it’s worth it to stop by the drugstore on my way home from work and risk getting off schedule from 6pm onward, but, I’m not there, yet.
I know I am very fortunate in this area: I pay for childcare but it is in the excellent form of my mum and dad who pick my kids up from school for me and supervise homework etc. They draw my attention to anything that needs me to look at it but they pretty much ensure that homework is properly done. This works when the kids are 9 and 7 and the homework isn’t too demanding. Not sure how things are going to pan out when the subjects get more complex (Mum already struggles with French!). Even so, evenings are hectic with making lunches and packing bags for next day and filling in school forms and older son’s therapy exercises and….stuff. Having thought about it really hard, I have decided that I really need a wife. Know where I can get one?
I have two kids, one with homework and one too little to have homework. The big issue is that when I’m there to pay attention to the big one’s homework, the little one still wants his Papa to play.
(In addition, second grade homework can be really boring if you’re a smart kid.)
We had a good session in the living room the other day where I read the homework out loud and we talked about it while he did it – it was a way to ease some of the occasional frustrations with handwriting that seem to be the biggest source of delays, and it let me really get to be part of the work so I understood what he was doing.
I think this is one of the saddest truths of our existence: the lack of margin. If a trip to the drugstore threatens our routine (and it does, I hear ya on this), we are overscheduled, reality or not.
I’m not a big fan of homework for elementary kids: the research just doesn’t support it, but it’s law here in Australia and we have had to comply. But talking it through with teachers has helped to foucs on the essentials and ensure youngest son doesn’t get penalised for having a life outside of school (ie., for not writing out the same spelling list five nights in a row when he knew it 100% on the first, etc). One of the hardest things is exactly what Edward said: divided attention, being stretched in too many ways at once. Women can handle this better than us guys can, but there’s still limits …
… basically I think homework sucks!
Push my buttons, will ya?? I avoided going to Target all week last week since the 3rd grader was at my house. I really needed some stuff, but we had Brownies and dance in the late afternoon/early evenings, and we couldn’t have any more disruption than that. Those two plus the regular inane homework about kill me.
So tonight I pick the 2yo up from day care [3rd grader at her dad's this week per our regular schedule of one week on, one week off] and they tell me he hasn’t napped.
Now you tell me. How crazy do you have to be to take a toddler who hasn’t napped to Target at dinnertime?
Thank you, I am that person.
My gosh, I’m a mom of “one” 3rd grader & the amount of assignments we do in the evenings… ack!!!
And to think there was a time when I wanted 5. lol