The Homework Monster..[it will get you, too.]

I know it probably sounds dumb when you don't have a kid who is old enough for homework...but when you do, you'll understand!!! You know, having been out of school for quite some time now, I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I find 3rd grade homework at times a bit, well, difficult! Mostly I'm okay with it, but there are some math problems and writing skills and terminology that I just don't get anymore. Yes, I was your typical bookworm smarty pants teacher's pet nerd back in the day...but having to revisit multiplication tables, the structure of a sentence, and the different phases of a mealworm has proven to be an unwelcomed challenge. And if you know me, you know I HAVE to not only get it, lest my universe be in turmoil until I figure out the correct and perfect answer..but I also have to be able to explain it thoroughly so that someone else (read: my kid) could use my technique to figure it out..it's all part of the disease. ahahaa.

I've finally settled into the fact that my son is not the homework-loving type and it will most definitely take hours of me bribing him before he writes a sentence in his best handwriting or does his math worksheet without putting the same answer down for every question. He's intelligent..that's not the issue. It's getting him to focus on the task at hand that's the hard part. Cry-fests are no stranger to this house in the homework department.

My kindergarden daughter, on the other hand, is smart as a whip and actually creates her own homework for herself, so I'm not too terribly concerned about the amount of time I will have to spend helping her with her homework, once she begins to recieve it. Who knew, though, that she would begin to recieve it, like, this week?! You can imagine my sheer excitement when I opened her backpack to find a ziplock bag with the words "Mikayla's Homework" printed on the front in nice, large letters for me to see. I'm not sure I'm ready to take it on, what with my constant battle of tackling the other one's weekly math and writing already..it's all just too much!

I'm not against homework, but, seriously, it's one of those things that I just dread, because it's just one more thing I as the parent have to keep track of, and the more kids you have in school, the more homework you have to track. And, yes, the teachers emphasize that it's the kids' responsibility to remember to do it and do it to the best of their ability, but, let's be honest, you know that if your kid's not consistently handing in his work on time, finished and well done, it totally reflects on your parenting skills; perhaps indirectly, but it does.

All I know is, when I signed on to be a parent (or, in my case, "Oh s***, I'm gonna be a parent?!?"), I didn't factor in (hahaha factor, pun intended) the amount of time spent on homework or arguing about it. And if I'm having trouble helping my kids now, what the crap am I gonna do when they start bringing home chemistry and algebra? I better use the extra time I have now to brush up..

Oh wait...extra time? What's that?