Wednesday, March 10, 2004

No Homework? Are you sure?

I've been struggling with my oldest boy. He's ahead of his class in just about everything; his teachers rave about how well he does, and yet, he struggles with his homework. It's because it's boring. It's stuff he knows and it's the same piddly stuff over and over. But I'd like him to learn that successful people do what they don't want to do. If left alone to do his work, he just sits there, so we have to sit next to him and coax him on like personal trainers. This is all because he doesn't get the work done at school. And then soon after we started doing this, he stopped having homework. He got it done at school, he said. But the other night we were looking for his glasses and we found stacks of assignments balled up under his bed. So my wife asked the teacher to send home a note every day with his assignments written on it. If there's no note we know he's hiding something again. Two nights ago, I stayed up with him until 11:30 pm. I must be pretty gullible, though. Several times he had me believing he was on his last page. When we got up the next morning my wife pointed out there was still more to do.

We've developed a pretty good incentive program, however. As soon as his homework is done I read The Narnia Chronicles to him and his brother. I love those books and I like that I'm able to experience them again through my kids. It's a nice bonding experience. So it's working out.

Last night my five-year-old and I were getting situated to begin reading and we bumped heads. It was a light bump but he's pretty dramatic about such things and grabbed his head in pain. I asked if he was ok. He said he was and then he said, "It's a good thing I wasn't knocked out or I would have missed the story!" Yes, that is very fortunate.

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