A+ for failure

This morning was awesome.

There were tears, there were lunches being thrown into plastic walmart grocery bags, there were unsigned papers left behind.

It all started last night......
After the umpteenth time of telling the boys to get their homework done, I gave up. When Kurt got home, I told him that he was on homework duty. After being blatantly ignored, Kurt didn't ask them again for the rest of the night. Owen decided instead to play his DS. Isaac thought it would be appropriate to stay at a friends house until 10:00 p.m.

Kurt told me that I need to stop being a military mom and forcing the kids to do their homework. As hard as that is for me, and it is really hard, I didn't do or say anything to them this morning about their homework, getting their planners signed, or getting all of their stuff into their backpacks.

Sweet redemption came this morning.

Isaac asked if I could play vocabulary bingo so he could get it signed and turned in. Unfortunately, I was busy. And he still needed to do his morning chores. Owen, still obsessed with his DS thought he was fine to play the dang thing up until 1 minute before we were to leave. It was then that he realized that he had homework pages still sitting in his homework folder and that I hadn't yet signed his planner, and he couldn't find his lunch bag.

As I was backing out of the driveway with Isaac and Gavin in tow, Owen comes running out of the house with an armload of papers, his planner, a pencil, his lunch in a plastic walmart bag, and his backpack all opened and upside down. With tears running down his face, "Mom, I have to do my homework."

As Owen frantically works on his homework in the car, Isaac asks if I can play vocabulary bingo with him. I told him I couldn't as I had to drive the car. "You should have done your homework when we told you to," I said to the boys. Owen says, "What! You never told me to do my homework."

Owen, Owen, Owen. (head shake)

When I returned home after dropping the boys off, I found a folder sitting by the front door, an unsigned reading paper, and spelling and vocab papers on the table.

I smiled as I saw all the stuff that didn't make it to school. It also made me smile to see them worried that they didn't get their homework done and their papers signed. Kurt keeps telling me that I need to let them fail. I did that today. It was awesome.