Friday, August 19, 2011

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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This scenerio seems all to familiar at our house, Way to go! Good luck with homework this week, we are starting school Wednesday and the homework battle will be on....Love ya guys:) Helena

Brittney said...

Good for you. LOVE the wake up call. Maybe they will listen a little better next time. I need to practice that a little more often myself. Sadly, my 12-year old is my worst one that way. :(

The Clark said...

Love it! Teaching them to be responsible for themselves. I try this occasionally with my kids.

Taylor's said...

I am so much like you - you hate to see your kids fail and want the best for them but after going to a parenting class and hearing "Let your kids fail over and over again now - when they can afford to fail will only help them later in life" it clicked for me.

My kids can afford to fail now so I can correct them and they can fail on the little things so that if the big things happen hopefully they will not fail.

The story was amusing and I am sure we will get to the point in our house one day. Super proud you stuck to your guns!

Here are to many more homework sessions (right?!?)

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...