(no subject)
I sit here with Isaac while he refuses to do his homework (dot-to-dot 1-100, write 12 spelling words 5 times each, solve 27 simple subtraction problems using a number line), and I wonder how my mother ever got anything done. I know now what a burden I was to teach. I remember vividly doing the same thing as him: sitting for hours on end, wishing I was somewhere, anywhere else, doing something, anything else, but not doing the simple task that could free me. He won't do anything unless I am sitting here with him. I can't tell him to do something small and walk away and do something and come back. I can't even do anything else while I'm sitting here with him, or he won't do his work. Each letter he writes has to be followed by me telling him to continue, not to stop, to go on to the next one. He refuses to write neatly, although he can. He actually spends more time writing messily than he would if he just wrote neatly. At this point he has spent four hours not doing his homework. It shouldn't have taken him more than half an hour, forty-five minutes at the outside. I know this, becaue I know how fast he can work. Unfortunately, this pace we've been setting today is the normal pace. It's past bedtime now, and we've reached the point where I can't promise him a break or a stretch if he'll only finish this small bit. He's got to turn this in tomorrow morning. We can't be nice about it anymore. It is, as they say, crunch time. Why he has to write his words five times each, I don't know. He had been writing them three times each, and he always aces his spelling tests. This week he has to write them five times. I think I might send a note with him asking about the change. The wording will be a sensitive thing, though. I'm actually only curious why it changed and I don't understand giving extra homework to a child that aces the subject naturally with no study at all.
Meanwhile, Kaely is buckled into her booster seat, strapped to a chair, to keep her out of trouble because if I take my eyes off of her today she gets into something. Most days she's not this much trouble. Today has been one of those days where she's been into everything. She has stripped down naked and now complains of being cold. I'll have to go take care of her, but I suppose Isaac can't be expected to keep working while I do that.
Also, I still haven't fed the dogs. I don't like dogs. Nothing against these dogs in particular, but dogs, while appreciative and affectionate, smell bad, drool overly much, and leave their poo lying around inconveniently on the ground -- usually right where I'm walking. They're not my dogs. It wasn't my idea to get the dogs. And yet, I am the one that feeds and waters them almost exclusively. I only agreed to get them because they were going to have to be put down otherwise for the simple reason that there was no home for them to go to. I am sick with a cold that was shared by the baby. I've spent the greater part of the past four days in bed trying to sleep it off before I have to start school in a week. The house is literally piling up around me and I can't do a damn thing about it because I am stuck here on this seat, watching my seven-year-old not do work that ought to have been finished before he even left school.
Meanwhile, Kaely is buckled into her booster seat, strapped to a chair, to keep her out of trouble because if I take my eyes off of her today she gets into something. Most days she's not this much trouble. Today has been one of those days where she's been into everything. She has stripped down naked and now complains of being cold. I'll have to go take care of her, but I suppose Isaac can't be expected to keep working while I do that.
Also, I still haven't fed the dogs. I don't like dogs. Nothing against these dogs in particular, but dogs, while appreciative and affectionate, smell bad, drool overly much, and leave their poo lying around inconveniently on the ground -- usually right where I'm walking. They're not my dogs. It wasn't my idea to get the dogs. And yet, I am the one that feeds and waters them almost exclusively. I only agreed to get them because they were going to have to be put down otherwise for the simple reason that there was no home for them to go to. I am sick with a cold that was shared by the baby. I've spent the greater part of the past four days in bed trying to sleep it off before I have to start school in a week. The house is literally piling up around me and I can't do a damn thing about it because I am stuck here on this seat, watching my seven-year-old not do work that ought to have been finished before he even left school.