Conrad should be Morrissey for Halloween
Conrad, my oldest is still in the throws of first-grade culture shock. In the same way I couldn’t believe I had to go to work five days a week when I got a job as a copywriter after college, Conrad is surprised that nearly every morning is a school day, and that every afternoon he has homework. There’s a lot of “oh come ons” and sighing in our house. If he had an iphone he’d be upstairs listening to The Smiths in his room, singing along with the lyric “So please, please, let me get what I want this time. Lord knows it would be the first time…”
Six weeks in he wants a break, he probably needs a break but I don’t know how to squeeze one in between playdates, Lego club and the occasional run to the supermarket. Yesterday, he looked beat so instead of doing homework after school and before Tae Kwan Do, I let him watch Josie and the Pussycats on Boomerang, which meant we had to do homework this morning.
He sat at the kitchen table whining, “I haaate homework.” I ignored it for a while but when he purposely wouldn’t try I realized we can’t afford to deviate from the our plan to do homework after school. Usually he comes up to my office and we do it together. I make a big deal of stopping my work to focus on him. He even has his own desk with a mug full of pencils and penny jar for math problems. It gives us time to connect and I think he really appreciates being allowed to come into my office and focus on him.
At 8:15 this morning, I sat with him at the kitchen table trying to encourage him to find some pleasure in a nickel counting assignment. I sang out numbers by fives. I clapped the numbers to help him count out the tally marks. But it was no use. He was determined to hate the process. Frustrated I got up from the table and said, “Con you need to find the happy because this homework is not going away.” The words came out of my mouth and I wondered if he’d start hating it more just to spite me.
I remember being feeling defeated by homework, it wasn’t just a recap of the days lesson, since I was a struggler in school, assignments, especially anything math related, were a reminder of my weaknesses. Worksheets were evidence of the gaps in my learning. I didn’t know why I didn’t understand, but I knew I was missing some big important part of the puzzle and I felt ashamed. I’ve never been able to say or come up with right answer when I’m embarrassed.
And now all this heartache is being mirrored back to me in my child. What’s odd is that Conrad answers the questions correctly but never confidently, there’s always a curl of a question at the end of his sentence. If not there’s a sigh, as if he’s exhausted by the thought process it him took to get there.
I’m trying to think back to when homework and I started to get along. What was it the thing that made it easier? It really wasn’t until 7th grade when my Dad, a history buff, got me excited about the Louisiana Purchase. I have fond memories of he and I just taking about Thomas Jefferson in my bedroom and I know that his attention is what made me more confident to express my ideas.
I guess that’s what I should be doing with Conrad, because we can’t wait to get this right until 7th grade.
Epilogue:
I just got up from writing this post and looked at Conrad’s desk. David, my husband, left him a note that says in big black Sharpie letters: YOU ARE COOL!
Thank God for dads.