Raising Devils

Playing Family

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 | Connecting the Dots | 2 Comments

Lily, Rory and Wyatt are devotedly and cooperatively playing an enthusiastic game of family with Rory’s doll house. (“Special for me!” but she lets them play. Sometimes.) So far I’ve heard the children go for an airplane ride, someone prepare dinner and ask how a school day was, a very convincing crying baby (that caused Rob to worriedly consider a rescue, but I was pretty sure it was faux, and I was right) and now, some kind of building.

The amazing thing is that Wy and Rory were doing it BEFORE Lily joined in–she’s usually the guiding force in this as well as the–well, I won’t say peacemaker. More like the peace broker. They have another five minutes before the bedtime clock strikes, but if they keep this up, they might score ten.

Poor Sam is rocking a pretty solid chunk of homework tonight.

Tags: homework, playing

Homework Help

Monday, April 27th, 2009 | Have I mentioned that I have kids? | Comments Off

It’s a beautiful night here. I’d like to go for a walk with the dog. I would much rather be going for a walk with the dog–and even the younger kids–than babysitting by 7-year-old while he completes a project about New York state for his “state fair.”

Go ahead, you say? Why don’t you? Why should you be stuck with hishomework?

Well, if I don’t contribute at all, then what he will end up with is a posterboard covered in random pictures, mostly of New York City, which is what he was really interested in, and probably not including–or including as an afterthought–things like the state bird, et al.

So what’s wrong with that? Well–I don’t know. I actually have no idea. I refuse to do the project, or really influence it in any major way. So it’s not focused–he didn’t, for example, highlight China town, or the different sports teams, or use different ways of getting around New York state to showcase different destinations. There is no New York diorama street scene. It is nearly as random as he would have done it, with only slight jogs from me. I did suggest dividing the board in half for city and state, for example. He came up with then putting the city’s motto and sports teams on one side and the state’s on the other, which I thought was good.

But obviously it could be better, and I could push him to make it better. I could suggest all kinds of things. Or, on the flip side, I could go for a walk. I hope I’m striking a happy balance. I have a suspicion that I’m coming in on the low end of the scale, and that I might as well just pour myself a vodka tonic, and maybe teach him to mix them while I’m at it, because I’m clearly not helping him to make the most of this educational opportunity.

Tags: homework, Sam