Looking back at my school days, I had a love/hate relationship with homework, as most kids do. We know it’s necessary to reinforce learning, but it can be a real drag to do. Sometimes when it’s on a subject we like, it can be fun. Other times, it can feel like pure torture. I do not remember having homework until I got to first grade, but at Kaia’s school, homework begins in kindergarten. I appreciate the rigor because what earlier homework also does is that it forces self discipline a lot earlier. And I think in today’s society, kids really do need to learn self discipline and have it reinforced more often.
Kaia gets two sets of homework each week: one is for ELA (English language arts), and one is for Mandarin Chinese. The ELA one is about the things you might expect: daily reading with a caregiver, practicing writing one’s name (first AND last), as well as letters. For Chinese, some of it is just drawing pictures that resemble Chinese strokes, while others are actually stroke practice to begin. For Chinese, Kaia is required to complete eight pages of Chinese homework each week for this term; we shall see how it progresses and accelerates.
Chris coached Kaia through her English homework; I watched over and encouraged her Chinese homework. The most ridiculous thing that I never got warned about becoming a parent is what a true pain in the the ass the transition from “no homework” to “homework every day” is. To be honest, it wasn’t even the homework itself that was painful; she was actually pretty decent about completing the basic Chinese strokes (we are entering week 3, after all). The worst part of the homework… WAS GETTING HER TO WRITE THE DATE ON THE TOP OF EACH PAGE. She still gets the number “9” backwards. Sometimes, she forgets to add the straight horizontal line at the bottom of the number “2.” On her homework pages, she’s expected to write her name and the full date at the top corner of each page. She hated this so, so much. She whined, whinged, screamed, cried, jumped up and down, ran from the table, and got boogery over this whole process. I eventually had to sit down with her and coax her through… each date.
We finally finished after what felt like an eternity. This was a true, true test of my freaking patience. I gave her some apple sauce (from Trader Joe’s, since she said my homemade apple sauce is not good…) as a “treat” for finishing. And then we still have… tomorrow, and every next day of her academic life for more homework. What joy awaits!