I know for a fact that when I was kindergarten, I did not have any homework. Homework did not start until first grade for me in my San Francisco public school. I had a bit of a head start with learning since my mom was diligent enough to force me to practice writing and reciting numbers and all letters of the alphabet, both lower and upper case, before I entered kindergarten. Discipline was taught to me pretty early, and when I wasn’t behaving, I was whacked (as were most kids of our generation by our immigrant parents). A common complaint of kids of Kaia’s generation is that they do not have enough self discipline. Every single action is monitored and manned. They have a high level of ADHC diagnoses because their parents cannot handle parenting and succumb to simply drugging their kids up, likely with medication that is not even needed. It’s not an individual parent problem, but rather a generational problem: every generation has its challenges that it needs to attempt to solve.

Although I did not have the self discipline or patience to do what my mom did and try to get Kaia to know how to write all her English letters and numbers before kindergarten, I am very much a fan of homework at this age, if just in shorter bursts. I like that her school starts homework at this age; other people will not agree with me, but the reason I like this is that it instills discipline young. It forces parents to carve out the time in the day to dedicate to learning and reinforcing learning in the classroom. At the end of the day as sucky as it sounds, it’s really a test of the parents and how much patience they can have when enforcing that homework is not optional; it must be done, and done by a certain date for teachers to review.

I was chatting with my friend over tea about this last week. She asked me if homework was really necessary at this age. She said it seemed excessive, that when she was in kindergarten 35 years ago, she didn’t have homework (and she’s just fine now!). I don’t think that using us as the example is necessarily the right thing since every generation and its standards for everything will be different. Yes, I also didn’t have homework in kindergarten, but just because I had that experience, does that necessarily mean I do not want my child to have homework in K? If discipline is an all around issue for kids of this generation, we should probably be doing more to instill it at a younger age. It needs to become a habit, one they understand that is repeatable.

So even though once again, Kaia had a meltdown after lunch today and refused to do a second page of Chinese character writing, I insisted she had to finish the second page. We took many breaks. She ran away screaming and crying from the table multiple times, yelling in Chinese that she doesn’t like homework. But I told her: in life, she’s going to have to do lots and lots of things that she doesn’t like, but they are very necessary for her life and well being. She won’t get that now, but this needs to be reinforced… forever, muah hahaha!

Okay, that sounded a little mean to laugh. But I do mean that. We need to repeat to her that there are endless things she will need to do in her life that she does not like. I hate doing half the things I do in a day, but I know they are beneficial to me, and I’m almost 36 years older than her!