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Kaly Sullivan

Brand Storyteller | Creative Director | Copy Expert | Screenwriter

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The Evolution of Homework #10yearsaparent

May 15, 2015 Kaly Sullivan 2 Comments

homework

Way back when, a cave mom gave her cave girl the assignment to go out and gather dark blue berries, and the cave girl came back with purple berries resulting in many cave people dying from eating the wrong berries.

And because their population was significantly diminished by this mistake, something had to be done. The elders met and decided it would make sense to write all future gathering assignments down and make the cave girl’s parents sign it. But without written or spoken language, this posed a challenge.

Instead the elders declared that the cave girl would learn to pick the right kind of berries, or she would be pushed off the nearest cliff.

She learned.

Later when it was decided that children should receive an education instead being used as labor on farms and factories, these new students became adept at making up excuses why they did not have their assignments. Enter the classic:

The dog ate my homework.

Teachers quickly tired of this. They issued consequences for not completing homework.

The kids learned.

Then somewhere along the line, children became incapable of keeping track of their work on regular pieces of paper, so an assignment book was developed specifically for this purpose.

And when homework still went incomplete and missing, it was clear that all homework assignments were no longer the child’s responsibility, but should be traced back to the incompetent, lazy parents who were failing at monitoring their children’s homework assignments.

My children are constantly reminding me to…

Sign the reading log.

Sign the spelling book.

Sign the homework sheet.

Sign the weekly folder.

Sign the assignment book.

There are more signatures required for my second grader’s homework than for a mortgage.

This is my problem with all the signing:

Instead of teaching personal responsibility for their assignments, we’re teaching our children how to remind their parents to sign something which is sort of like personal responsibility. But not really.

I know that part of the signing is me acknowledging to the teacher and the school that I have seen what’s been sent home. But that makes me feel monitored.

Let my kids learn. Let me monitor myself.

We can handle the responsibility. Give us a chance.

If we can’t, we’ll be ready for the consequences. You can push us off the nearest cliff.

#tenyearsaparent is a weekly blog series about what I’ve learned in my first ten years as a parent. Whether you’re a parent nodding in agreement or shaking your head with disgust or a non-parent using these posts as birth control (the surgeon general wants me to tell you that reading blog posts about parenting is not an effective form of birth control), I’ll be spilling the beans on what parenting is really all about.

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#10yearsaparent homework, parenting, school

About Kaly

When Kaly doesn’t have her nose in a book, she wrangles and referees two elementary age boys and blogs about her humorous efforts to lead a mindful, connected life. She’s the author of Good Move: Strategy and Advice for Your Family’s Relocation, a book about the craziness of moving with kids. Her writing has been featured on sites such as Mamalode, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Scary Mommy to name a few.

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