Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Fifth Grade Homework - Ad Nauseam

The other day Olivia brought home two homework assignments. These were on top of the weekly packet she brings home each Monday.

The first one we did was math. Ugh! It was a worksheet on speed, distance and time. Whatever! It was so very irritating.

I mean, give me a freaking break.

Olivia is very smart. She can do so much. But to ask her how long it will take her to drive 57 miles if she’s going 38 miles an hour is just stupid.

Can I state right here, again, how much I HATE doing fifth grade homework. It’s not that I hate helping my child do fifth grade homework. No. I hate it when she brings homework home that I am obviously going to have to do. I can explain it to her until I’m blue but she’s probably not going to get it.

This is not to say she can’t get it, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t WANT To get it, which means, she’s not going to get it.

And anyone out there who believes they could ‘force’ Olivia to do this stuff, to understand this stuff, to ‘get’ this stuff, is welcome to come to our house and parent her for an evening. Just one evening is all it would take to realize that you can teach a child to count but you can’t make her do math. I also invite them to go to her school with her for one day and spend a few hours with her teachers, bless every one of their hearts. These people do NOT get paid enough to put up with my child, is what I’m saying.

And that feels so unfair because she’s not at all disruptive. She’s just…easily distracted and doesn’t feel any urgency to do anything that is put in front of her. So…she does what she wants when she wants and doesn’t care about grades or notes home or having her tablet taken away or being yelled at or, well, anything. Punishments don’t work. Rewards don’t work. She doesn’t mean to irritate those around her with what appears to be pure laziness, she just wants to do what she wants to do and doesn’t think school work is important. Like at all.

Is this a 5p- characteristic? Or is it just an Olivia characteristic? Who the fuck knows? What I do know is that this is what we deal with it on a daily basis. And 95% of the time, she’s fine, she’s a delight even. But that other 5% when we’re doing homework? Please, can the zombie apocalypse just happen now so we can never have to do homework ever again?

Ahem. So.

After the math worksheet, we had to do a practice test for the Ohio State testing that is coming up. It was over geography.

Okay.

Yes, I’m rolling my eyes.

I did make Olivia actually listen to me as I read each question and I made her give the answers she though were best.

And it was fine.

My frustration level went down.

But damn. Why does it have to be so much work?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you get homework that Olivia can’t or won’t do, can you just skip it? I doubt that the teacher wants you to do the worksheet.