On Sunday I wrote some lovely words about not wanting to count the months until the end of the school year, but instead trying to savor them.
Four months, two weeks. And I really hope that most of them are more savor-able than this evening has been.
Trying to help four kids with homework simultaneously is destined to end in frazzle. This is particularly true when part of my brain will not shut up, but is instead providing a running commentary, complete with grade sheet, about how I am handling each bit of parenting that I do. Today’s grades are not stellar.
Nothing has gone wrong. The kids are cheerful. They are cheerful little cats whom I must herd. Well, except for the moments when they are stressed little cats hissing and spitting at their various homework sheets. Our house could be a wonderful and peaceful place if only I would stop trying to make them do the things that they are supposed to be doing.
The other voice that I wish would shut up is the one who evaluates all my decisions against the theories of homeschooling and unschooling which would abhor the very structure of homework itself. Of course if I switched to those unstructured methodologies, I would have a ranty voice saying I was failing to teach discipline. The voices in my head will not let me win today. I think I shall bury them under ice cream. I’m pretty sure I can savor that.
I second the burying with ice cream. If not that, then chocolate chip cookies.
Third for ice cream. Nagging internal voices drown in it, or at least change topics to complain about eating habits. And eating another spoonful of ice cream to spite that random bit of my own head shouldn’t feel so sweetly vengeful. But that little bit of me sure picks on me a lot. And rarely in any sort of usefully constructive manner.