Homework Heh Heh Heh

The week I had the mental breakdown involving kindergarten concerts and Build-a-Bear, Peanut's teacher offered to watch the children for an evening while Josh and I got away. Did I mention she's recovering from knee surgery? Yep. Because that's the kind of person she is. And I am the kind of person who will accept babysitting from a person recovering from knee surgery just to have an uninterrupted conversation with my husband. Hey. Don't judge.

Mrs. B was also Princess's (and Buddy's, incidentally) kindergarten teacher, and knows pretty much whatever is going on with my kiddos, so she also offered to do homework with Princess, to give me a break. And, I think, to see what happened.

What happened is I chose the most difficult of the math assignments, the one that involved a lot of in-your-head thinking, the one I knew without a shadow of a doubt was going to cause WWIII in our household. I didn't say anything about it to Princess, but within five minutes at Mrs. B's house, before I even left, she was working on it.

When I came to pick them up, it was done. Perfectly, with very little erasing. Mrs. B said she did it without any help, and that she was impressed with how easily Princess completed it. She said, "are you going to do that for Mom next time?" Princess shrugged her shoulders and said, "I dunno."

My first thought was how to keep my head from spinning around and popping off shooting green puss everywhere. My next thought was: well, now I AM SURE that she is perfectly intelligent and is not having a hard time with school work because of a neurological issue or a learning disability; at least I don't have to question THAT anymore. And then I thought. Hmm. WHY is she only doing this for me. The obvious answer is, of course, attention.

To be very honest, I am having a difficult time giving her more positive attention then negative. When she's not acting out, I'm mostly just relieved and kind of lay low hoping not to draw attention to myself or say something that's going to cause the next blood bath. So naturally, she's going to have fits, because that's how she KNOWS she's going to get my attention. Unfortunately I don't always leave her much of a choice.

So tonight she was working on a math sheet: fact families. I know she knows this; it's not anywhere near new. So when she got to problem 5 and said, "I need help," (Princess for, "I think I'll see if I can start a fight now,") I had a plan. I moved in close. I got next to her. And I read her worksheet.

4+4=8
blank+4=blank
8-4=4
12-blank=blank

And I handed it back. With a sweet smile.

She took it back to the table and finished it.

Correctly.


And lucky for her sake, too, because the next phase in my attack plan was to tell boring stories from my childhood.