Why Mornings Do My Head In

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“We’ve got to go!” I called out to our school aged kids. One was eagerly doing her homework at the dinning table and the other two were holding high level talks about Pokemon in the kitchen. “I need to be at work in ten minutes! Everyone down to the car!”

Suddenly there was a flurry of activity. Not. The dog glanced up briefly.

“I just need to finish my maths homework,” said Miss7 matter-of-factly, not even bothering to look up from the table.

I confess this threw me for a second or two because I’m not used to having children that actually want to do homework without my ‘encouragements’, like threatening to let the two year old play with their stuff. It’s more usual to have kids trying to trick us into signing their homework books while we’re preoccupied with making coffee.

The morning had been going very poorly. It was only the second day back at school for the kids since the holidays and already things were back in their usual groove – kids feigning illness in the hope they can stay home, or arguing because someone woke someone up before they absolutely needed to be woken up, or complaining their lunchbox is missing when in fact they haven’t taken it out of their school bag from the day before.

I’m amazed every single day I make it to work on time. Which really didn’t look like happening this morning.

“Let’s move!” I yelled.

Two kids raced past me onto the balcony.

Right.

Two kids didn’t seem to hear me, despite being in the same room. I yelled the same sentence louder, this time including their names and possibly a low level cuss word. They moved, but in the wrong direction. They explained they hadn’t packed their bags yet, and I explained how little time they’ll have with their electronics this weekend if they didn’t get a spring in their step and they finally slothed past me onto the balcony.

Which left one more school aged kid to encourage out the door. She’d been sitting at the dinning table hunched over her homework for the last half an hour. Surely it was done by now.

“Why didn’t you do your homework last night?” I asked.

“You said we had to go to bed early.”

So suddenly it was my fault? Now we were back on familiar ground.

“Pack it up,” I told her. “We have to go.”

“Nearly ready, Daddy,” countered Miss7, still hunched over her work book and scribbling madly.

“You’ve been saying that for ten minutes,” I told her in my best daddy voice.  “Whatever you haven’t finished, it’s too late. You’ll just have to get in trouble with your teacher.”

“That’s okay,” she said, finally packing up her pencils and joining her two older siblings, who had by now abandoned their bags and were kicking a ball up and down the balcony. “I’ll do it tonight. I don’t have to hand it in until Friday.”

Friday!!!

Is it wrong I’m entertaining trying to turn her off doing homework just a little? Don’t answer that.

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“Raising a family on little more than laughs”

1 Comment

  • My 9 year old daughter has two weeks to do her homework, yet decided to bring it with her in the car yesterday on a country drive and kept telling my partner and I to be quiet so she could do it, as she only has two weeks to finish it :0/

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