Variations on a Theme
Here we are on another Saturday morning.
It's cold. The kids are finished with track practice.
Claire is talking her way through her homework. Dave is doing something game-related on his laptop. Ben is "cleaning up" his Legos. He's not, really. He's playing with them, when he really ought to be reading an essay about plastic straws and writing something. But, I'm trying to be calm and rational about it, and not lose my shit over a 10 minute homework assignment, that's probably going to take him the better part of an hour to actually do.
I'm not going to engage on this one.
I can't parse out what it is about Saturday homework that sets me off. Ben and I are both fine with the routine every other day of the week. But something about Saturday is just horrible. I can't be nice about it. I become this caricature of the angry mom, bellowing like an irate cow over it. He becomes the stereotype of the Distracted Kid. Can't focus on the homework, so either zones out with something else, OR runs around in a manic state.
It's a terrible combination. What's worse, the harder I try to disconnect, the angrier I get about it. And the angrier I get, the more bad behavior it seems to trigger in Ben. So, round and round we go, until we're both so angry we can't speak.
Dave has often said that I need to leave the house on Saturday mornings, that my presence is enough to set off the cycle. But that seems like failure to me. So, now I'm going to use the time for blogging. At least then some of the ruminations end up out of my brain.
It's cold. The kids are finished with track practice.
Claire is talking her way through her homework. Dave is doing something game-related on his laptop. Ben is "cleaning up" his Legos. He's not, really. He's playing with them, when he really ought to be reading an essay about plastic straws and writing something. But, I'm trying to be calm and rational about it, and not lose my shit over a 10 minute homework assignment, that's probably going to take him the better part of an hour to actually do.
I'm not going to engage on this one.
I can't parse out what it is about Saturday homework that sets me off. Ben and I are both fine with the routine every other day of the week. But something about Saturday is just horrible. I can't be nice about it. I become this caricature of the angry mom, bellowing like an irate cow over it. He becomes the stereotype of the Distracted Kid. Can't focus on the homework, so either zones out with something else, OR runs around in a manic state.
It's a terrible combination. What's worse, the harder I try to disconnect, the angrier I get about it. And the angrier I get, the more bad behavior it seems to trigger in Ben. So, round and round we go, until we're both so angry we can't speak.
Dave has often said that I need to leave the house on Saturday mornings, that my presence is enough to set off the cycle. But that seems like failure to me. So, now I'm going to use the time for blogging. At least then some of the ruminations end up out of my brain.
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