Math Problems

I am not sure what happened tonight. How it got as far as it did. But I knew I could not give in, no matter how red her eyes and face got from crying, no matter the endless stream of tears streaking down her cheeks. No matter that I was dying inside, simultaneously angry and heartbroken, that it had come to this. This travesty, this trauma, this drama that neither of us asked for or needed.

First grade homework. First grade MATH homework to be precise. All she has to do is one page of subtraction. It’s called Rocket Math and the premise of it is to actually time her and see how many she can do in one minute. There are 92 problems on the page. Ninety two. How many six year olds have the patience to do 92 problems at one time? Even trying to break it down, do some 50 problems one day and 42 the next – even THAT is a struggle. And that’s for a kid who actually CAN do math. But see, the thing is, she doesn’t want to.

She wants to go play after school – let her imagination and her feet run wild. Or she wants to chill and play on her ipad for a bit. She wants a snack. She wants to come out to the barn with me and play with her friends that come while I teach lessons. Or play with Daphne, the cat. She wants to have dinner and take a bath and read stories with me. SHE DOES NOT WANT TO DO MATH HOMEWORK. And the feeling is quite mutual.

Baby girl is very, very smart. She doesn’t struggle to understand concepts, or to see the wisdom of tricks and shortcuts. She can easily subtract using a numberline, or the old fashioned way of lining up the numbers one under the other. She can use her fingers. None of these methods are acceptable. Baby Girl wants to do it in her head and she wants to do it quickly. So she does them wrong. So she can be finished and get on with her important activities. Somebody has to sit there with her and either write down the answers while she does the work, or find all the ones that are similar so we don’t have to go through hell more than once. She will find every excuse in the book to put off doing her math homework. Write a letter to her teacher? Sure, let’s practice writing neatly. Do some spelling words? Sight words? Read a book? Absolutely.

Do math? No, no, no, no, and still no again. It isn’t fun. Not for her, not for me, not for Daddy, not for Sissy, not for her patient friend Rina who is in third grade and well past subtraction. Sissy takes off home when math is mentioned. Daddy goes to work. Rina hears her mom calling her. Which leaves…. Me. Mommy. The Demon. Because that is what I turn into. I simply cannot understand WHY she won’t just DO THE WORK. At first I encourage. Then I start saying things like “we could be done by now, if you would just buckle down.” I say “Baby Girl, you are so smart, you can totally do this stuff.” Then she starts whining. And whining. And whining…. until I can’t hold it together and I completely lose my shit. I yell. She cries. I feel awful. She cries some more and says she’s sorry. Which quadruples my guilt over yelling at her. Sorry, sorry she says with rivulets of tears and snot. I put my head in my hands. I pick up my phone. “Don’t text Daddy!!!!” she cries frantically. I come back sharply with “Let’s get this done then!” I say she’s stubborn. She gets even more upset. I say please can we just do this and she howls that she doesn’t know the answers.

On and on it goes until we are both a puddle of feelings and exhaustion.

She can spell “starvation” and “plastic.” She can read chapter books. She can write and imagine wonderful stories. She can play pretend school and she can ride a pony and do all sorts of beautiful, amazing things. She can look at me with her heart in her eyes, in both happiness and sadness. I worry that this will traumatize her. That it will only get worse as the grades go up and the homework gets harder. That she will completely rebel against doing any homework at all. It’s only first grade and we are a wreck over math homework. I worry that she sees me lose my shit with her and thinks it’s her fault, when I know damn well it isn’t. I think that it probably scares her to see me lose control and I beat myself up over that. All because of math homework.

So, friends, tonight please say a prayer that the end of school will come quickly. That summer break will soon be upon us. That moms and dads everywhere survive these last few weeks. And that the shit-losing is minimal and that the kids are not traumatized permanently. And have a drink in honor of all of us that are still doing first grade math homework at 45 years old and at 9 pm when little children should have been asleep an hour ago. We are not ok. This is not ok. I’m going to take a deep breath and leave you with this…..

Homework sucks and children need sleep.