We’ve been struggling with homework lately. To be honest, I think homework has been a challenge from the start which is silly because it’s kindergarten! How hard can it be, right? Hah. Kindergarten schmindergarten. I think these three-inch packets of busywork they send home as “homework” are a trick to see if parents are paying attention, that’s what they are. If you don’t help your children do the homework correctly then it must mean you don’t love them! The homework police are watching! Fail! Fail! Fail!

For example: that black rectangular smudge on this thrice-copied xerox that someone hand-me-downed from the eighties is a van, right? V is for van? Or maybe it’s a sink. Is there an S on there? Hmm…let me squint and read the miniscule directions along the side of this really crappy worksheet copy…oh, the directions got cut off. We’re just supposed to know what to do because we’re grown-ups and kindergarten homework is for five-year-olds. Surely 39-year-olds can handle simple letter-recognition exercises? I have a degree in English dadgumit!

So my inability to comprehend kindergarten homework directions coupled with my five-year-old’s highly-effective homework resistance efforts have moved the actual homework completion process to a fairly volatile situation. Meaning, the morning that homework is due has turned into full-on bootcamp craziness, complete with me yelling my head off and the five-year-old running off to her room in tears. And this is just kindergarten!! Whatever are we going to do when she gets to word problems and science projects and book reports?!!!

My feelings exactly.

I don’t know.

We’ve tried everything. We’ve tried sitting down and doing little bits daily. She pokes at it. Spends probably 45 minutes procrastinating and picking all the berries off my centerpiece and gets 1/32nd of it done. We’ve tried me sitting next to her coaching her kindly. That lasts about 45 minutes and then my face melts off and I retreat to go text or something on my phone. We’ve tried comedy hour with me making jokes about every little thing. Haha! Isn’t the number seven so funny the way it slants to the left so that all the little children can slide down it and go to the front of the line! HA HA HA HAA HO HO HO HEE HEE HEE!!! She loves that method. We spend hours laughing our heads off and get about nothing done. And then when I don’t make jokes she thinks I’m the meanest mom in the whole wide world.

I’m such a cruel mom! I’m NOT funny AND I make her do stuff. Like pick up her dirty laundry and brush her teeth. It’s so unfair!! Why does she have do EVERYTHING!!!

Does anybody else out there struggle with kindergarten homework?

Do you have any tips for me? Anything has got to be better than how we’re doing it.

I remember when Bug was really really little and she’d show some sign of being willful or naughty, I’d smile. I had this terrible superstitious fear, deep down, that she was too perfect and that meant she was like an angel and would probably be taken from me. Isn’t that how the stories always go?

I don’t know why I felt like that. Maybe it’s rooted in the time my Guess Jeans that I loved so much got stolen out of my locker during gym. I know the value of a child and jeans are not really the same but I always feel this way about things that I love so much. Sometimes I don’t even want to put my laptop in my car because I’m afraid that I’ll get in a wreck and I’ll lose Bug, my laptop and my car all in one fell swoop. It’s ridiculous to be me inside my loopy brain.

Sometimes when I look at Bug and find myself getting lost in her big beautiful eyes, her blonde cascading hair and her perfectly little bouncing crazy body, it’s too much for me. How did I ever get so lucky to have her? I don’t deserve her! I expected so much less and God gave me so much.

But then the other foot falls and I realize God knew exactly what he was doing. He gave me the most stubborn, evil, drama-queen, devil-child who will eternally exasperate me beyond words. She might look sweet but try forcing her to eat a bite of perfectly delicious strawberry yogurt (that she picked out at the grocery store herself!) and it will turn into an hour-long, snotty, crying, freight train of emotions that can only be saved from complete and utter bloody ruin by eating a bowl of hot buttered noodles in the tub.

I’m so tired. How will I ever make it to her teens?

The other day I was making Bug her usual Peanut Butter and Nutella sandwich. (Yes, I know Nutella has four tablespoons of sugar in one spoonful. Gah!) Bug was sitting on the counter next to me, watching and chattering on as she is wont to do.

Everything was going along fine until I got to the cutting part. I cut the sandwich in half and then was about to cut it in half again to make four small triangles when she burst out crying, saying that I wasn’t doing it right. She didn’t want four little triangles. She wanted BIG triangles like her cousin Rapunzel makes.

Sheesh! Kids are so demanding. As if sandwich shapes makes them taste different.

What could I do? One half was already cut? I did what any mother would do. I pretended the big triangle was the mommy sandwich and the two little triangles were the baby sandwiches and made them talk to each other as they waddled on their corners along my paper towel work-space onto her plate.

She thought that was grand…until I told her to eat them

Then there were tears.

“I can’t eat them! I don’t want to eat the Mommy and Baby sandwiches!!!” Waaaah waaaah wahhhh waaaaaah!!! Tears, tears, tears. “Make me another sandwich so I can just look at these sandwiches!”

I tried and tried to tell her the sandwiches wanted to go to the party in her tummy but nothing really worked. She was a crying snotty mess—the usual hungry-needing-a-nap-growth-spurt routine of late. I know a lot of parents would just say suck it up or go hungry and I probably should have. But I finally worked it out for her by drawing a sketch of a mommy sandwich and some baby sandwiches that she could keep and that consoled her. Now we have a sketch of sandwiches permanently living in our house.

Lesson of the day: Never anthropomorphize your kid’s food.