I hate homework
Is it really worth all this stress and screaming?

by Terri Mauro

My daughter is a champ about homework. She knows just what she has to do, gets it all out of her folder and sets herself up on the kitchen table and polishes it off with minimal supervision. No nagging needed. She may have a learning disability, but she loves the trappings of learning. She's proud to be a homework self-starter.

And so I have always been a little smug about homework. I'd listen to other mothers complain about hours-long screaming matches, endless monitoring of assignments and enforcing of homework time. Those moms hated homework, and wished the teachers would do the teaching on their time so that the family could just be a family during family time, and not a sweat shop. But I was happy to have my girl bring work home, so I could see what she was doing and how she was doing with it. Yep, we just love homework here.

That is, we did until my son hit first grade.

No one doubts this boy's ability to learn things, but his ability to put what he's learned down on paper is severely compromised. He has some good reasons for this--low muscle tone makes it hard to hold a pencil, delays in fine motor skills make it hard to move the pencil around. I liken it to being asked to do paperwork while running on a treadmill. After a while, the physical exertion may not seem worth the trouble.

But he also has some bad reasons for refusing to do homework: On a basic level, he just wants to do what he wants to do, and what he wants to do is not worksheets. He's dogged in the pursuit of his own desires, be they for lining up cars in rows or counting keys or jumping up and down or staring out the window keeping tabs on the neighbors. Spelling words? Math problems? Gee, mom, I'd love to help, but I'm busy here. Getting him to sit and write involves varying degrees of yelling, screaming, threatening, and bribing. Then, of course, when he does a quick and lousy job just so he can get up again, you have to erase and start the yelling all over again. Not a fun way to spend an evening.

Then the spirit of "How dare you give him this homework" come upon me. Why should a kid with such fine motor problems have to write his spelling words three times each? Shouldn't he be able to do it on the computer? Shouldn't he be able to just say them to me? Isn't the purpose of the assignment spelling, not penmanship? Then why do his papers come back marked "Write Neater!" if I yell a little less and let him write the way he writes, without constant do-overs. Does the teacher want to come to my house and yell at him so that our family relationships are not marred by constant conflict? Or are these writing-intensive assignments her little bit of revenge for having to spend the whole day with this busy little guy?

The most frustrating thing is that, really, he can do it. He'll struggle with the writing, but he knows the spelling, and could polish it off in a short span of time and be back to playing or whatever odd pasttime he fancies. Instead, he spends all his time and energy fighting, fighting, fighting. It's exhausting, and makes me see the point of all those moms who complain. At least I know, as I browbeat my child to make him do that work already, that I'm in good company.

Happy birthday
One year older, one year closer to puberty. Yikes!

by Terri Mauro

Today, my daughter turns 10. We passed the landmark of with-us-as-long-as-she-was-in-the-orphanage last year at age 9, so this birthday is mostly significant for the double digits and the extreme nearness of puberty. The latter worries me especially because she is nearly as tall as I am already, and the thought of an insolent teenager towering over me is a tad terrifying.

So far, she's been nothing but a sweetie, and maybe that gentle disposition and useful eagerness to please will extend into her adolescence. She's two years behind in school--thanks to language delays, learning disorders, and several years frittered away in self-contained special-ed classrooms before making it into a mainstream group this year--so she may well hit her social transitions, if not her physical ones, with her now-2nd-grade classmates. Socially, emotionally, behaviorally, she's barely at an eight-year-old level.

And yet I feel the hot breath of approaching puberty on my neck. It's not just her size and her rapidly blossoming shape. It's not the fact that she already has her 12-year-old molars, a startling sign of physical advancement in a girl who's delayed in just about everything else. It's not even the Backstreet Boys and Brittany Spears CDs she's demanding, or the way she now prefers Nickelodeon to Nick Jr. and "Zoom" to "Barney."

Family matters
Should we adopt a kid or a kitty?

by Terri Mauro

There's a strong opinion these days among my kids that our family needs a new member. My daughter is desperate for a sister, but would settle for a puppy. My son would like a brother, or a cat, or maybe a cow. The necessity for a new addition is a given, but its species appears up for debate.

Their dad and I are so far resisting all suggestions. The care and feeding of pets is something neither child is really ready for. And the care and feeding of siblings is something we're probably not ready for, either. To say that our two little bundles of love and neurological impairments fill our days to the brim is an understatement. I'd like to think we have enough affection and energy left to fit a fivesome instead of a foursome, but you can't exactly return a child if it doesn't work out. You can't really even return a puppy, if it turns out not to fit my daughter's stringent criteria of "a dog that likes me."

Vacation anxiety
It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It'll be fine.

by Terri Mauro

It's finally here: Come Monday, we leave for our vacation in Orlando, Florida. Going to visit Mickey. On the busiest theme-park week of the year. With a hyperactive boy and a whiney girl. On an airline so small I've never heard of it. With a stopover. Can you tell how much I'm looking forward to this carefree family getaway?

It'll be fine. The timeshare is nice. There's a lovely pool. Of course, I'll have to wear sweatpants while sitting by the pool so that my thighs don't scare the children, but I'm sure the temperature won't be higher than 90 or so. Maybe I can sweat off some of inches. Fun, fun, fun.

Last year, we didn't go on vacation at all. By the time I got around to making timeshare reservations for April, the place was booked. We moved in August, which pretty much cancelled our plans to go to California that month. So I haven't been on a plane in quite some time, which of course exponentially increases my anxiety. For a while, we thought about taking the train from New Jersey, and though it was less comfortable, less timely, and more expensive, I'm kind of regretting our decision against it.

But it'll be fine. Travelling with kids is never what you'd call relaxing, but we're bringing along our best friends to act as second-string parents, so maybe we'll get a break here and there. Certainly we couldn't have a more trying time than the first time we brought the kiddos to Orlando; our son started the week by hitting his face on the side of the bathtub and going to the hospital for stitches, and ended it by jumping in the deep end of the pool and almost drowning. Good times! If only the ER sold souvenir T-shirts.

We won't go there this time. It'll be fine. We'll navigate the endless lines. We'll withstand the Florida heat. We'll swim and sun and sightsee. Or maybe we'll just sit in the air-conditioned condo and watch "TV Land." Hey, relaxation's where you find it.

copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro