It is currently 5:30 in the morning. I've been awake since 2. Why? Beats me. But I figure if I'm going to be wide awake I might as well get something done. Since this doesn't involve waking Hubby up to sort and start laundry or banging around in the kitchen and waking the girls up earlier than usual, I'm going with catching up with a couple of posts.
So my huge mistake. I know you're shocked that I make mistakes. But I try to keep it real. This mistake involves #2. The one I've started having problems with slacking off on her independent work. So way back before we took the week off for Thanksgiving I looked at the rest of the IEW book we're working in for #2 and decided that since the grandparents were already in town that we would make that week a little easier and just work through getting a rough draft finished. Then we would come back after Thanksgiving and revise it and write the final draft and then have two weeks to write two more papers and we would end exactly where I wanted to. It was a great plan! Too bad I didn't remember that plan of action when we started the week last week. So for the rest of the story, keep in mind that I thought she was supposed to have written both a rough draft and a final draft before Thanksgiving.
When I opened the IEW book at the beginning of the week I had a passing thought of, "Wait a sec, I thought I had it planned out to where we would be ending at the end of a section, not have a week off at the end." But I was in full-on school mode and didn't think anymore about it. So as we're getting ready to start a brand new lesson I asked #2 if she had put up the final draft from her other paper. She didn't remember if she had so she got out her "work in progress" folder. Which is when we discovered that not only did she not have a final draft (please note that neither one of us actually remembered that there wasn't supposed to be a final draft), but she also had not finished writing her rough draft like she was supposed to. So, slightly in my defense, she didn't finish the work that she was actually supposed to do. The thing is, if I had remembered that she was only supposed to do the rough draft I would have just shrugged it off as a side effect of having family here and we would have gone on with a mild reprimand. That's not the way it went down though.
I am happy to report that I kept my cool through all of this. There was no yelling and I didn't make her cry or anything. But I immediately latched on to the idea that this was going to be an excellent teaching moment for her. We were not going to skip the current week's paper. She was basically going to have to write two papers in one week. I would be working with her on the new paper, but only editing the former paper. So to cut the story down a little bit, she did nothing but school work Monday and Tuesday. It is the first time in the 7 years I've been homeschooling that any of my children have had so much work. Normally I wouldn't even allow that to happen, but I was teaching a lesson so I stuck to my guns. She had to write 2 rough drafts for the old paper. With major editing having to be done on both. By the time Wednesday rolled around and I started reading her "final" draft I was ready to be done teaching that particular lesson and just ignore the mistakes I saw and let her be done. Except that the last half of it had some major mistakes that I knew would not be a good idea to ignore. When I told her that she was going to have to write it again she burst into tears. And I honestly did feel bad for her. She had had no time off that week and I hated that she had to write it again. But I used the moment to really drive home the point that she had brought this on herself by not completing her assignments. That it's not my job just to teach her math and writing, but that my job is to also teach her responsibility. I'm pretty sure I had a good line in the speech about there not being anyone around when she was an adult to hold her hand and make sure she got everything done that she was supposed to, she would have to do that on her own. It was a good speech. And at the end of it I suddenly remembered my brilliant plan from two weeks ago.
So I was faced with a dilemma. Come clean, admit how horribly wrong I was, and apologize profusely to my child who I had made work so hard because I couldn't remember my own plans and undo all the teaching about responsibility that I had instilled so well in her. Or I could continue on faking like I knew exactly what I was doing and leave her with a lesson she isn't likely to forget any time soon.
I chose the latter. Not for myself. I would have willingly 'fessed up to this one. I felt and still feel bad about it. But she really needed the lesson. And I'm not willing to undo everything she learned from this particular episode. I did confess what had happened to Hubby. He agreed with me. And one day I'll tell #2 about it too. But probably not until she is a fully-functioning, responsible adult! Until then the secret is safe here on my little blog. On the internet. Where technically anyone could find it. But since she's 9 and doesn't get online much I think I'll be OK for a couple of years!
On the plus side, we don't have a paper to write next week. We are officially done with IEW after this week for the rest of the year for #2. I think we're both happy about that.
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