Dad, Tell Me About the Time (52)

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

How did you manage your childrens homework?

We didn’t. I don’t think I ever got a good system where the kids came home and did their homework. It was a constant battle.

Homework was greatly complicated by the fact that many of the kids had sports and band going on. Ben would sometimes get home at 10:00pm from a game or a practice and then have to do homework. I felt for him.

The worst, however, was math. Alycia and Sarah just couldn’t get math, and they had very bad attitudes about it as well. I made things worse by being less than patient. I found it so annoying when I would clearly demonstrate how to solve the problem and then I would ask them to do a similar problem and they would just stare at it and say. I don’t know how.

Fortunately, they have all graduated and I think they’ve forgiven me for yelling at them.

On the other side of the spectrum we have Brandon, who never needed any help with his homework until Calculus came along and then he asked me for help. He was not very understanding when I told him that I always struggled with calculus and it had been decades since I had done any. He was well beyond what I could remember.