Hidden Truths

I have noticed some startling similarities between myself and Five.

For instance, she does not like homework.

We have an almost daily battle over the few, tiny tasks she has to complete and she rails against me as if I were trying to force her to eat live slugs, weeping and complaining that it’s TOO HARD and she CAN’T DO IT and she NEVER EVER…

The never ever is not actually specified as by the time she reaches what would be the end of the sentence she has usually fallen on the floor crying with self pity and rage, but I do understand the sense of dark despair and utter pointlessness of life that she can’t quite articulate but definitely feels.

I quite clearly remember feeling like that about homework.

I do try explaining to her that it will be much less painful just to do the few little tasks than to work herself into a state and  by the time she’s thrown herself on the rug and writhed around screeching she could have finished it, but this does not have any effect. She’s too busy whimpering with terror and misery.

Just for the record, we are talking about a bit of colouring, unscrambling a sentence, and writing the answer to some sums that she can easily calculate in her head. She does occasionally display an aversion to writing (her penmanship being somewhat lacking in finesse), but left to her own devices she will write secret notes and compose stories in one of her many exercise books, so it’s not as if she can’t actually utilise a pencil to form words.

I try to be understanding. I know she feels awful. But on the other hand, I can’t stand to watch her go through what I put myself through for literally years which eventually resulted in academic failure over what was essentially an emotional problem.

It’s not that I didn’t find my own solution to homework hatred. I did. I just didn’t do it.

I was incredibly creative about avoiding my homework and managed to get through high school by scraping by on natural intelligence, convincing bullshit, fabulous and inventive lies and deciding that as I was going to art college which was actually a gateway to being a pop star I didn’t really need to bother with all that school stuff anyway.
In one sense I was right. I set a goal and I got there, but the slamming of doors as I shut off option after option was near deafening, not to mention the sick feeling I got whenever a test came and I knew I’d get a D or an F and have to pretend I didn’t care.

I don’t want Five to feel like that. I want her to learn that her school work is just something you do, that sometimes it’s boring, but you just get through it and then there is the rest of life waiting to reward you at the end.

I tried getting her to set a timer for a number of minutes that she chose but this approach did not work because she chose one minute

I offered a computer game or television or a treat at the end of her tasks but she wailed that she COULD NOT DO IT and she wanted her treat NOW!

(tough luck, cookie.)

I asked which bit was hardest, did she want to start with the bit she liked most?

She said she didn’t like any of it, she HATED BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO and EVERYONE EVERYWHERE TELLS HER WHAT TO DO!!

Poor Five. I suppose in a way she’s right. It’s one of the very unfair things about being a small child. And I sympathise. I don’t like to be bossed around either.

We tussled and struggled, I reasoned and was rebuffed. I listened and cared, but finally I had had enough of the drama and I’m sorry to say I shouted back.

“SUCK IT UP, FIVE! Either you do your homework now or else you don’t and then it gets harder and harder to catch up until one day the only thing you can do is work somewhere where someone DUMBER than you tells you what to do ALL THE TIME for the REST OF YOUR LIFE! The choice is yours.”

There was a silence.

And a glare.

And then she picked up her pencil.

But it’s not like she did a great job. The task she had to complete was:

Unscramble the following sentence, write the words in the correct order, then finish and colour the picture (a girl on a lawn holding a string going up).

up The went kite .

Five expressed strong disgust at the simplicity of the sentence’s construction, gave the opinion that at least they should have made it:

Up went the kite! (she is especially fond of exclamation marks)

and wrote the correct answer in the most awful, huge uneven letters, reminiscent of how she was forming the alphabet nearly a year ago. She resolutely would not erase and rewrite them and she insisted on completing the drawing in grayscale, saying it was so STOOPID that it didn’t deserve to be in full colour.

I decided that it was better, on balance, just to let this slide and let her teacher deal with the quality of the work. At least she’d done some of it. Whew! We could move on to maths which was, hopefully, a little less emotional.

Just before I picked up the sums worksheet, I had a quick look over the picture part of The kite went up and noticed that there had been some modifications to the grassy area, not more than half a centimetre high, but running the width of the page.

Five had written quite clearly, in tiny, legible, evenly spaced letters.

I do not like kindergarten.

Do you think she’ll get extra marks for that?

(I’m hoping that Five develops a bit more of her father’s aptitude  and appetite for study in the years to come)