Ever since the time of cavewomen enrolling their cavechildren in Cavern Elementary School, we parents have always helped them with their homework — adding and subtracting stalagmites from stalactites, geography lessons in dirt with a club, and even mastering Hooked on Hieroglyphics. Fast forward to present day when, at about grade 6, things got so advanced, it would’ve been detrimental for me to have helped them in anything other than lunch-packing and hopscotch. And now, with the new core math, I’d need a graphing calculator, a Promethean Board, a syllabus, a xylophone, and a Xanax to almost help. If I can’t use an abacus and my 10 fingers, count me out.
So, it’s with understanding and sympathy that I witness parents struggle to aid their children with school assignments. But it’s with alarming frequency that I observe them leap-frogging over the fine line between “assist” and “do.” This school year, I’ve seen a multitude of parents overtake and complete their child’s entire assignment. And I can tell you this: the child is more than capable of handling the task themselves.
The parents (mothers) will research the project, belly-up to the computer and actually write the report, choose the photos, print it, proofread it, staple it and do everything but hop on their broomstick and deliver the finished product to the teacher themselves. It leaves me agog. I want to shake them by their enabling shoulders and scream: “Wise up! You’re hampering your child’s progress and maturity! You are handcuffing them to a life of parental reliance and neediness!”
Have parents gone mad? Are they so afraid of a child attempting a challenging project and perhaps securing an average grade? Is average bad? It better not be, or my children are screwed. Listen, I’ll admit that when my son was in fourth grade he had to create a poster showcasing an assigned country. Upon completion, I just thought it would look sassier if he glued sand around the area. A beach featuring real sand? Home run! He refused and I forced him. He finally slapped down some glue, threw some sand on that bad boy and carried it to school, and not at all with the enthusiasm I thought it deserved. He came home that day crying. “What?”
He sobbed: “My country was Switzerlandand you made me put sand around it and it’s landlocked, Mom! It’s not a beach! She knew you helped me. I got a C!”
Well. That was embarrassing. Heh heh. And that marked the first and very last time I did more than offer a paperclip for anyone’s projects going forward. Not that anyone ever asked me.
My point is this: Children who don’t do their own work simply cannot own success. Cannot. They will never know how to temper achievements with failures, large or small. They will never work independently and they can never strive for personal greatness because they never accomplished greatness on their own. Their mothers did, however, and posted their work on Facebook; but in college, Mama cannot hike to PSU and diagram molecules in organic chemistry for Junior. For every book report we pretend they complete on their own, for every poster of a landlocked geographical site we hope to improve, but actually impede, the fact remains: we are securing their feet to the ground when we should be encouraging them to fly solo.
Step-off and let them fail. Or succeed. Or simply just be.
Even a cavewoman would agree.
