Skip to main content
Let someone else take the heat. This is because I am not a fan of drama. There is a whole lot of drama around homework, an extra dose of Sturm und Drang that I can’t cotton to. So I shirk my duties and let my wife deal. My daughter is a master complainer, a dillydallier of the first order, and a good daydreamer. I’m not good at dealing with it. But that’s when screen time happens! Most programs have a little bit of fun and then a little bit of homework time. With everyone stuck doing homework together, your kid might even finish before she comes home. Besides not having any homework, having the homework already done is the easiest way to do homework. And that might mean even getting the wrong answer, as long as they understand the process behind it. Except I thought math was about getting the right answer. In fact, that’s what I liked about math. 
Moment of Surrender
That’s maybe my favorite thing about math. If I wanted no right answer, I’d do any other thing but math. Is everything uncertain now? What happened to good old math? So give new math a chance. But in new math, it’s about the journey, man. First, you’d subtract 0 from 0, and so far so good. Put that 0 down there. You do what your brain would actually do in real life. First, you round that $4.60 up to $5.00 like you’re not the cheap bastard you are. It’s the why of math. It’s great to have an old friend back. Spend Some Time
Something must have happened at school. Unless you have one of those precociously chatty tiny adults, you’re going to need tips on finding out what your kid is doing all day now that she won’t tell you anything. Fine. Remember school? Most days weren’t bad and they weren’t great. Not very memorable, not much to speak of. Come to think of it, most of your days are probably fine, too, if you’re lucky. I learn more about my daughter’s day on the quiet walks to and from school than any other time. It’s like she needs the space to tell me stuff without the pressure of me asking for it. Make sure you provide some time to just listen to your kid. Still want to get your kid talking? Try some of these on for size. How was school today, really? Tell me one thing you learned today, but use the voice of the teacher you learned it from. Tell me something that made you laugh today. Depending On You
What do you call a fish with no eye? I’m still the funniest. When were you bored today? What do you think about . Where do you play the most at recess? That’s the best place. Who in your class could you have been nicer to? Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m calling their parents. Where is the coolest place at the school? Do you think I could still hang there if I dressed up like a kid? You know what, forget it. What do you think you should learn more of at school? Do you think that you’re the best judge of that? I mean, you’re just a kid. You’ve spent years carefully curating your child’s food. Pinterest is lousy with bento boxes full of amazing food that I assume a parent definitely made and that the parent’s kid definitely appreciated. So now that your kid is in school, is it okay for him to just eat the cafeteria food and let you save a bunch of time and money and let all the suffering of preparing lunches stop? It’s all there. I’m getting hungry just listing it. And the cafeteria food has changed, too. Now there are more options and healthier choices for your precious child. Here are just some of the new food options for your kid to ignore. He can ignore the lettuce and stock up on the weird bacon bits. Or he can put together a nice salad and then smother it with dressing like you do at that midtown hot bar you go to. They are like french fries, but instead of using potatoes, they use zucchini. I guess that’s better? All you probably know is what he doesn’t like. Great! You don’t like turkey anymore? Or how about carrots? Those don’t work either, huh. Let the lunch ladies deal with your tiny foodie and his rarified tastes. There are no guarantees that he’ll like what’s on order that day, but at least it won’t be your problem. He needs to start to own his choices and make his own mistakes. I have the opposite of a fond memory of eating a huge bag of candy corn when I was a child and yacking it all over the place. Only eat half of a huge bag of candy corn at a time. The seventies and eighties were a golden era of thick, gooey sauces that tasted great. So you don’t want that for your child? But sometimes the ranch dressing makes the carrot go down, and cafeterias always have sauces. Sure, you come for the ranch, but eventually maybe you develop a taste for the carrot. That has to be the worst threesome imaginable. How annoying is it to have a carefully packed lunch sent off in the morning only to have it return in the afternoon untouched or barely pecked at? Let them eat school lunch! Oh yeah, it’s still that time. Maybe you’re already involved in other ways. Perhaps you are a coach of your kid’s team or you are a scoutmaster or something. That’s great, but that’s all dad stuff that we knew you’d do. Are you good with money? Schools can’t seem to get money from the government, so it has come down to you. But they aren’t going to just come out and ask for money over and over. These will be passed over in favor of marshmallow treats. Needless to say, this never happens.