Why I stopped hovering over my second child’s homework (and what that taught me about the first)
The kitchen counter is covered with pencil shavings, a half-eaten apple, and a spelling worksheet that’s been erased so many times there’s a thin, gray hole starting to form in the paper. My second grader, Leo, is chewing the end of his pencil and staring at the word “because” like it owes him money.
I’m across the room, pretending to load the dishwasher. I can see the worksheet from here. I can also see that he’s spelled “becuase” again. It’s the same mistake he made yesterday. And the day before.
With my first child, Maya, I would have already been sitting beside her, finger pointing at the exact letter, saying, “No, sweetie, it’s c-e, not e-c. Watch me. See? B-e-c-a-u-s-e.” I would have taken the pencil out of her hand if she hesitated. I would have thought I was helping.
Now I’m watching Leo sound it out to himself. He mumbles, “Be-cuh-uz.” He taps the pencil on his cheek. Then he writes “becuase” one more time. I bite my tongue. He looks up at me. “Is this right?” he asks.
The old me would have told him immediately. The old me would have made him erase and rewrite it correctly, then made him write the whole word five times on a separate sheet for good measure.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Read it back to me and see.”
He reads it the way it’s spelled: “Beck-you-ase.” He pauses. “That’s not because.”
He erases the whole thing, and I watch him carefully write the letters one at a time, whispering them under his breath: “B-e-c-a-u-s-e.” He checks it. He writes the next sentence.
This is not because I’ve become a patient, enlightened parent. I haven’t. It’s because I already used up all my patience and energy on my first child, and I was wrong about most of it.
With Maya, I was the parent I thought you were supposed to be. I read blogs about early literacy. I bought the phonics flashcards. I turned every trip to the grocery store into a spelling quiz. When she brought home homework in first grade, I sat next to her like a personal trainer. I corrected every messy letter. I told her to fix her “b”s because they looked like “d”s. I reminded her to put spaces between words. I practically finished her sentences when she got stuck on a reading page.
The result? By second grade, Maya would not pick up a pencil without asking, “Is this okay?” She would write two words and then look up at me, waiting. Her teacher told me at a conference that Maya was a bright kid who seemed afraid to try. “She checks in a lot,” the teacher said. “She’s not taking risks.”
I remember standing in that tiny chair, hot with embarrassment. I told the teacher Maya was just thorough. But the truth was, Maya had learned that I would do the thinking if she waited long enough. And if I didn’t do the thinking for her, at least I would tell her if the thinking was right.
It wasn’t something I meant to teach. I thought I was being helpful. But every time I pointed out a mistake right away, I sent the message that she needed me to find the errors. Every time I corrected the spelling, I told her that getting it wrong on the first try wasn’t acceptable. So she stopped trying unless she was sure she’d be correct.
Leo is not the same child Maya was. That’s part of it. He’s more willing to be wrong. He doesn’t care as much what adults think. But I also think I’m not the same mother I was, and that matters more.
When Leo was born, I didn’t have the energy to hover. I had a baby in one arm most of the time and a second grader who needed help with her math page. So when Leo brought home his first worksheets in kindergarten, I often handed the paper to him and said, “You’ve got this. I’m making dinner. Help me if you need me.” And he figured it out. He wrote letters backwards. He spelled words wrong. And I didn’t catch most of it until much later, because I was busy. The little mistakes didn’t matter in the end. He learned to read anyway.
By the time he was in elementary school, I had learned a few things, mostly from watching Maya struggle with decisions.
The biggest change: I wait longer before I say anything. If Leo is stuck on a math problem, I don’t walk over. I stay where I am. I might say, “Tell me what you’ve tried so far.” He rolls his eyes sometimes. But answering that question forces him to talk through his process, which often helps him realize what went wrong. If he still doesn’t get it, I ask one small question: “What part do you know for sure?” That gets him to break the problem into pieces, which is a real skill. Giving him the answer never was.
I also stopped with the constant praise. With Maya, I used to say “Good job!” every time she finished a sentence. It got so meaningless that she didn’t hear it anymore. With Leo, I try to only respond when he has actually done something worth noticing, and I say what I noticed: “You fixed that comma after reading it out loud.” That’s specific enough for him to know what worked.
He still makes mistakes. So do I. Just last week, he brought home a science worksheet and announced he didn’t understand the directions. I read them, saw they were confusingly worded, explained the meaning, and then watched him fill in every answer wrong because he misunderstood the actual experiment. Part of me wanted to tell him to turn it over and start again. I didn’t. The teacher crossed out half the page and wrote “See me tomorrow.” Leo shrugged. He’s fine.
And Maya? She’s in middle school now. She still asks for permission more than I wish she did. She still wants me to check her essays before she prints them. Some of that is just her nature. She’s careful. She always was, even as a toddler. I can’t take all the credit for her caution or all the blame.
But I can see the difference in how Leo approaches schoolwork. He doesn’t treat mistakes as a signal to stop. He erases, tries again, or sometimes just turns in what he has and accepts the grade. That may not sound like a triumph, but from my kitchen stool, watching him slowly sound out “because” one more time, it looks a lot like independence.
I can’t go back and redo the homework sessions with Maya. I can’t uncorrect all those early letters. But I can hold my tongue with Leo, and I can remind myself that the work of learning belongs to him. It’s messy and slow and full of wrong answers. That’s the point. Those wrong answers are how he learns what right looks like. I just have to let the eraser work.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why I stopped hovering over my second child’s homework (and what that taught me about the first)