<p>Lol, except for Amy Chua, I think all parents have been there
[Jen</a> Hatmaker: Worst End of School Year Mom Ever](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Worst End of School Year Mom Ever | HuffPost Life)
Make sure to check out the slide show What is Mommy Homework? </p>
<p>There is a special place in hell for the French guy who invented papier mache…</p>
<p>“I am exactly still like that at the end of school, except the opposite.”</p>
<p>LOL! So true!</p>
<p>And multiply that by the Third Child Slump. </p>
<p>My oldest had a “What?! Well get started on that right now!” mom. </p>
<p>My youngest has a "Ummmhmmm… Whatever… " mom.</p>
<p>My only homework rule is: Do NOT tell me we are out of printer ink at midnight the night before the due date."</p>
<p>She is earning the same high school grades as the oldest.</p>
<p>This made me smile; thank you for posting. I am so happpppy both my kiddos are grown. Five children - sweet heaven. I particularly liked the slide showing all the dollar bills. I shall never forget the fourth grade mommy project to make a doll according to very detailed specific instructions. My son sat with eyes filled ready to spill over while he watched me make the danged thing - he thought it was his own incompetence that made him unable to start let alone complete that project. The stupid teacher put all those mom dolls up at the front of the room above the blackboard for a MONTH. Ugh.</p>
<p>I have seen this, and I have been this mom! My children are really spread out in age and so I had 16 continuous years of ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. Finally finished, thank goodness. </p>
<p>I despise group projects, done outside of school, until the children can drive themselves, stay up past 830 and are masters/mistresses of their own lives. My daughter knows that if there is a choice, she is to do projects by herself. This May, in the last few weeks of schools, she had two. Ugh.</p>
<p>I raised two weirdos who liked to do homework. I never had to check their folders or even ask them if they’d done their homework because if I did, they would look at me like I’d lost my mind and say “OF COURSE.”</p>
<p>I was a major procrastinator in school, but for some reason my kids hated to leave anything to the last minute. I guess they take after their Dad.</p>
<p>I never had to check over my kids’ homework. I only got involved if their grades dropped. My H was in charge of getting the material for them, but they managed to do their own projects. D1 also had a doll project in third grade. We spent over $50 to buy all necessary materials for her to make a colonial doll. D2 had to build a pyramid. She was quite smart in using marshmallows and toothpicks to build the pyramid (she ate a lot of it too). She was very happy with her work until she saw a classmate with a perfectly tiled pyramid. The classmate’s father owned a construction company. Those pyramids were in displayed for parents night and D2 really wished we were more talented.</p>
<p>When S2 was in the gifted and talented program in third grade, the teacher told the students they had to make a costume of the historical character they had been studying. (Each student had a different character.) And, she announced, “I don’t want you just buying a costume!” Guess what that meant . . . . We really didn’t like that teacher. </p>
<p>S2 was King Ferdinand who, with Queen Isabella, gave Columbus the bucks he needed to head to the New World. Like there are any pictures of him we could copy.</p>
<p>@oldfort, S1 had a similar building project in 3rd grade, but it was a medieval English castle instead of a pyramid. </p>
<p>On parents night, there were plenty of lop-sided cardboard castles, and then there was the one precision built, perfectly mitered, routered, dove-tail-joined carpentry opus magnus.</p>
<p>I was a slacker mom all year.</p>
<p>In 3rd grade you had to dress up like a fairy tail character. I told D to find some stuff around the house and she went as a witch. With a plastic skirt and hat. Imagine all the other girls as Disney princesses and Glenda the good witch with elaborate costumes. 3rd grade was the year of the project. We had the doll project also which D did herself. I walked into the room and exclaimed to the teacher “my what talented parents you have”. I despised that year. I danced a jig when they got out of elementary school.</p>
<p>The article is laugh out loud funny. We had to make a rule about telling me by the day before. Or else. For some reason, they always needed to take in baked goods. Warn me in advance or get something with veggies. Btw, my kids are still afraid of clowns.</p>
<p>For us, the 3rd grade project revolved around a book they had read, recreate the character’s home and yard . You should have seen the amazing piece submitted by the architect dad- two story historically accurate house, with simulated roof tiles, inset windows (with panes) and a precisely cut log/picket fence. Should have heard the praise heaped on… the little non-artistic girl. That’s when I tuned out to that sort of thing.</p>
<p>May was hitting the wall time and I just dragged myself through from then until mid-June. I continued to slack when they brought everything home from their lockers on the last day of school - mostly spiral subject notebooks but also art projects, photos, syllabi, band music, on and on and on. We just piled it in the basement until I caught a second wind when the last one went off to college. </p>
<p>Five years later, it’s all been either recycled, trashed, or saved. Just one bin per kid. Considering what I started with, I should put that on the bragging thread.</p>
<p>VeryHappy-
A couple of years ago my child had one of those “dress up like the character whose biography you’ve just read and give a presentation” assignments. My daughter had chosen a book on Mary McLeod Bethune. Fascinating life, great book, but how do you make a blonde, blue eyed 10 year old look like a former slave without putting her in blackface and a fright wig? Ouch.</p>
<p>Sue22:</p>
<p>Oooooooooo. That’s a politically correct challenge.</p>
<p>Review homeworks? Pfeh. I should start sending corrections to DD1’s college Intro to Structures class notes :D</p>
<p>I’m not much of a hater. I can see the value in all sorts of things, but grammar in math class and parent projects made me despise a couple of teachers over the years. Honestly, the things that used to be “extra credit” for kids who couldn’t take the test and do the work have now become part of the curriculum.</p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>We had mercifully few projects at home. And the school my youngest is at now is all project-based, but they do these in school, and actually have very little homework. For any written homework, the rule has always been, “do it when you get home before anything else”. When she was younger we made sure ti was done; now she sits down and get its over with without prodding.</p>
<p>We have the best Goodwill on the planet and that’s been the source of every costume. You go online and look at photos or paintings of the person and/or era you’re doing, then go pay 99 cents for each item you need. Donate when done. I’d think having to represent a person of color when you are white would best be done by wearing period clothing and calling it good. D never painted her face white! That said, she tried to avoid such characters if she could. </p>
<p>I’ve always been a slacker mom. School has always been important, but so is real life.</p>
<p>I was so driven that my mom said, half seriously, that she’d give me ten dollars if I made a grade as low as a B!</p>
<p>And now my youngest is barely scraping his way out of high school. Two weeks ago, I wasn’t even sure he was going to graduate! Sigh. I became the anti-Tiger Mom with him sometime last fall.</p>
<p>In California the 4th graders do a mission project. I remember the mission I made like, uh, 50 years ago, from sugar cubes. By myself, because my mom was always hiding in her bedroom (five daughters). When it came time for my daughter to do her mission project, I remember the glowing smile on the face of the artist mom when we admired her ‘child’s’ project. “Wow, amazing mission”, we said to the little girl. “Thank you”, said the mom.</p>
<p>Our fifth grade has (and has had for at least the past eleven years) an assigned science project: build a working rollercoaster, without using electronics. </p>
<p>One large family used the same rollercoaster, recycled for each kid. The only changes made from year to year were the paint and theme. (Scary Halloween Coaster, Fairy Garden Coaster…). And they handed it in over and over to the same two teachers who taught fifth grade science.</p>