I Love Tuesdays!
Monday evenings, my eight-year old son has soccer practice
(right during the dinner hour from 6 to 7:30; it’s crazy, but accommodates us
working parents). Wednesdays, both boys have music lessons. Thursdays and
Fridays, they go to taekwondo. Every day, they attend an afterschool program to
accommodate our work schedule, and every day, they have homework (at eight and
nine years old!). Weekends are great, but on weekends we sometimes have soccer
games or a belt test or some other obligation, birthday parties, and always
house cleaning, folding laundry, and other household chores.
But Tuesdays…Tuesdays, the boys just come home. I love
Tuesdays.
And I can’t believe I contemplated giving up my Tuesdays to
put them in a parent-facilitated math club!
Friends of my eight-year old were concerned with the math
education their kids were getting this year. I don’t know if it was mistrust of
the state’s new curriculum Common Core or the teacher. Nonetheless, the parents
of these kids—several of them best friends of my son (and my best friends
too)—started rotating at their homes once a week afterschool teaching Singapore
Math to enhance the kids’ love and understanding of numbers. Singapore is a
teacher-created math curriculum accumulated from “the best of” around the
world. The kids seemed to enjoy it very much, get a lot out of it, and the
parents were all smiles about it. Hearing of this program, a couple other
parents decided to do the same, and initially, I jumped on the bandwagon. I couldn’t
join the existing group, because they were full up, but the other moms and dads
were wonderfully enthusiastic, and we started exchanging emails, doing the
crazy scheduling we parents do these days, and I bought the workbooks on
Amazon. The other parents said Tuesday was the best day for them.
I was going to sign my son up, which also meant signing me
up: for studying the philosophies and methodologies of Singapore Math, for
meeting with the parents to plan the curriculum and assess it once started,
prepping every third week to teach the kids, for picking them up and hosting
them at my house (a half hour of math, 45 minutes of raucous playdate, I
imagined), and for picking my son up from their houses the other two Tuesdays
right during the dinner hour since they had to have a later start time with
their work schedules.
Suddenly, Tuesdays looked bleak. But I continued on in this
vein anyway: 21st Century parental logistics, which is never-ending.
Then, before holiday break, the boys and I had one of our
Tuesdays. I brought my kids home at 4pm, and the time just spilled out before
us.
“Mom, can we get ourselves snacks?” “Of course,” I replied.
“Can we play with the neighbor before doing our homework?”
The sun was shining on a warm west coast winter’s day. “Yes,” I replied.
“Mom, can I take out my guinea pig and hold her awhile?” My
little guy used Christmas grandparent money to buy himself this new pet, along
with her cage, all her supplies, and the responsibility. “You bet,” I said,
“Wash your hands after. We start homework at five.”
There’s nothing more pleasing for a parent than being able
to say: “YES” to your kids without hesitation, guilt, shame or doubt.
After an hour, they both sat down to do homework without
prompting. Because it wasn’t yet time to make dinner, I got to sit down beside
them.
It’s hard to find great value in much of my kids’
homework—mostly spelling words, a little reading comprehension and math
worksheets. I never had homework in second grade. In fourth grade, my only homework
was occasional special projects like writing to the tourist boards of different
states and countries. This was a great assignment. I received my own mail,
which was amazing, and I fell in love with all things Connecticut, learned a
ton about Danish cheese, and started writing the tourist boards of every state
in the union.
Nonetheless, daily, skill-based homework is required of my
children. I find with my active eight and nine-year old boys that sitting with
them while they do their homework (even if I say nothing at all), versus
telling them to do it on their own while I cook dinner or take a phone call or
check email, makes all the difference in the world in their enjoyment and
absorption of the material. Rather than the declarative: “I hate homework!” I
hear, “Hey, that was fun” or at the very least, pride in completing it. On days
other than Tuesdays, I have to watch the clock to make sure we get everything
done and to the next place on time. The boys complain that there isn’t enough
time to relax as I set the kitchen timer to warn that homework starts in
fifteen minutes, usually while I’m boiling water for pasta.
But Tuesdays are different. That Tuesday, after homework was
done and tucked into backpacks, we had a lovely dinner, cleared the table, and
then the kids practiced their music: my older son was learning Seven Nation Army by White Stripes on
his electric guitar, my younger one sight-read Purple-People Eater on the piano—how fun is that compared to the
tuneless scales I had to play everyday. They took a long bath while I read
aloud to them, and then each of them read to themselves and got into bed on
time at 8:30, a rarity on other days.
They woke up the next day on time, rested, and content.
This prompted me to ask: why was I considering committing to
an afterschool math club? Why would I give up our Tuesdays?
Looking at it honestly, the reasons were mostly
psychological. Certainly there was my unhappiness with the basic worksheet-led,
stay-in-your-seat style of public education in California (even the best of
schools) and wanting my kids to love school and learning, but the truer reasons
were not wanting my son to be “left out,” not wanting to be left out myself,
wanting to give my children everything they need (Am I being a good parent? Am
I doing the right thing? The other parents seem to manage it all.), my
curiosity, and—I have to admit it—the old “keeping up with the Jones.’”
The decision for our respected friends to engage in
Singapore Math was a good one for them, which made it even harder for me to
follow my heart, go against the grain, to not worry about what they might
think, and to say that powerful, powerful word that every toddler knows before
it is “lifed” out of them: “NO.”
Both my son’s math abilities are above average. It did take
until December with the transition to the new state curriculum for the second
grade math become satisfyingly challenging, but my youngest loves “regrouping,”
the new term for “carrying the one.”
I also realized that if I was going to complement my kids’
math education, I wanted to do it through real life application: cooking
(measurement, fractions), allowance, investment and consumerism (addition,
multiplication, money facts, weight, percentages), art projects (patterns,
shapes), home improvement/building a clubhouse (angles, shapes, planes,
graphing and proportion, multiplication, grouping, division), and occasional
online games.
Of course, creating regularity without the accountability of
a group is much more of a challenge, but this is what fits into our lives
best.
There is value in our Tuesdays that outweighs all the
reasons for giving it up: time, simplicity, a sense of accomplishment without
stress, and a certain quality of life. And those are just the start.
I love my Tuesdays, and I just hope with today’s pressures
on kids and parents I will always remember this and create plenty of Tuesdays,
for them and me.
