homework for parents

This weekend 10 year old Jessica needed to get a frame made for her homework ... which was all to do with a famous Virginian. Now, for obvious reasons, my knowledge of Virginian history is limited. I do now know that George Mason isn't just a University. Braddock and Lee aren't just roads, and I even know that Robert Frost isn't just a middle school. But I didn't know who William Henry Harrison was. (Apparently he was a President, but he was only President for 4 days, and he died in office.) So Jess has to find interesting things about this man, and construct a frame, which she will then decorate and label with these interesting facts. This afternoon I went to CVS and bought a sheet of flimsy poster board, and Jess and I got down to the business of stenciling his name and coloring in the stenciled letters.
Then it happened. The man of the house came in and read the homework instructions. And OK, I admit it, I am useless when it comes to following directions. I am missing the part of my brain which enables other people to look at a map and know that if you follow a particular route you can get from A to B (I invariably go from A to D, via Z, then back to B. I can only get there in a direct route when given very precise instructions by Andy. Very precise. Very) The sole instructions I am able to follow are recipe directions, and even then I think its only because I get to eat something at the end (If my teacher had given me a chocolate cake upon completion of math tests maybe things would have been different ... ) Anyway. Suffice to say, I still get confused when I attempt to understand what the teachers want from my children as regards homework. And I had not read what Jess needed this frame for. She needed to stick her head through it (?), dressed as her famous Virginian (help!) So ... we had written his name horizontally not vertically. WRONG! And then Andy gets a brainwave. "I'll make a frame out of wood!"
Of course you will dear!
"It'll only take a few minutes"
Of course it will dear!
Now, I have no problem with Andy making things. He is very handy with wood and a saw and a drill and nails and all that D.I.Y stuff. ( a bit like my Dad, who spent weekends working on little projects, and when my brother, then aged 4, was asked what his Daddy did for a living, said "he makes boxes in the garage") It's just that he is not very good about estimating how long it will take him to do these things. His "few minutes" usually turn into "A few hours" and yes ... he still isn't done. Make no mistake, when it is completed it will be perfect. But Jessica doesn't need a perfect frame when she is a sophomore in High School. She needs it tomorrow.
So, Andy will be working on it later, when he comes back from Church Youth Group. And it will be a very nice frame. Maybe I will post a picture when it gets finished.