Begun2211824

For the previous couple of months, my personal son happens to be drowning in prep! He's in second-grade. While you may know, he has dyslexia and ADHD. But, his "disabilities" are not the problem. As a matter of fact, our targeted interventions and his hard work have put him very close to "grade-level." He hates writing (the process of forming letters, not composition). Otherwise, he's progressing nicely. Nonetheless, he's drowning in prep. This past weekend, do my homework he had a three-day weekend. (In theory, anyway.) We spent three hours every day on prep. By Sunday afternoon, I was crawling out of my personal skin! I thought, "Geez! I am intended to help other parents AVOID this mess! What advice do I give others that I am not taking for myself?" I literally grabbed my personal "Homework Help for Parents!" CDs and read through the table of contents. This is not the first time I have done this. Two years ago, when my son was in kindergarten, I had to re-orient myself with all of the lessons I learned over many years as an in-home tutor and prep coach. I am happy to say that I identified our problem areas and corrected course. I rediscovered my personal "Night Before School Tool" and "Chip Clip System." Things began to hum again. Perhaps it would work this time, too. I ran through the list of topics on the CDs. I mentally checked each one off of the list. "We are doing that...and that...and that..." I thought. "So, what am I missing?" I thought to myself. Parent Guilt is an ugly thing for all of us, but this was more than just Parent Guilt. Since this is what I do for a living, Professional Guilt set in. "Oh my gosh! Why would anyone trust me if I can't help *myself *out of this..." I WAS SUDDENLY STRUCK BY A LIGHTNING BOLT OF THE OBVIOUS... We simply have too much prep! It seems ridiculously obvious to me now. But, when emotions are in charge -especially Mama Bear Emotions - logic takes a back seat...by a long shot! I was trying to be a responsible parent and teach/model/encourage the same level of responsibility in my personal son. In the midst of that, however, I missed the clear signs that we were well beyond age-appropriate levels of prep. I have been coaching parents and students through prep for over 15 years and have spoken with hundreds of parents about prep battles. I can usually trouble-shoot any prep problem, as long as the parent *really* wants to resolve it. "Too much prep" is the trickiest problem to solve! Don't get me wrong, I adore my personal son's teachers. I am forever grateful for the way they embrace him with compassion, yet hold him to high expectations. He highly respects both of them and I don't want to compromise that in any way. THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY I must tell you, when I was a classroom teacher, I had NO WAY of knowing if the workload was too much! I assigned what I *thought* was reasonable. The prep simply came back to school, complete and accurate. One day, when teaching third grade, I received a note from a frustrated mom. She wrote, "I help Bailey with her math prep every day, but it is tearing her apart! She gets overwhelmed and very upset..." I had no idea! In class, Bailey held it together. She did "fairly well" on tests. do my homework I didn't know that "fairly well" was not good enough for her. She put pressure on herself to answer every prep question perfectly. She didn't understand that homework was "practice." It was perfectly okay if she got some questions wrong. She could learn from mistakes. So, I assured Bailey and her mom that I did not assign prep to make them miserable. If prep was causing tears, then it was time for them to wrap it up. Bailey's mom could write me a note and we would trouble-shoot from there. This experience made me realize that parents accept prep without any question. From talking to all of those frustrated parents, I know how reluctant they are to complain about prep. We don't want to teach our children that they can "complain" their way out of responsibility. We can struggle and fight to no end with our kids over prep, but all the teacher sees the next morning is a perfectly complete assignment. Inspired by Bailey, I created a platform for regular prep feedback. I added a cover sheet to my personal weekly prep assignments. The cover sheet asked parents to rank their child's understanding of each assignment, on a scale of 1-5. I also included a space for parents to write a brief prep summary each week. This feedback was incredibly valuable!