Advice welcome...

I just spent an hour and 40 minutes doing homework with Stuart.

He's 5.

An hour of it was work he had not managed to finish in class - in his homeroom class and in his art class. The art part took the hour, the stuff he didn't finish in school took a lot less and then we did the words for his dictee.

The guidelines in the parent handbook say 10 minutes a day for Grade One. Well the dictee takes at least that long (maybe I care too much??), but I do concede that the other stuff is pretty quick.

We "knew" that this was going to be a big jump for him - because of the different age cut-off dates between Luxembourg (30 August) and Ontario (31 December) he skipped Senior Kindergarten. His class in Luxembourg was a mixed Jr/Sr Kindergarten and the teacher told me that he's a bright boy who often knew the answers to things that the second years didn't. But that his fine motor skills needed some work.

His teacher here told me the first week that he needed to learn to focus and I explained that he had skipped a grade. She said no worries we would work on in together (she's always in a rush) once things settled down (I think it was the day after the unpacking service ended up being 3.5 hours - for all the stuff that took 3 full days to pack, I was a little overwhelmed). She said he was a very bright boy, that she could tell, but that he would need to apply himself.

I am getting notes from the teacher saying that he is working slow, or today that he was very distracted in class. The double whammy of homework from two teachers today has thrown me for a loop.

I know he has a short attention span - as in if he's not in the mood to do something he's not going to do it. We've been through this several times - violin lessons that he insisted on taking, then wouldn't play at the classes, LIttle Gym that he HAD to go to and then spent almost every class trying to come out to see me, and even Karate where he would try and go to the bathroom every 10 minutes. There was a week when I dragged him out in the middle of the class because he was refused the bathroom and spent the next 15 minutes howling (he really didn't have to go, he'd been before we left for class and when we got to class, I am not cruel).

The kid doesn't seem (to his frustrated and neurotic mother) to have sticking power. And it's one thing when it comes to extra-curricular activities, but this is school now.

I told him today that all the time we spent doing homework could have been used to do something fun - like going to the park on a nice day (Marc came home and took Julia out to the park). I am hoping that a lot of positive reinforcement and incentives like play time will help.

But any advice is welcome. I am new to this whole homework thing. And there's going to be a lot of days when Marc won't be around to take Julia to the park so we can do close to two hours of homework.

It also doesn't help that I am sick again. It started last week with a sinus headache, turned into a sore throat, then spread (as it always does) to my sinuses. Today it's also hitting the chest so I broke out the antibiotics that my ENT prescribed for an emergency before we left Luxembourg. I feel lousy, which doesn't help when you're trying to be a nurturing parent. Not to mention it's bringing back a whole lot of bad memories of the last 6 months we were in Lux - I don't want to play this game again.

Dinner time - thanks to my wonderful husband who let me stay in bed until 2:30 this aft.