Cheers to Judith Newman for her charming honesty about who really does her son's homework:
“Listen,” I hiss. “People pay me to do this. I have a master’s in literature from an Ivy League school.” I continue, pathetically. “I write for all the major magazines. I write for The New York Times, for God’s sake.” Oddly enough, this doesn’t mollify him.
How I found myself justifying my career to a 12-year-old was this: I wanted him to ace his “To Kill a Mockingbird” essay, and I was nervous. I am always nervous; you might be too, if your son’s highest intellectual aspiration involved beating his friends at their daily lunchtime poker game. He usually won’t let me near his homework. But this time, after much pressure, he did. Because, as I calmly explained, I knew just what this essay needed.
I read the whole piece with a knowing smile. One of my favorite things to watch when I taught piano lessons was parents, while their children were engrossed in an activity. Take, for instance, the aptly-named Solitaire. The child is patiently making stacks of note and rest cards, building down on the bottom and up on the top. If he makes a mistake, I will correct him in time -- that's the way he learns. But while he dithers, or if he misses a move -- oh, my, how the mothers squirm, knowing they should keep quiet but unable to avoid a "Honey, look carefully, now . . . " and the fathers tend to just blurt: "You've got a sixteenth note there!" I would give them my best Patiently Suffering Teacher look and they would sheepishly zip it up.
On one hand, as a recovering perfectionist / control freak, I totally understand why it must be hard for parents to allow their children to miss something -- a comma splice in the essay or a key move in a card game. But on the other, it really isn't missing anything; it's simply learning naturally. Somehow the child will grasp the concept in her own time, using her own methods. When I'm tempted to intervene with that process, I remember the thrill of working something out on my own -- tying my shoes in elementary school, or using a table saw in college -- and I watch the student calmly, waiting for the moment she figures it out alone. A triumph.
