OPEN POST: How do you find time for homework?

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Homework. Who knew?

My daughter is five. She started school this year.

She loves it. She’s filled with pride about how she’s learning new things, meeting new kids, has new stories to tell us every day, stories we don’t know and haven’t heard before about people we haven’t met.

It’s her first foot forward into independence, and I – contrary to both my own expectations and the ones we’re handed by the world around us – am so happy about it. I get an enormous amount of pleasure from seeing her grow in confidence every day. I swear she walks a little taller in her gingham uniform frock.

Yes, I am a proud mother.

BUT – school brings its challenges. The hours. The holidays. The the complex mish-mash of activities and equipment and expectations. It’s Clean-up Australia Day and every kids remembered their gloves except yours. It’s grandparents’ day but you’ve got meetings, it’s Easter bonnet parade and you haven’t had time to get crafty…

This is not news. These are all the stereotypes of  the life of a working parent. You sneer at them, imagine they can’t half be that bad. And then they’re your life.

Right now, this week, I’m struggling with homework.

Our wonderful public school is not heavy on homework, but still, it’s there, already, in kindy. Home reader, Reading Eggs, Mathletics.

The homework is there, but the extra hour in the day to do it is not.

At the end of the day, my kindy kid is exhausted, and so are we. Corralling them home from daycare and after-care, onto dinner, into the bath, pyjamas, books and bed. That’s the frantic rythym of our evenings. There’s no fat in the schedule, and now I have to find some.

So at the moment homework is happening just before bedtime books.

I’m not convinced this is ideal. For a start, my daughter’s tired, cranky, and not in possession of a razor-sharp focus. Plus, book time is sacred in our house, and rushing through homework to get to it makes the home-reader feel like a chore.

What do we do? What does everyone else do? If you have a job, and kids, how do you make time for homework?

Because we’re not even at the end of Term 1 and I’m tempted to start lying on the Home Reader Record already. And there will be NO smiley faces.

Help.

What have you been up to this week? Let us know in the comments.