breaking news: local boy says homework is stupid, dumb, fat

I'm not kidding around when I say P is not a fan of homework. And I should point out that we haven't started speech therapy through the school, yet, so we don't even have that to contend with.

Pretty much P hates everything about school except gym ("Jim," according to the paper he filled out on Meet the Teacher night. I was like, "Who is Jim? How have I never heard of this kid before?") and his teacher. He also likes getting home from school, and cites that as the best thing that happened to him all day every night at dinner.

Last night he had reading homework, which was very easy for him. He had to write his spelling words, which was also easy. But then he had to 1) draw a picture of himself playing with shapes (because he said that was his favorite part of math exploration) and 2) find thermometers around the house. And that pissed him off.

I do the boys' homework separately in most cases, otherwise G tries to copy off P but doesn't usually copy successfully and it's just a mess. But on things like "find clocks around your house!" or "find calendars!" or "find thermometers!" I take them on a walk through the house and play warmer/colder until they find some clocks/calendars/thermometers, or until I start having stroke-like symptoms.

Any night that I attempt homework is 60-90 minutes of dragging the kids through their very simple assignments. We aren't writing research papers here, people. We are copying spelling words, counting the number of dots on a domino, and describing what kind of cat Sam is. (A good cat. The boys were irritated by that question because they took it to mean the breed of cat. I kind of agree with them.)

P's latest insult is "fat." This is probably my fault because I'm a little spazzy about the word "fat" to describe people. So once again my efforts have backfired, and all the words we've spent the last 7 years forbidding are now on P's hot list. Stupid, dumb, fat, butt, and fart are now his absolute favorites. He throws fat around to describe all kinds of things that cannot in fact be fat, though, like homework, bedtime, school, and using a car seat. I think this is 94% annoying as hell, 6% funny. But this is probably how "gay" took off as a very catchy insult, so I should instead aim for 92% troubling, 8% sad.