I’m not doing my child’s homework (I’m just holding the glue gun)

As the school year gets underway, parents everywhere are confronting the same question.  

How much should I help my child with schoolwork?

It’s necessary first to define the word “help.”  Parents seem to have varying interpretations.  There is “help” as in “have you tried reading the directions?”  Then there is “help” as in “Go to bed.  Mommy just needs another hour with this glue gun.”

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Every parent believes children should be responsible for their own schoolwork. Some parents continue believing this even after the first B-minus. Then there are those who can’t stand seeing a report card with anything less than an A+.

Many parents begin the school year wedded to very clear principles.  The only way a child learns accountability and responsibility is to allow their child to do all the work themselves even if it means the occasional (gasp) failing grade.

Other parents accept the fact that their constitution couldn’t stand even one failing grade.  Those are the parents occasionally seen at the kitchen table at 11:57pm at night putting together a model of the Alamo constructed with “things found around the house” while the student sleeps soundly in bed.

Nothing teaches a child personal responsibility quite like waking up to discover his mother finished his Texas history diorama for him. 

By high school, we have been academically eliminated and our contribution consists mostly of asking seventeen times, “Did you turn it in?”

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But in the fifth or sixth grade, a parent’s usefulness has climbed to its peak.

This is when the assignment to create a poster board listing the five greatest accomplishments of the Abraham Lincoln administration turns into a heated art competition.  

It starts innocently enough.  Your child asks you to buy a poster board.  Then you hear that Madison’s mom went to Michaels and not only bought poster board but also purchased some fancy border and a glue gun. You even hear she’s called her friend who is a graphic designer.  This will not stand, so you bring out the big guns. Before you know it you’re standing in front of your Cricut Maker cutting letters in fancy fonts and adding a stovepipe hat.

Your child sees you frantically working with your own glue gun and your fingers covered in paper cuts and wisely notes, “Mom, you know this isn’t a competition between you and Madison’s mom.”

“Au contraire,” you reply.  That’s exactly what this is.

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But even the poster-board arms race pales beside the most organized fraud in American education.  Yes, we’re talking about the school science fair.

Walk into any gym in America during this event and you’ll see the exact same thing.  There will be a solar system looking very much like it was created by an eight-year-old.  Then you’ll notice a lopsided volcano also clearly the creation of a young child.  And in the middle of it all will be a fully operational desalination facility with LED lighting, laser-cut acrylic and a QR code.

Standing next to it (and the first place ribbon) will be one very confused looking fourth grader who can’t even pronounce desalination much less know what it is.  Her father is an engineer.

Probably the biggest lapse in parental ethics comes from the forgotten assignment.  The most responsible reply at 9:30 p.m. at night when your child announces frantically that he needs 100 popsicle sticks to reconstruct a fort for an assignment given weeks before but due tomorrow is to say, “You should have planned ahead.”

What really happens?

You find yourself in the Walmart parking lot, frantically Googling the nearest store that sells popsicle sticks, only to discover that six other parents, the same ones who claim to champion personal responsibility for their children, beat you to the store earlier that night.

You buy wooden coffee stirrers, toothpicks, two bags of craft sticks that are unfortunately neon purple and something from the floral department that looks vaguely colonial.

By 11:45, your child is asleep.

You are still working.

At midnight, you finish the fort.

You stand back and admire your handiwork. The walls are straight. The lookout tower is historically plausible. You even added a tiny American flag.

And that's when it hits you. Your child hasn't learned anything about frontier forts. He hasn't learned anything about planning ahead. He hasn't even learned where Walmart keeps the popsicle sticks.

But you have learned something.

Madison’s fort is going down.