Thursday, March 23, 2006

Our Kids are Cute so We Won't Kill Them

It must be true. Your child does something so annoying that you're on the verge of murder -- and then they give you "The Look." You know the look....the one with the big puppy dog eyes, and maybe, if they're wily and crafty, they throw a hug and an "I love you, Mom! You're the best!" in there just for extra measure.

This theory of mine was put to good test recently by Offspring. She was courting imminent demise by neglecting to tell me about (or to even attempt to begin) the Science Fair project that she's known about for over a month. Apparently, her teacher had decided to team three or four students together to do projects, and Offspring and her "team" hemmed and hawed over even choosing a project, much less doing actual WORK on said project.

Offspring decides to ask me for help in cobbling together some sort of project that she can turn in -- this is on a Monday. The project (which includes the "project", a research paper, a display board, and a logbook that the students were supposed to be keeping for the past month, detailing their experiments and their progress.) is due on Wednesday morning.

This is when the red haze descended over my eyes, and I sorta blacked out for a while. I probably broke at least 1 commandment during this time. I know I broke my Lenten vow to give up cursing.

After my tirade, I grounded Offspring, and then headed out to find some supplies we needed. The project got done in the end. I just wonder what grade we....uh, I mean, *she* got.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Aw, man. I remember doing this to my mother. It was all about leaves. What a nightmare!

ccw said...

So sorry! Kid L does this a lot; it makes me crazy.

KLee said...

You know -- I thought I had made the impression on her the LAST time that she tried to pull a stunt like this that it wasn't gonna fly. I guess I wasn't forceful enough. I don't think she'll forget it after THIS incident.

Now I'm curious as to what grade she actually got. And ticked that the other two on her team did absolutely zilch.

purple_kangaroo said...

Awww, hugs. I sometimes wonder, when I run into situations like that, how I will handle them.

halloweenlover said...

Oh no!!! I'm sure I've done this to my mom a time or two. You are such a good mom to help her!!!

KLee said...

Well, she got her grade back on the project today. She got an 85, which isn't the greatest grade I've ever seen her make.

I'm torn about it. Glad that she didn't fail, and mad that the grade was decent enough that she will probably not suffer any consequences because of it.

I want her to do well in school, and a large part of that is being a self-starter. It's frustrating that she wasn't more prepared about this project, and really galling for me because I'm given a hard choice: help her, and teach her that mom and dad will rescue her when she's lazy; or not help her, and let her fail when there's something I could have done to help her.

Either choice is bad, and the situation is really just enough to make me grind my teeth.

jo(e) said...

Yeah, that is always a tough call. Sometimes I'll step in and help my kid -- especially when part of the problem is that the teacher gave an unclear assignment or something over his head. Other times, I will step back and let the kid crash and burn and accept the consequences.