Intrusive Homework Disorder...IHD

Disorder: an illness or condition that disrupts normal physical or mental functions.

Would you believe my daughter informed me yesterday that her teacher already told her that she will have homework over the Winter break!  Hold me back!!! There are so many ways my mind wants to go with this post!!! So hold on tight and whether or not you are a proponent of homework, you need to read on.

First I know there will be those questioning, "Students will have 10, 11 or even 12 days of break. Are you telling me they can't fit in homework during that time?" After all, it only takes a couple hours to do homework and we have days! Sounds reasonable and not at all egregious. Can they 'fit it in'?  of course. But I am here to tell you...look at that strong word I used there, "tell"...not suggest, ask or posit...I am here to tell you, having the time to do the work is not the point!

The point is that if I have something I need to do, I am feeling the anxiety, worry and planning associated with that task. That is NOT a break!  And if I have something that needs doing, even if I do it right when I get home from school, it is still infringing on the hard earned time away. But I am already digressing....let me get back on track lest you think this post is just going to go through the list of positives and negatives of homework. The only point I have to make in this post will put the kibosh on any other argument one might present for giving homework over a long break. ("Training them for college" anyone?...wrong!....my son just got home Thursday night from college...no homework, just saying)

I will stop playing and digressing now, I promise. This is serious.

Here is my main point, and you need to hear it loud and clear. We live in a time when we have forgotten to take our own care seriously. "Self-care" is an actual thing now, not a natural tendency as it should be. Even the most primitive animals have the natural tendency toward self-preservation, but not us anymore. We have to implicitly teach 'coping with stress', 'strategies for organizing' and 'deliberate self-care'. As teachers we must provide "brain breaks", we need to teach "mindfulness", we need to remember to eat right and exercise.  How is it possible that we have forgotten how to 'do' the most natural of tasks, taking care of ourselves? Self-preservation is in our natural make-up, yet somehow we have forgotten how to practice it!  That is insane! But I know how it happened...I know the reason.

Intrusive Homework Disorder, or IHD, is a result of years of schooling where we have foregone the natural tendency of humans to take a break from the stresses of school in the name of homework. We have taught nature right out of our kids. We ourselves, the adults of the 21st Century, are the product of the early stages of IHD. We need classes and tutorials and Ten Step Plans regarding self-care because in the name of teaching responsibility, we have untaught self-preservation. In a time when we need to teach people to "do" self-care, we have a lot of nerve suggesting the teaching benefits of homework. Do you see what it is teaching when we don't allow people to have the break that is necessary to come back refreshed?  We are teaching that the 'self' does not, in fact, matter, and the 'self' certainly does not come first.

There is nothing, NOTHING, that we teach in our curriculum that students need to 'work on' over a break.

In case you missed it:  N-O-T-H-I-N-G!!!

Please don't be a perpetuator of a poor practice! Students need to take a break from all the stresses and reminders of school. And by the way, the same goes for you!  In case you are one of the casualties of IHD, here is your permission to take a break over break. Sounds insane, right, that someone should need to permit you to take a break, but the symptoms of IHD are pervasive. Together we can work through and defeat this disorder. In case you are so far gone that you have completely forgotten, a break is time to leave the work behind. It is time to enjoy the people put in your immediate vicinity to the greatest extent possible. While you are taking the break from work, you might want to consider a break from the other things that keep you from fully enjoying those you love: worry, devices, self-pity, etc...you can do it. You might need to train yourself, old habits are hard to extinguish, but the good news is that the effects of IHD are reversable. Once you feel the freedom, you will be stronger to resist its hold on you. You deserve a break! You need a break! Your students and personal children need to learn from your example of taking a break! The Road to Recovery is paved with happiness. Together we can do it!

A side note: This is one of those posts that regardless of how many times I reread it, I still am not quite sure how much of it is in jest, and how much of it I feel so strongly that I want to scream.  You can decide.  Thanks for reading!  D.

Allow the Experience of Struggle

Confession: I just took my daughter's social studies study guide, crumpled it up and threw it in the trash can. Two points for my clean shot from across the dining room. I do believe I saw that in a parenting book somewhere. It would have been the chapter about surviving the teen years, or perhaps the one on how to proceed through them without needing psychiatric care in the end. You see, my daughter who shall remain anonymous, has been crying for about an hour now.  Heck, she's been crying for a full month, about how unfair her teachers are and how hard school is. The actual list of complaints is much longer but generally speaking, when the tirade begins, the other three girls and I run for the hills. But tonight, I just couldn't stay away as the tearful rant went on about how she is just going to fail because it's so unfair, and how she doesn't understand ANYTHING! Don't get me wrong. I feel for her. It sucks to feel unprepared and to have no other course but to head for the very thing that is causing your angst. I get it! But it is also the path she has created for herself, and so the path she must take. It is certainly the best shot we have right now at having her learn to not procrastinate and instead put in the time necessary in order to understand challenging material.

(Lest you are a teacher of one of my children, let me be clear...THIS IS NOT ABOUT THEIR TEACHERS! You are all awesome and just what they each need this year!!!)

School generally comes easily for my children and as such, it is not teaching them much about real life. Usually they skate through their classes barely batting an eye, writing what needs writing, performing math as if it is second nature, and picking up the intricacies of science.  But not this year for this child. And here's my nasty little secret: it's all just fine with me! This child has needed to have the experience of struggling, the wake-up call of challenging work and the consequences of putting things off even though you know the deadline looms. She has needed to know that struggles and challenges don't just go away because you want them to or because you chose to attempt to avoid them. She might even need to cry and get it out and feel like she is going to fail. Mean of me?  maybe....but in the end, she will not only survive, she will learn a valuable lesson or two at the cost of a social studies grade. Not a bad deal. She will learn that procrastination will not get the work done. She will learn that she must read the material instead of trying to write an essay without putting in the grunt work. In the end, when we look back, she will learn that her mom stands by her even when she might not feel that my watching from the sidelines is effective support at all.

The connection I make here is to my "me-ness" over the years, dying a little in order to surrender to the potential that was inside. For our full potential to come to fruition, we are given opportunities along the way where we must put forth an effort, put the needs of others first, or put ourselves on the path of failure in order to live through that, and emerge on the other side stronger for the pain and grateful for the glory.  In the end, while the glory is so wonderful to embrace, I think it is equally important to hold onto the memory of the pain. We need to recall how difficult those moments were in order to really appreciate how incredibly far we have come. So is the case for my daughter. When she starts to internalize the pain of the consequences of procrastination, she might be more apt to avoid it in the future.

You see, the pain, the struggle, the challenges are all there to be reminders for us as each new life-experience builds on the previous ones. This is even more important as teachers or parents of young children. We need to be secure in allowing them to struggle and maybe even fail. We know they will survive and even learn if we allow them to have the experience. To deprive them of the experience is to be negligent, especially when we will expect them to handle situations in the future as adults even though we have not allowed them to face struggles as children. We all need life-experiences in order to die a little, grow stronger and move closer to our full potential. 

As adults we are called to so much in the way of life-challenges. Staying up all night with a teething baby only to have to go to work the next day...foregoing the concerts, vacations, dinners out, because someone in our care is not well...losing a job, a home, a family member...deadlines, expectations and missed opportunities...the list goes on. Many adults shy away from these moments, dancing around them instead of living through them, and then they wonder why life is so difficult for them. Every moment in life is training us for the next. We need not be afraid to face challenges, struggle and suffer. We need to allow our children those same opportunities...now when we are here to be their guide. Not we can, but we must. It is our obligation.  After all, in the end, one cannot run mile 26 of a marathon without having run, suffered and survived the prior 25. Don't be afraid to let them fail!