Parent Homework

My six-year-old son has a school assignment.

I think that actually means that I have an assignment, really. Doesn’t it?

It’s a class book where all the kids have to do a double page of who they are and a bit about their short lives in two giant A3 pages. Lots of space for a small child isn’t it?

Except that the small child isn’t the one filling that space up. That would be where I come in.

I don’t know why the school don’t just send it directly to me via email as I will be the one completing it. Luca is about as interested in school as he is in Barbie so the chance of him getting excited about participating in said assignment is extremely small.

So I knew it was going to be complex. I’d have to ambush him into doing the assignment with me with whatever armament I had. It was not going to be an easy combat.

I planned my attack carefully.

I tried to rein him in with “hey Luca why don’t we sit here and go through all the photos on my iPhone and pick out the ones you want to show all your class mates”. Not interested. “I’ll let you do the scrolling”. Whatevs, not interested. “I could print some colouring in sheets of London and you can colour them in so we can stick them around the photos”. Not interested.

Time to bring out the big guns.

“I’ll let you climb Daddy’s step ladder you aren’t allowed to normally use to reach the printer”. Slight interest. “And I’ll let you use the paper cutter to cut the photos out”. Slightly even more interest. “I’ll let you use all Holly’s special stickers”. Yep that was the one that did it. What is it with kids and stickers?

Visions of spending an entire day roaming our entire shopping district for identical stickers to replace Holly’s filled my head as she’d notice if one was missing, or if I’d replaced them with something slightly different. So I’d probably have to just fess up to her and bribe her with expensive stationery. Dear God this assignment was getting out of hand.

So my sunday afternoon was dedicated to printing out photos. Very soon it became apparent that the printer was out of ink (of course it was) so a trip to the local Kodak was in need. Except that it was sunday night so HELLO, shops closed.

Because the book was due back the following day and Luca woke up with a cold I decided he could have the day off and we’d go to print photos together. Which we did. So I had to use one of those Kodak photo machines and stupid apps which took forever because I have 10,500 photos on my iPhone and … blah blah blah you know the rest.

We needed baby photos first. It didn’t take me long to work out that iPhones have only been around for a few years so all the baby photos were Jude’s or maybe Charlie’s. I decided they’d have to do and Luca didn’t even notice all these pictures of babies being spat out of the machine weren’t even him. Sometimes there are benefits to having a unobservent child.

Once we had all the photos and bits and pieces to stick in the book for my, I mean Luca’s, assignment – I actually got a bit excited as my OCD was about to get a bonanza workout. Me, lots of photos, scissors, glue, blank paper and stickers. Best rainy monday ever.

I got Luca involved in colouring some Union Jack flags in until he got distracted and stuck the scissors into the glue and dug it out like he was eating yoghurt .. sometimes I wonder how I’m going to get three of him to adulthood with my sanity in place .. anyway he left me alone to finish it off while he stuck a couple of the stickers on our cat’s tail and watched it run around the house like a headless chook trying to get them off.

My creation was amazing. Worthy of some kind of award really. I couldn’t help but flick back through the pages and compare ours, I mean Luca’s, to the other kids in the book before I decided that ours was totally the best and that maybe Luca was artistically talented. Then I remembered he hadn’t really done anything except de-glue the glue and piss the cat off.

Last step .. stickers. Luca’s job. I found it so hard watching him stick them on and kept saying “not there, it’s not straight”, “you can’t put two yellow ones next to each, other they don’t match”, “no more,  it’s ruining my collage”.

GOOD LORD WOMAN, GET A GRIP.

So when the stickers ran out we were left with my, I mean our, masterpiece …

TA DA !!!!

Do you think his teacher will know I helped him?