underachieving mother

Over-achiever parents. Their existence in this world just shines a spotlight on my underachievingness. Their child walks into school rolling in a 1/25th scale Taj Mahal made out of toothpicks, gold-leafed with a water feature.   My child walks into school clutching a self-constructed Lego mass that was crushed into pieces by a rolling backpack in the trunk on the way to school. I would like to write that I am intentionally among the underachieving.   Like it is a moral stand toward child independence. Kids should do their own work! But that isn’t the case.   I am underachieving to maintain a shred of my self-respect. Second grade at my children’s school is when they start creative writing projects.   They are graded on a 100 point rubric.   I have always been a fan of creative writing (shocking, eh?) so helping the boys get their thoughts on paper has been one of the fun parts of homeschooling. When I say “getting their thoughts on paper”, I mean it figuratively. The actual writing process of letter making, capital letters and end marks is pure torture for second grade boys.   It takes bribes, threats and a lot of cheerleading to get a sentence written out. An entire paragraph? Misery. One of Reid’s first creative writing assignments was to write a story. I like to write stories! Reid and I sat down and he thought up what he wanted to write about.   I asked him lots of questions and some of them might have been a bit leading. The afternoon turned to evening and we still didn’t have a written story. A one paragraph story. My questions turned from leading to directional and within 15 minutes we had a completed story. The story may have ended up to be a little bit more mine than Reid’s. But it was on paper.   Illustrated.   In his backpack.   Ready to turn in.   Whew. When Reid’s paper was returned a few days later, it came to my attention that the story was definitely more ME than HIM when I uttered… Your teacher gave US a 68/100 on that story? I said us. Yep, we got a 68.