World's worst mother.

It's official - I am the world's worst mother. I have always adopted the attitude that homework should be done by the child, and anything they can't do, that can't be explained by simply helping them understand the question, should be left. After all, the teacher needs to know if a child doesn't understand a key concept or if they need a bit more teaching on a particular subject. I have, in the past, sent in a note to explain which part LE has had problems with so that her teacher knows she tried, but sees where she may need more support. Actually, if the truth be known, I don't think children under 10 should have lots of homework and I refuse to allow LE to get stressed by work (there's enough of that from me...).

Anyway... five weeks ago LE was given a project, on the Victorians, to complete by this Friday. She has been fantastic about it and really enjoyed researching and putting together pictures and ideas - I haven't had to tell her once to do any work on it, she has just asked for the laptop or sat going through the library books we borrowed. I have just let her get on with it - it is meant to be her work after all. Yesterday, as she left school, I heard her talking with one of her classmates about another girl who hadn't even started yet; they were both quite shocked and couldn't believe how she was going to complete it in time. When we got home LE said she'd like to get the project completed by Thursday, so we agreed that I'd leave school early, we'd have an early tea and she'd have first dibs on the PC.

I was late leaving school. She was very forgiving. Tea was late. She was still smiling. I'd forgotten to get paper for the printer. She called our neighbours. No pritt stick. She told me the double-sided tape would do and was very careful not to chastise me even though she'd asked me in the morning to get some on the way home. She got her project out... and suddenly looked pale. She had done a lot of work, but there was no order to it, she'd missed out some key areas and she didn't know where to start. The up-shot of my neglect was that she finally went to bed at10:45pm. She now has a brilliant project, it is all her own work (well apart from the contents page and the bibliography but the poor child was asleep on her feet by that stage and I only typed up what she'd written, honest)and she was so proud of her efforts. She will also be so exhausted that she won't enjoy tomorrow night's end of term disco.

And she thanked me for all my help. If only she knew...