“Together We Grow”, the program that the Monster is enrolled in at school, is a standard kindergarten for the purposes of the school system.  They follow the regular curriculum, such as it is, and that includes homework.

Of course, the Monster had homework all last year, but this is different – it’s more in-depth now, longer, and tends to be something that entails more of a fight with him at certain points.

No child, really, likes doing homework.  I know that even when I returned to college a few years back, as an adult, I still dreaded having to do assignments at home… but I was also rational and realized that I had to get it done if I was going to get a passing grade.  And for younger kids, there’s some level of carrot-and-stick that you can do with them to get the assignments done at some point, even if it’s threatening to take away privileges if they don’t get it done (if the prospect of failing grades isn’t bad enough).

None of these really seem to ‘register’ with the Monster, which usually then escalates into some kind of fight or meltdown before everyone takes a step back… and we get homework done in the morning in a rush before school.  That’s not to say it’s always a struggle – I can often, when time permits, give him a reasonable enough bribe to get our way through it…

And then there’s days like today, where there’s nothing at all that is “good enough” that I can bribe him with to get it done, and it requires a motherly intervention to try to get things done, but again, that tends to eat up the available time and sanity in the house.

I am sure, that when/if we manage to get back to the therapist, that’s something we can apply ABA towards to manage these behaviors, but… it’s just wearing on me in the meantime.