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Today, everyone in the house was completely unreasonable.
Generally speaking, when one is thinking that everyone else is unreasonable, then that person is the unreasonable person. Thus, I am probably the unreasonable person.
But here: let me lay it out for you.
First, my daughter would not stop playing Prodigy, an optional math game, to work on her other school work, which is not optional. I let this go for a while; the play Prodigy activity is supposed to be about 30 minutes, and she will often go more like 45-50. But this went on for an hour and a half, and there are other scheduled activities that remove me from being available to help her with school work, or are school related that she has to do separate from the not optional activities. And by the time all that is done, it will be dinner and she will then want to veg on the couch with videos. Tomorrow is Friday and can be catch up day, but she will not want to do school on Friday. I know if I do not get her to stop Prodigy, then the future will be worse. In my mind, this is all pretty unreasonable!
I did eventually get her to stop by laying this all out, but then I had to walk her through which science activity. At that point, T. started interrupting.
T. has an assignment due Tuesday, so presumably, the teacher is expecting some sustained effort to be put into it, which T. is generally not willing to do. The assignment is for a social studies class and involves making a propaganda poster for a campaign from either the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. T. does not really understand any of the campaigns and I am just stupid enough to mention along the way what a bad idea they all were (they were — it is characteristic of the entire planet during the 20th century that everyone did everything the Modern Way which by definition was, exactly the opposite of what everyone used to do, and generally speaking was exactly wrong by many, many, many definitions. China’s versions were just a bit more harrowing than some others because they were numerous and their government highly capable of getting them all moving in the same direction. MADD / nukes were still even more harrowing, tho). Then T. did not want to do the assignment. So I sent him to interact with his teachers. They said, nope, still gotta do it. Fine, I said, here, write a paragraph explaining why this is a bad campaign to comfort yourself while you do the poster. I give him examples of posters for the sparrow campaign. He copies the paragraph I sent him explaining what the sparrow thing was a bad idea. He copies the poster example I found him through google images, and proposes to turn all that in. I nixed that idea. I drew him a stick-figure version of a poster (slingshot, person wearing a blue cadre cap and a red scarf, dead sparrow, caption saying Grain is not for birds, grain is for people), colored it with marker and told him he could use my poster as a draft to do his own. He disappeared for a while, and came back with something that still did not look like it had much time put into it, but was very clearly his own work and very clearly did more or less what the rubric wanted him to do. OK. Fine. Then he wanted help uploading it all. I said, can’t do it now; come back later. He figured it out, then went off to CVS to buy me a Mother’s Day card, which I had told him last night not to do because he could make a card. R. told him he could, and I was like, fine, whatever.
All that happened overlapping with the science activity, so that took a really long time to get through, but it was finally done and turned in, leaving yesterday and today’s storytelling through art activity, which is basically A. has to do a 4 panel comic telling a story. Joy. We discussed it extensively yesterday; still no progress. I finally sat down and drew a four panel comic (panel one: stick figure thinking of popcorn; 2: sad face empty popcorn 3: stove with popcorn popping in sauce pot 4: happy stick figure with popcorn bucket full of popcorn). She liked it, and proposed to modify it slightly. Oh, no. That is mine. You have to draw your own. Cue all kinds of carping about how the braids she does are not as good as mine (explain how to space the xs for the braids) and then she was really unhappy with the stove I sloppily drew, because she wants it to look good, but has never done perspective drawing before, so we had to go over that. So. Much.
Also, somewhere in there I got really frustrated because I realized that yesterday’s chicken stock went into two quart size containers, unlabeled and put in the chest freezer. This was not what I wanted from the chicken stock project. True, I had not told him what I wanted. But still. Anyway. He got one back out and thawed it, and then it turned out we had really different plans for the chicken stock: he was assuming a big batch of chicken noodle soup. I was thinking in terms of small containers of chicken stock, one lives in the fridge to add to other meals, the others are available to thaw when the one in the fridge is empty. I had no chicken soup plans at all. And in fact, there is a general disconnect. He is still trying to cook ahead to save time (and I am trying to stave off boredom with food. Both specifically, tired of eating the same meal a half dozen times as leftovers AND in general). I am actively trying to avoid making more than we will eat immediately, but cooking for components (like the chicken stock, reusing brine for fridge pickles, etc). I try to be collaborative; he is prone to taking over projects and heading them the direction he thinks they should go. I try to re-steer back to my goal, and then I blow up when it persists in not working. If he only took over my projects, that would be one thing, but he does this with the kids, too, so it is not just me.
Netted out, I feel like everyone else is being unreasonable. Pragmatically, they were just all doing what they wanted to do (play prodigy, object to producing propaganda for stupid purposes as a social studies project, try to get the massive chicken stock project put away in some place where it will not instantly go bad). It just so happened that I did not want any of them doing what they wanted to do. I wanted the kids to do the school work that was assigned, and I wanted to engage in a mildly complicated packaging and labeling project to support using the chicken stock over the next couple months as a cooking ingredient.
Oh well! Live and learn, I guess. Normally, we avoid conflict by being in different places. Teachers deal with the kids. R. works at a job that provides him with very clear guidance about his role in the group project. I putter around the house doing what I want to do while they are at school or work. That is not an option right now, and that has some really nice side effects (I get to see what the kids are actually learning), and some really annoying side effects (do not make me teach kids how to draw. I am bad at teaching PE, but I am much worse than bad at teaching art).
Generally speaking, when one is thinking that everyone else is unreasonable, then that person is the unreasonable person. Thus, I am probably the unreasonable person.
But here: let me lay it out for you.
First, my daughter would not stop playing Prodigy, an optional math game, to work on her other school work, which is not optional. I let this go for a while; the play Prodigy activity is supposed to be about 30 minutes, and she will often go more like 45-50. But this went on for an hour and a half, and there are other scheduled activities that remove me from being available to help her with school work, or are school related that she has to do separate from the not optional activities. And by the time all that is done, it will be dinner and she will then want to veg on the couch with videos. Tomorrow is Friday and can be catch up day, but she will not want to do school on Friday. I know if I do not get her to stop Prodigy, then the future will be worse. In my mind, this is all pretty unreasonable!
I did eventually get her to stop by laying this all out, but then I had to walk her through which science activity. At that point, T. started interrupting.
T. has an assignment due Tuesday, so presumably, the teacher is expecting some sustained effort to be put into it, which T. is generally not willing to do. The assignment is for a social studies class and involves making a propaganda poster for a campaign from either the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. T. does not really understand any of the campaigns and I am just stupid enough to mention along the way what a bad idea they all were (they were — it is characteristic of the entire planet during the 20th century that everyone did everything the Modern Way which by definition was, exactly the opposite of what everyone used to do, and generally speaking was exactly wrong by many, many, many definitions. China’s versions were just a bit more harrowing than some others because they were numerous and their government highly capable of getting them all moving in the same direction. MADD / nukes were still even more harrowing, tho). Then T. did not want to do the assignment. So I sent him to interact with his teachers. They said, nope, still gotta do it. Fine, I said, here, write a paragraph explaining why this is a bad campaign to comfort yourself while you do the poster. I give him examples of posters for the sparrow campaign. He copies the paragraph I sent him explaining what the sparrow thing was a bad idea. He copies the poster example I found him through google images, and proposes to turn all that in. I nixed that idea. I drew him a stick-figure version of a poster (slingshot, person wearing a blue cadre cap and a red scarf, dead sparrow, caption saying Grain is not for birds, grain is for people), colored it with marker and told him he could use my poster as a draft to do his own. He disappeared for a while, and came back with something that still did not look like it had much time put into it, but was very clearly his own work and very clearly did more or less what the rubric wanted him to do. OK. Fine. Then he wanted help uploading it all. I said, can’t do it now; come back later. He figured it out, then went off to CVS to buy me a Mother’s Day card, which I had told him last night not to do because he could make a card. R. told him he could, and I was like, fine, whatever.
All that happened overlapping with the science activity, so that took a really long time to get through, but it was finally done and turned in, leaving yesterday and today’s storytelling through art activity, which is basically A. has to do a 4 panel comic telling a story. Joy. We discussed it extensively yesterday; still no progress. I finally sat down and drew a four panel comic (panel one: stick figure thinking of popcorn; 2: sad face empty popcorn 3: stove with popcorn popping in sauce pot 4: happy stick figure with popcorn bucket full of popcorn). She liked it, and proposed to modify it slightly. Oh, no. That is mine. You have to draw your own. Cue all kinds of carping about how the braids she does are not as good as mine (explain how to space the xs for the braids) and then she was really unhappy with the stove I sloppily drew, because she wants it to look good, but has never done perspective drawing before, so we had to go over that. So. Much.
Also, somewhere in there I got really frustrated because I realized that yesterday’s chicken stock went into two quart size containers, unlabeled and put in the chest freezer. This was not what I wanted from the chicken stock project. True, I had not told him what I wanted. But still. Anyway. He got one back out and thawed it, and then it turned out we had really different plans for the chicken stock: he was assuming a big batch of chicken noodle soup. I was thinking in terms of small containers of chicken stock, one lives in the fridge to add to other meals, the others are available to thaw when the one in the fridge is empty. I had no chicken soup plans at all. And in fact, there is a general disconnect. He is still trying to cook ahead to save time (and I am trying to stave off boredom with food. Both specifically, tired of eating the same meal a half dozen times as leftovers AND in general). I am actively trying to avoid making more than we will eat immediately, but cooking for components (like the chicken stock, reusing brine for fridge pickles, etc). I try to be collaborative; he is prone to taking over projects and heading them the direction he thinks they should go. I try to re-steer back to my goal, and then I blow up when it persists in not working. If he only took over my projects, that would be one thing, but he does this with the kids, too, so it is not just me.
Netted out, I feel like everyone else is being unreasonable. Pragmatically, they were just all doing what they wanted to do (play prodigy, object to producing propaganda for stupid purposes as a social studies project, try to get the massive chicken stock project put away in some place where it will not instantly go bad). It just so happened that I did not want any of them doing what they wanted to do. I wanted the kids to do the school work that was assigned, and I wanted to engage in a mildly complicated packaging and labeling project to support using the chicken stock over the next couple months as a cooking ingredient.
Oh well! Live and learn, I guess. Normally, we avoid conflict by being in different places. Teachers deal with the kids. R. works at a job that provides him with very clear guidance about his role in the group project. I putter around the house doing what I want to do while they are at school or work. That is not an option right now, and that has some really nice side effects (I get to see what the kids are actually learning), and some really annoying side effects (do not make me teach kids how to draw. I am bad at teaching PE, but I am much worse than bad at teaching art).