Why it’s not just handwriting
“His penmanship was sloppy,” he said in a text, and proceeded to send pictures of the inadequacies he’d found within the handwritten homework assignment.
He explained all the reasons why this was unacceptable, the fact that he understands that kids perform better for their dad, because dads are disciplinarians, while moms are the nurturers; which is equivalent to saying that when the kids do anything with me, it will be subpar, and so on.
I responded, via text, and after several painstakingly worded messages, attempting to be as polite and succinct as I could, I sent, “Please do not, ever again, make the kids redo homework after I have completed it with them.”
This is what my ex-husband of 11 years had done. The kids were with me. I did their homework with them. We had finished this homework. He made our child redo it.
When I dropped them off, Ex asked the kids to see their homework. I was not in the room, but oversaw this conversation happening through the window. The look of anxiety and disappointment on my child’s face, and the stern frustration on my ex’s told me plainly what was being said. He then made our child rewrite the assignment because “His penmanship was sloppy.”
In a coparenting situation, this was a really, really bad decision, disguised as a ‘really-not-such-a-big-deal’ decision.
Here’s why it looks like it’s not a big deal:
It’s just handwriting.
It didn’t take very long for the kid to rewrite it.
It’s good for the kid to understand the expectation of quality.
Here’s why it is a really bad decision in a coparenting situation:
The child is getting conflicting messages about what is expected of them.
This undermines the competency of the other parent to the child
This undermines the child’s belief in their own ability to complete a task correctly.
This post is to be continued..
