In Praise of Diligent Reminders

I am the homework-enforcer in our family, partly by default, but largely because homework is a topic I get worked up about. Don’t get me wrong: I am not an advocate of homework, especially for younger children who are exhausted by a full school day. But if children are in a school where homework exists and is assigned, then it needs to be completed. Thus, I worry to an unreasonable degree about my grandkids’ homework getting done. Why? First, I’m a champion worrier and homework is a good place to display that virtuosity. But more importantly, worrying about homework is in my blood.

My own mother worried a lot. She backed her worry up with action, sweeping through the battlefield of domestic concerns with a sword in each hand. I had no moments of leisure on schooldays until I had practiced the piano extensively and done all my homework. Those two commitments took up the afternoon and sometimes the interval between dinner and bedtime. My strongest memory of “childhood” (other than perpetually getting poison oak) involves me sitting at the Baldwin Acrosonic, practicing Beethoven and Brahms while staring out the plate-glass window at “regular” kids riding their bikes, playing games, and frolicking. Tears did not move my mother’s heart. She daily set this strange, gilded table clock with its clear glass face that turned without a visible mechanism right on top of the piano in front of me. Until the specified hour struck, I kept playing.

Still, in contrast to the pain of daily practicing (which helped me become a solid pianist and opened doors to my future), I have positive memories of undertaking my own homework. The truth is, I had had wonderful teachers that I wished to please. They, along with my insistent mother, made education matter to me. They, reinforced by my mom, helped me see learning as the key to virtually everything.

So, don’t feel sorry for me. In most respects, my childhood was a breeze. My mother took the position that I should have a labor-free childhood beyond practicing and homework. I did no housework, cooking, or chores other than ironing on the weekends. Unfortunately, due to this indulgence, I hit the real world incompetent at most things, although I could iron up a storm in between playing Chopin and Prokofiev.

Still, my childhood freedom from housework was a point of pride to my mother. She had suffered greatly as a poor immigrant girl in the tenements of New York City, overseeing three younger kids while her own mother, the single support of the family, worked 12-hour shifts in the garment district. My mother did not speak of her childhood, other than to reiterate that she had no happy memories. If I wanted to know more, she said, I should read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

For my mother’s generation (and Betty Smith’s, as reflected in the character of Francie), education was the panacea for all woes. Of the platitudes I heard non-stop, statements about education held top place. Yet, my mother was not the person who demonstrated to me the single most important principle of accomplishing homework or any other unwanted task. A now faceless person during my college years convinced me that the effort needed to procrastinate is nearly always greater than the effort needed for completing the task itself. I have this vague memory of a scribbled graph comparing the effort required to do a project with effort needed to avoid doing the same project. The avoiding-line was much longer.

Furthermore, as all adults know, that simple principle applies to far more activities than homework. It applies to writing a thank-you note, vacuuming the carpet, organizing a closet, walking the dog on a cold night, or cleaning out the refrigerator (to give my top example!)

“Go do it. Get it done.” I repeat these same words daily, not just to homework-delinquent grandkids, but to myself! Years will pass before the grandkids can internalize this lesson. To myself, I say these words in order to start the motor and put me in gear.

Repetition of platitudes is one of the toughest jobs a parent has. Yet it is the best tool we humans have to instill facts, admonitions, warnings, and wisdom into children. “How many times do I have to tell you this?” my mother asked, knowing the answer was “thousands.” Still, at some point her thousands of planted seeds took root and sprouted. It may not have been my mother’s graph that finally swayed me to accomplish tasks rather than avoid them. But it was her diligent repetition of such maxims that tilled the ground, watered the seedlings, and warmed the soil with sun and her constant faith.

So step back if you wring your hands while repeating words of correction before seemingly deaf ears. Those same words ring every day in every language around the world, anywhere an adult is doing his or her best to raise a child to honorable, responsible adulthood. Meanwhile, there’s a grandchild who has forgotten my call to do a practice spelling test. Apparently she has drifted off into reading her latest novel (Percy Jackson) or is lost, reshuffling her zoo of stuffed animals. I’d better go get her.