The Enforcer.

That's been my role today.  I'm normally a little bit more hands-off than I should be probably and lately I've been even worse, expecting the kids to get their lists of school-work done with little to no help from me, but the youngest has not been getting his work done.  Last week, he got the last of it done late Friday night, just in time to ensure that he wouldn't be grounded all weekend and could watch Saturday morning cartoons.  So, when it looked like this week was going to end in a similar fashion, I made him sit at the table today until he got mostly caught up, and I sat there with him.  He got it done and it wasn't all that painful for anyone.  I know we're not asking him to do too much, probably too little in some people's opinions, but he got 3 math worksheets done, 3 paragraphs and drawings for his copywork/writing book and now he's going to do 2 days of geometry computer game and a few other things and he'll be done.  He has been doing some of it all week, just procrastinating about the harder stuff.  I do feel like kids, especially kids like him, the right brained, day-dreamy, inventor kind of kids need a lot of free time to imagine and build things, but he also needs to learn to write well, do math and, read!  Ever since we've been homeschooling, the kids, especially this one, have fought against a strict schedule and want to choose when to do what and so we've compromised with the list system we use. The trouble is, with this kid, he'll push any system as far as it would go and procrastinate about all of it until the very, very last minute.  If it were up to him, he'd do all of it on Friday right before the deadline, including personal hygeine (5 showers in a row) and chores (feed the dogs 5 times on Friday!). 

He's a funny kid.   Yesterday he said to me "Isn't it ironic that Devin's ankle brace is called a "StepLite" brace and when he walks in it, it goes CLONK, CLONK, CLONK?"  Yes, they should have called it StepLoud.  :-)