Teen Working on Time Management

It's amazing to me how much kids do these days. For the past several weeks and through next week Teen is part of the pit band for the school musical. She likes it but it makes getting homework or anything else done quite difficult. This week is particularly bad as she is practicing till 9:30 at night or later.

This is requiring some new tactics in time management. Last week she needed help getting definitions for geography vocabulary, basically looking the words up and writing the definitions on a card. When approached I said "I'll do it, but looking up and writing down the definitions is part of the learning process." She disagreed with that until her father said I was right. (Hubby is the last word on all things educational around this house despite the fact that I too attended high school at one time in my life.) So she agreed to wait and see whether she could handle it then if not come back. She came back. No big deal, mostly busy work.

Then last night, after a 10:00 p.m. pick-up from pit band practice, Teen was stressing about a special project due on Monday: the history of the Golden Delicious Apple and its role in saving mankind. That's what the questions sounded like to me anyway. She didn't ask, but I could see she was once again using her new time management tactic, get mom to help, only this time waiting for me to volunteer. I'm a wimp. I did.

So today I looked up anything I could find on the Golden Delicious apple, bookmarking anything that looked remotely relevant to the salvation of mankind. In particular I hunted for information on Johnny Appleseed because Teen is convinced there is no historical context to him and scoffed at me when I brought it up. (Remember that I am not the educational guru of the house, so what do I know.) I am happy to report that Big John was indeed based on a real person and can be tied back to the history of the Golden Delicious. So there.

So far her new time management system appears to be working. Too bad Hubby is out-of-town because now my system is breaking down.