Growing pains...

Sometimes I feel like I do not know what I am doing as a mother. I feel like I pretending to know, but totally lost. I haven't mentioned before what a challenge 3rd grade has been in our family. Lindsey's 3rd grade teacher is well known for being hard and giving a lot of homework. Lindsey was the kind of student who breezed thru school without studying and just brings home good grades, until now. This teacher does not let you get away with that. For example she pretests for spelling and if you pass the basic words you get challenge words (we get those every time). She give vocabulary tests that are killers, all my parent friends and I talk about how we as parents can't pass these. It's not a simple matching test, you have to write a sentence and the sentence has to meet specific criteria. We are learning. We have been working on homework hours every night, and her play time was becoming non existent! Since we could not have that I have had to arrange to get a jump and complete much of it on the weekends so that she can limit her homework to an hour or so and get to play. Anyway... as you know we were on vacation and because of that Lindsey missed some school. So her first day back she came home and had not filler in her vocab so I instructed her so do it the next day so we could begin creating or sentences. So the next day after school she admits she still has not done it, so I call her teacher to ask her how we can do it from home (books in class). She explains that Lindsey said it was home and completed. I was shocked, disapointed, embarassed etc... I just totally freaked out. My kid lied? So I was pretty harsh. She explained that she was scared of being in "think time" and figured she could just go home and finish the assignment later. I believe in natural consequences so she had to immediately had to go to the school and admit it wasn't done and get her book to do it, she was grounded for week and I lectured her endlessly. When Alan arrived home and Lindsey was tucked in bed asleep, he brought me down to earth and helped me realize how totally normal it would be to fib and say a homework assignment was forgotten and completed at home... especially when "think time" was feared in your mind. I had to laugh at my overeaction and remember she is just 8, just learning how to get through all this. This much homework and school has been an adjustment for us all, its a lot of responsibility for her. Lindsey and I did have a talk about the importance of telling the truth even when your scared and the difference of being in "think time" for 5 minutes at school or being a dishonest person and having a much worse fate. She really seemed to get it. Anyway she did complete her grounding etc... and I think she learned a lesson. I also learned that kids makes mistakes and its through those mistakes we all learn and grow. Lindsey was such a sweetheart last night when I was out with her and the twins. I know I am not perfect, I am always trying to improve and I certainly haven't got this parenting thing figured out yet... I have a lot to learn.