Terrible twos meets pedantic pre teens

It's been one of those Bank Holiday weekends. The ones where you long, you yearn, you would trade your most perfect pair of shoes for just a few childfree moments. On the whole I consider myself quite lucky as most of the time I enjoy my sons' company, but this long weekend, with the emphasis on long, not so much.

I think it is because we are sandwiched between two boundary pushing phases and any parent knows how much fun that is. The twins are two and just learning the best way to assert their wills. Jonah has settled on much shrieking and screaming of the word NO. Anything he doesn't want to do or have is simply prefaced by a shrill negative declaration, for example "No get dressed", "No go beddy", "No eat bishbingers", which is repeated ad infinitum until you give in to his wishes. I am sure you get the picture.

Zach is more likely to approach any situation of which he disapproves by taking an implacable, immovable stance, twinned with a death stare. So if you decide to move off from a certain location where he prefers to remain he will simply plant his little feet and fix you with a hard stare. Any and all parental whiles to get him moving fall onto very stony ground. You can try cajoling, pretending to walk off and leave him behind, screaming, shouting, begging, pleading and all will be met with a cold glare.

The only thing to do is to bodily lift him and carry him where you want to go, the downside of this is (a) he weighs a ton and (b) it is accompanied by blood curdling screams that convince anyone in the vicinity that you are abducting the poor child.

Now having mothered two two-year-olds before (albeit not at the same time) I was expecting this, but what I had not banked on was the contribution of their older brothers. To be fair to Max he is his usual clumsy daft self, but this does not detract from the fact that his affection for swinging sharp sticks close to tender eye sockets can be the cause of much distress as is his inability to follow even the simplest instructions or to carry out any task at any speed faster than an invalid snail.

Jacob however, has at the grand old age of seven decided that growing up means developing a highly (annoying) pedantic nature, to the point that after the millionth time of being corrected (or as he would point out not actually a million, more like 999,999) you could scream as loudly as a displaced Zach. Perhaps the best way to describe how all these particular elements of create a particularly toxic mix is to paint a picture of a typical exchange.

We are out for a walk. Jonah is firmly stating 'No sit the buggy', while wriggling out of his pushchair into the path of an oncoming cyclist. Zach is several yards back down the path refusing to budge, so my husband strides back to scoop him up, his protests ripping the bucolic country walk being enjoyed by those around us to shreds.

Meanwhile the older boys are engaged in some kind of battle that results in Max inadvertently injuring himself. Wailing ensues, notching up the decibel count even further. I rush over to find out what's wrong and Max announces that Jacob has hit him in the head. Jacob counters "Actually mummy I think you will find that I hit him in the ear, not the head". ARRRRGH.

I hate homework

It all started when I was at school. That dreaded feeling in the pit of  your stomach on a Sunday evening, as you contemplated the mounds of reading, essays and sums you had conveniently shoved to the back of your mind for the rest of the weekend. That moment when you had to stop pretending to be engrossed in Antiques Roadshow and actually unglue yourself from the television and propel yourself to your desk.

It was horrible, and deadly dull. I think I can safely assume that I am not academically minded. The thought of the hours I spent locked in a dusty libraries while I was at university is enough to bring me out in a cold sweat. The ever present sensation that I had never read quite enough (or indeed nearly enough) to write anything close to a coherent essay, and then just winging it and hoping for the best, was not a pleasant one.

I was pretty good at fooling people, and have an upper second class degree to prove it. However, I will admit that my head of department once took me aside and revealed that he could only decipher about half of any essay I had written as my handwriting was so atrocious, so he was just assuming the other half was as good in awarding me high marks.

When I finally threw my mortarboard aloft, dumped my graduation gown, and headed off into the world of work, it was with a sigh of relief that my days of cramming were done with. Or so I thought, as now a few decades hence I find myself locked into homework hell once again.

I am sure when I was at primary school homework amounted to collecting a few pretty leaves to show off in autumn and keeping a scant diary of what you got up to in the holidays. Nowadays even in Year One children are given work to do every week, and by God is it mind numbing.

I am not entirely sure who the work is pitched at, apparently it is set across the year so every child in every class does the same assignment, which leads me to believe there are some real thickies out there. My boy is seven and he is 'challenged' by such conundrums as 'Which number is half of 8?' and the tricky task of working out that tortoises are slow. Surely only a half wit would be stumped by such questions?

The plus side of this is that it means we can whizz through homework double quick - hurrah. The downside is that whenever I 'help' my boy I get so frustrated that I am tempted to just answer all the questions and tell him to hurry up and write them into the appropriate boxes.

I can't shake the feeling that homework is a waste of time. Mine and his. He, along with most of his contemporaries, is too bright for the work to be an extension of his learning, and I can think of better and far more educational ways to spend time with my children. It seems that I am destined never to see the point of extracurricular study, I just hope my sons don't find this particular blog post when I am battling with them to get them to revise for their exams.