Homework Hotline

I came home tonight to a homework emergency. G and DH had been working on G's English homework for quite some time and they were both stumped. The assignment was a list of sentences and the students were asked to mark the prepositional phrases in each. As with most grade school assignments most of the sentences followed the basic rules that were covered in the classroom but final 4 were more difficult.

I was able to help G with this and started helping her break down the first sentence she had a trouble with, asking her to single out the subject and the verb of the sentence because neither could be apart of a prepositional phrase. The only answer I was able to pull out of her was "I don't know". I even prompted her for what a verb and subject were and got no answer. I spoon fed her the first sentence stopping just short of giving her the answers outright. On the next sentence, I tried having her brake down the sentence again. Find the subject and the verb. "I don't know." This time she follow it up with complaining about how her teacher didn't explain any of this and that she just spent most of the class time yelling. While there may be some truth to this I can't believe that it is not exaggerated since G was able to do the first part of the assignment without any assistance from me or DH.

At this point DH and I were at our wits end, I pulled DH aside and explained that I would NOT give her anymore answers. That as much as I wanted to care and help her figure it out, I can't teach someone who doesn't care herself. I do regret one low blow that I took. DH often comments that BM is actually very smart but uses all of that brain power to figure out how to get out of doing any work rather then applying herself and excelling at anything. I pointed out that I felt G was behaving the same way, but I do have to wonder if that is BM influence or just normal 13 year old behavior.

DH pulled my assistance from G's assignment (I also had my own homework to get to), and apparently G was picking up some of what I said because she was able to finish the assignment. For better or for worse it is done, and at very least I can feel confident that I have shown G that I will never do her homework for her. I just home that she understands that I am still willing to help.