This year Rose and I reached an accord about her homework: she didn't ask my advice, and I didn't give it. This seemed to eliminate a great deal stomping, crying, and crazy making Catch-22's (you must help with my homework; you can't help me with my homework.) In addition, she is basically getting her homework done in a timely fashion without a lot of panicking about time management.

But for two days in a row, she told me she's a procrastinator, can't get her English essay written, and thinks this makes her a homework doer failure all around. So, I made three suggestions. One, I would keep her company as she worked on the essay to keep her focused and on task. Two, she should give herself a set amount of time to get each paragraph done, and keep herself to that time. I told how I do that for myself when I just need to get a rough draft done. And three, write a shitty rough draft. Not my term. I stole it from Anne Lamont, and it's one of the most helpful things I tell my perfectionist students. They are always trying to write the perfect rough draft instead of just getting some words on the paper and working from there. That isn't always Rose, but I suspected perfectionism might be a factor in this case.

Option one bombed out. I would have done it, and it might have worked, but Rose slept in, and I wanted to caucus. But two and three? I am a happy mama. While I tutored a student downstairs, Rose was upstairs on my computer with her timer going in 10 minute chunks. She told me she got the paragraph done in 10 minutes, dithered for a few, and then as soon as she set the timer, she got the next paragraph done. It took her 45 minutes, which seems a completely reasonable amount of time to pound out a 5 paragraph essay. She also told me it was a shitty first draft, somewhat relishing the term. I was so proud of her for letting herself not be perfect. I read the draft. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't shitty, but it certainly had room for improvement, which is fine, great, in fact, the teacher called it a rough draft.

My friends are trying to recruit me to teach our daughters a studies skills class before they go off to high school. I've been nervous because I've only taught study skills a couple times as opposed to the hundreds of writing classes I've taught, but after this little success, maybe.