Deadlines - A Teaching Moment

As a parent, we definitely all have our fair share of teaching moments.  In fact, there are times when I would rather not have them (because they often come with tears and hardship), but ultimately our calling as a parent is to be the best teacher that we can.  I know that I fall short of that many times and I just hope and pray that my children understand and forgive me for all of my faults. 

This past teaching moment with Corey was a success.  When my children start out in elementary school, I always try to be very aware of what is going on in their school lives.  We talk about the homework and the successes and any up-coming projects.  I am always trying to drill it into their heads that they need to plan and prepare and not put things off.  So with Corey, I have been doing this for years.  Way back when he was in elementary school and would get some project, I would try to help him see that he should work on a little bit of it at a time and try to get it done as early as he could.  Sometimes this worked really well, and sometimes not so well.

Today, Corey had a biology project due.  It was called the "Isect-a-thon."  This project entailed him collecting bugs and then displaying them in some fashion with certain details given about each bug.  Corey collected most of the bugs, along with his brothers on the very first day the assignment was given.  That was the fun and exciting part of the assignment.  The dead bugs sat on my front counter for weeks - lovely!  This past weekend, I urged Corey to complete the project so that he would not have to work on it during the week when he had a lot more homework.  Now, no one really wants to spend most of their Saturday doing homework, but that is what Corey did.  He spent time on his detailed drawing, which was quite nice and then he looked up information that he needed on the bugs and got it all neatly organized together.  He finished Saturday and it looked great.  Now the project was not due until today, Thursday, but now it was done and out of the way.  Last night, Corey had quite a bit of homework, along with YM's and studying for an Honors Geometry test.  He was busy from right after school until just after 10:00 with all of the stuff he had to do.  I took this moment to remind him how great it was that he had the insect project done.  I said to him, "Can you imagine if you had to work on that project tonight?"  "You would have had to skip YM, or stay up a lot later to get everything done."

I think Corey is getting the picture that planning ahead does really alleviate a lot of stress and make life more manageable. 

I am happy for any of these small successes in teaching moments, because I sure have a lot that do not go quite so well.