With the start of official preschool in the fall came something I was not quite prepared for: HOMEWORK! Yup, they are giving homework to not-quite-three-year-olds in preschool. Now, it’s not anything difficult or complicated and there isn’t massive amounts of it. It’s a packet of about six fairly simple worksheets due once a week that take her about 20 minutes to complete. And yet, something about it makes me uncomfortable.

Here’s the thing. I thought that I would get to be excited about Eleanor’s very first homework assignment. But I didn’t expect to have it come so soon. Eleanor wasn’t too thrilled about it either:

Okay, she actually loved it, which is fine. I’m really glad that she’s enjoying it and I hope that she continues to enjoy it.

But I have to admit that I am not a fan of homework. I haven’t done all my research on it yet, but I have heard a lot of the arguments for and against it, and I wasn’t a student so long ago myself. So I’m pretty familiar with it.

I have never liked it. As a kid I remember feeling very anxious about it. My parents didn’t supervise our homework completion, which is it’s own story, but that meant it was up to us to do it unprompted. And if you know me you know that I’m not going to do something that I don’t want to do without someone making me. And no one did. But I’m also a person that doesn’t like people to think poorly of me, so I never wanted to disappoint my teachers. The combination of these traits led to a lot of mornings feeling anxious, trying to hurriedly complete my homework in the car on the way to school. And lots of apologizing to teachers for not completing my assignments or turning them in late. Which always made me feel badly about myself.

Now, I am fully aware that homework doesn’t have to be this way. I’m sure it’s much better when a parent sits down with their child and helps or at least supervises their homework. But that brings me to my other problem with homework. I don’t want to have to help or supervise it. I don’t want it to exist at all. I strongly feel that after school time should be family time. Period. I hear so many stories of kids in elementary school with hours of homework to do after having spent all day in school. I think we are breeding a society of children who think that it’s okay and even expected that you should bring work home at the end of the day. I don’t want adults doing it and I don’t want our kids doing it either.

Children should have time to rest and to play and to connect with their friends and siblings and parents. School is the time for academic work. After school should be the time to work on other parts of their minds.

So, I went to back-to-school night hoping to find some like-minded parents who would be equally appalled that our children were being given homework so early. But you know what. The opposite was true. It seemed that the parents who bothered to show up for back-to-school night (most didn’t) were happy to see these preschoolers finally getting down to work! After all, they would be in Kindergarten soon (in 2-3 years), so they had better get ready to do some real work!

It makes me sad. I know that for now a few worksheets are really not a big deal, but this is only the beginning and I can see where it’s leading and I’ve found myself considering something that I never in a million years would have thought that I would consider: homeschooling.