However, I’m debating about refusing to do the homework for my second kid who enters Kindergarten next year, simply on principal. Nightly book reading/book bags are fine.

As for “teaching kids that life is about work”, I totally agree! It’s important to teach them that life requires work. But absolutely, the best kind of work to make them do is the kind they’ll be doing all their life: fold their laundry, put it away, set the table, put dishes away, clean up their room, clean up their playspace, cook dinner, help with the finances. If they weren’t so frazzled after school, I’d be able to get them to help do this, but instead it falls on my shoulders to pick up this work because they’re working on often unnecessary work. I can see why a lot of people yell at their kids…. By the end of the night, you’re frazzled.

Seriously, it’s a terrible habit, and equally hard to break. I don’t even know I’m doing it. I look down, and they’re gone. I’ll go through phases where I can grow them out, and it’s wonderful, and then something stressful happens or I’m concentrating hard at work or whatever, and I look down…gone.

Let me know if you figure something out. Sophia does it, too.

It’s ruthless, searing, yet at the same time, incredibly dulling.

perfectly describes how I feel in the throes of a migraine. Of course, I know you get them too so you understand that. But not having depression, I feel after reading this I kind of understand how it must feel. Great post.