tough love helping enabling

Tweet

So where do you draw the line between helping and enabling? And when do you use "tough love"? Last night we had two conflicting events. Cary had a concert at the middle school, and Dearra's high school had an open house. So we split up. R took Cary to the concert, and I went with the girls to the open house. I was hoping to get through it quickly so that I could show up at the concert. Naomi came to the open house because she had heard so much about Dearra's teachers that she wanted to meet them. Only two of them were there, so it went rather quickly. But when I mentioned going over to the concert, Naomi said she had a lot of homework and wanted to go home. So I took her and Dearra home ("Mom, I'd rather watch Naomi than go to a boring concert where they play old songs badly"), and I went to the concert. Unfortunately, I just missed beginning band. The intermediate band had already started playing when I got there. But I told Cary a little white lie at the end of the concert, so he was happy to hear that I had been there to hear him play. I get home and my shoulder's hurting. So I checked my e-mail, got in the bathtub, and decided that after the bath I was going to stretch and go to bed. No playing Poppit or doing surveys until 11 PM. Nope, not this time. So after the bath I got online to check my e-mail, and was just logging off when the ambush happened. R comes in and says, "do you know how much homework Naomi has. She has this report due on the solar system. I thought she was working on it all week, but she's left most of it until tonight." Well I thought she was working on it all week too, and I told him so. But now he's all in frantic parent mode, and wants me to print something out for her, find pictures of all the planets and print them out small enough to put on an index card, etc. I gave him the glare, because my darn shoulder was starting to hurt, considered telling him that it was her problem for leaving it so long (that's what MY parents would have done), sighed, and started working on it. Meanwhile, he starts taking the printed stuff and gluing it onto the cards while she continues writing. Well it's 11 PM by the time we are all finished, and she gets on the computer for her next assignment. What the heck? Yep, she also had to write a poem about an endangered animal starting with Q. After looking at the Queen Alexandra butterfly, a quetzal and a quoll, she decides on the quetzal, and starts throwing words at me, so I can give her rhyming words. Somewhere in there I start giving her a speech about procrastination, and she says "mom, you can give me the lecture on Saturday". 20 after 11, we're finally all finished and can go to bed. So this morning I get up, and there she is writing. "What, more homework?" "Yep," she says, "I have to write a persuasive essay." "Well... You should either write one to yourself about not procrastinating, or to your teacher persuading her not to give you so much homework." She laughs... So back to the discussion. Where do you draw the line between helping your child and enabling their bad habits? And when do you apply tough love?