‘Book of Hope’ nDepth piece put things in proper perspective

This morning, I was frustrated with my Kindergarten-age son.

He showed me a large poster sheet that was filled with questions for him to fill out.

Awesome. Looks like fun.

He’s supposed to tape photos of himself and of his family, as well as answering a series of questions about himself.

Super. Can’t wait. … uh. Wait a minute.

“When does it need to be done?” I asked while still multitasking on my daughter’s hair.

“Any day,” he responded.

OK … it must be for a project in a week or two. I’ll get more details later. Cool.

(To be honest, the deadline sounded ‘cool,’ because I imagined it being something my wife would work on with  him some evening this week.)

But then minutes later he brought me another piece of paper that read something to the affect of …

“Congratulations! Tyler is the student of the week! Fill out the paper and return it on Monday ……. “

Arrgh! That’s today. And there are lots of questions there.

And – worst of all – it’s a really big deal to him

Yeah, I know. I should have looked in his backpack on Friday. But I was still frustrated.  I sat him down to fill out the large sheet of paper and proceeded to look for photos. (Photos, by the way, that we don’t have. It’s a digital world. We don’t have many photos you can actually hold.)

In the end, we were 40 minutes late today. It was frustrating. What should have been a fun project was instead a stressful project.

My older son was bossy about the way my Kindergartner wrote. My younger daughter didn’t like her shoes. I couldn’t find the scissors. I cut myself on a kitchen knife (don’t ask). And where do we keep the tape, anyway?