When I sit beside my child’s homework, my work stops.
This is for parents who help their child with homework every afternoon, return to their desk, and still can’t get back into their work.
Scenes
- When I sit beside my child’s homework, my work stops. — With my laptop open, I spread out my child’s workbook, and my work keeps getting pushed back.
- It’s hard to look back at my screen and leave my child there. — I meant to look for just a moment and come back, but when my child is left staring blankly at a problem, it becomes hard to return to the screen.
- I left the table at the third problem. — When my child asked for help, I sat down and explained it. Even after I returned to my laptop, the problem and my child’s expression stayed with me.
- Unfinished questions follow you. — Even after answering your child’s question and returning to work, what happened between you doesn’t simply close in your mind. The more you give your attention to one side, the more you check whether you’ve neglected the other.
- Leave a time to revisit it in sight. — Today, write down a time to return to the problem your child got stuck on. Even if you can’t focus right away, the question that was hanging there can have a place to stay.
- It’s not that my work has simply stopped. — Your child may call for you again even at the time you set. Still, that’s where you begin practicing not holding your work and your child’s questions as one tangled thing.
Stories by Cheongun
- Cheongun
- When I step out after washing and stand before the mirror, the comparisons in my family come back to me.
- After the meeting, the plans and the spur-of-the-moment ideas clash again.
- When we get home from work, the first thing we talk about at the door is caring for our parents.
- As we left the exam room, Mom asked first.
- We put off the decision again while doing the dishes
- I set aside money for my younger sibling from my first paycheck
- It’s hard to tell my parents I’m getting counseling.
- I gave them flowers, but they didn’t say thank you