Performance anxiety

Last night, Greg was in the basement on the computer. The girls and I went upstairs at their bedtime and did the normal routine, then I read a very long version of Sleeping Beauty and they got into their beds about 15 minutes later than usual.

I went back down to the living room and started watching "Miami Ink," the show on the Discovery Channel about a tattoo shop, which I mostly watch (intermittently) because I can't believe what things people choose to have permanently imprinted on their bodies.

About five minutes later, Allie called me. I trucked upstairs and asked, from the doorway, what she wanted. She said, Mommy, we forgot to do my homework.

Now that she's in first grade, she has some homework almost every night. It usually takes 10-20 minutes to complete and she was right, we'd forgotten to do that night's worksheet.

I reassured her that we would start on her homework as soon as she got up in the morning and that we'd have plenty of time to get it done. The punishment, apparently, for coming to school without your homework done is that you have to miss first recess to complete it.

I said I'd go downstairs, get out the worksheet, read it, and be ready to help her get it done as soon as she woke up. She said OK and laid down again.

True to my word, I went downstairs and got out the worksheet to review what she had to do. I was still holding it on the couch when I heard her crying upstairs.

I went back up there and she was sobbing like her first boyfriend had just broken her heart. Crying her eyes out. She said she couldn't sleep because she was worried about not getting her homework done and missing recess.

I turned on her light and we spent the next 10 minutes completing her worksheet. As soon as we were finished, the poor girl relaxed onto the pillows, turned onto her side, and said goodnight.

She told me today she fell asleep in two minutes, since she knew she wasn't going to have to miss recess.

Allie is 6 1/2. Isn't this sad? What happened to a carefree childhood, people!