Summer Homework Hell

Penny had summer homework to be finished over the summer vacation. What an idiotic and stupid idea. I just emailed her case manager to give her a heads up on the resulting anxiety issues.

The &%#&%(*&^^$#!@# summer homework led to TONS of anxiety over the summer and seems to still be rearing its ugly head. I am seriously wondering whether this summer homework thing was a good idea at all, it was and is extremely stressful for Penny and has not led to any clear benefits for her. I understand that the school doesn't want students to 'lose competencies' but I don't think this was the way to go or whether it would be less stressful to just do some review during the first weeks, which they seem to do anyway.

Penny didn't finish it all and now is stressing about finishing it, so much that she often doesn't even get started on it.

Yesterday she first spent the afternoon in the library with a friend and did about an hour of homework there. At night after dinner she still had to do homework (not sure whether that was summer or not, she wasn't very clear on it) and got started just fine making a book but it took her at least another hour to make that book. During that period she had a big fight with Ysa because Ysa wanted to practice chorus homework and Penny yelled that the only place she could make her book was at the piano and there were many raised voices and hurt feelings on both sides.

Anyway, this all culminated in a door slamming event, at least half an hour of Penny uncontrollably crying about homework, life, school and everything and refusal to take any of her night time meds (gah, I was soooooooooooooooo ready for her to go to sleep!)

Eventually I did get her calmed down, she finished the rest of her homework and went off to bed (way too late by now).

We'll see what her case manager replies.