Tonight I officially became one of those parents that I - as a teacher - hate. Savannah came home from PreK with an assignment: Turn a slightly crumpled piece of construction paper into an artistic rendering worthy of being her snack mat for the next eight months. Now, to be fair, the teacher's instructions suggested making a collage of some sort. WHICH would definitely imply that a 3 year old would need some assistance, right?
So it started innocently enough. What's a collage without pictures, really? I dug out a couple of cute pics from our latest trek to the apple orchard and a few random zoo snapshots from earlier this summer. Then I remembered that I had some ribbon courtesy of the Target dollar bins. THEN I decided to lay the pictures out to decide how I could best convince Savannah to arrange them. You get the idea...
Fifteen minutes later, the collage is a beautiful collection of touching pics artfully arranged with coordinating ribbons setting the color scheme off quite nicely. Now this wouldn't be so bad if Savannah had at least sat near me as I "helped" her along. But no. Ladies and gentleman, I completed the entire art project with my daugther napping soundly in the next room!
The real dagger to my conscience came five minutes later when she awoke, rubbed her sleepy eyes, and proceeded to ask where her backpack was. Why? "I want to show you the paper." Yeah, she didn't exactly understand how the glued masterpiece on the table was the same ratty piece of paper she'd stuck in her bookbag at preschool. Then the guilt kicked in. As a college friend often quoted in reference to the dreaded g word: "I just can't shake that shit."
Luckily, all it takes to get over an overzealous mommy is the chance to cut (with real scissors!) and glue (with real glue!) and stick on leftover Wonder Pets birthday stickers on the back of said placemat. And let's hope I remember this lesson when the dioramas and fake volcanos start heading our way in a few years.
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