Instances in which Mommy is wrong

It probably will come as no surprise to you that I'm a little tough on Madeline when it comes to academics. I expect perfection even though it's clearly not realistic. I was an overachiever as a student and I still feel that competitive urge when I see papers with A's and 100s come home. When it comes to homework for Madeline, everything must be checked by me. Handing in homework with mistakes is a fate worse than death in my mind. (Blame my struggles with perfectionism for that outlook.)

Madeline had a single page of math homework tonight which is unusual. On an ordinary day she has a fact practice sheet and an assignment relating to the unit they're covering in class. When she brought her worksheet to me the first time I found several errors and a math problem that wasn't even attempted. So I sent her back to fix the mistakes and oversight. Then I sent her back two more times to fix this one particular problem. She was getting frustrated with me and kept insisting that she was doing her best but kept getting the same answer of 555. So in my slightly condescending tone I tell her that we're going to do the problem together [certain that she was going to feel a little sheepish when we arrived at the answer of 565]. Yeah, we got the one's column right (It was right all along, so that was expected.). Then, we moved on to the tens column (The only number that was "wrong."). So as I'm talking to her like she's not the brightest person, I come to the startling realization that she had been right all along. Talk about a lesson in humility! I promptly apologized to Madeline and explained that she was right and that I was the one who added wrong in the first place. (Oops!) She was a bit angry with me and cried (She cries easily, so don't think I'm a monster of a mom.) because I wasted her time and made her do the same problem four times when it was right the first time.

So the lesson I learned today is that 1+4+9+1=15, not 16. Oh, and I learned that I should try to have a little more humility. Clearly, I'm not always right.