It’s a beautiful night here. I’d like to go for a walk with the dog. I would much rather be going for a walk with the dog–and even the younger kids–than babysitting by 7-year-old while he completes a project about New York state for his “state fair.”

Go ahead, you say? Why don’t you? Why should you be stuck with hishomework?

Well, if I don’t contribute at all, then what he will end up with is a posterboard covered in random pictures, mostly of New York City, which is what he was really interested in, and probably not including–or including as an afterthought–things like the state bird, et al.

So what’s wrong with that? Well–I don’t know. I actually have no idea. I refuse to do the project, or really influence it in any major way. So it’s not focused–he didn’t, for example, highlight China town, or the different sports teams, or use different ways of getting around New York state to showcase different destinations. There is no New York diorama street scene. It is nearly as random as he would have done it, with only slight jogs from me. I did suggest dividing the board in half for city and state, for example. He came up with then putting the city’s motto and sports teams on one side and the state’s on the other, which I thought was good.

But obviously it could be better, and I could push him to make it better. I could suggest all kinds of things. Or, on the flip side, I could go for a walk. I hope I’m striking a happy balance. I have a suspicion that I’m coming in on the low end of the scale, and that I might as well just pour myself a vodka tonic, and maybe teach him to mix them while I’m at it, because I’m clearly not helping him to make the most of this educational opportunity.