Some of the unfettered joy and extreme discomfort of parenting comes from recognizing your own traits in your child. Not only does my eldest emulate my habit of wearing a queen-sized blanket around the house—and neighborhood on occasion, if he’s engaging in a game of hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids on a nippy day—but he has also inherited my habit of trying to get done as quickly as possible with crap that he's not interested in.
I can vividly recall doing the bare minimum necessary to get a piece of boring schoolwork done so that I could continue doing stuff I liked. (I can neither confirm nor deny that there is a similar work ethic afoot with my eldest’s homeschooling. All I know is that I am a lot more sympathetic about the level of exasperation I remember my parents exhibiting throughout my childhood.)
Much as it can be frustrating to see this habit recur in the next generation (the get-through-boring-things quickly habit, not the blanket-as-daywear habit), I have realized that it is our