Gave DH a taste of the "homework blues"

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I have had a rough few days (weeks) dealing with BM's drama. Wednesdays are the longest days because we have to squeeze homework, haircuts, dinner, church and bath time into the hours between school dismissal (2:45) and bedtime (between 8:30 and 9:00). Well, by 3:15pm yesterday I'd had far more than enough and all we had done so far was get the kids out of their school clothes. [for the life of me I cannot understand why skids need 30 minutes to change clothes!!]

So, I made up in my mind that DH was going to help with the bulk of homework since be gets off work early on Wednesdays. After haircuts and dinner DH went to sit on the couch and I informed him that SS8 had a story to write and had to incorporate all of his spelling words. DH gave me this look and then proclaimed "Oh that's easy, go do your homework". That was at about 5:45 pm and we were supposed to be at church by 7:00 pm.

At 6:00 pm DH checked in on SS8 and found out that SS8 "was having trouble deciding what to write about" and hadn't written a word.

By 6:15 DH was asking SS8 "what's so hard about making up a story?"

By 6:30 DH told SS6 and I that we weren't going to make it to church tonight because SS8 story had yet to be written.

By 7:00 DH and SS8 were sitting at the kitchen table with SS8 coughing and sneezing all over DH (skids seem to have no concept of "cover your mouth" no matter how many times we tell them to do so). From the looks of the table, you'd think they were solving complex mathematical equations or something.

By 7:45 SS6 and I had reviewed all of his spelling words and math problems for the week and run out of stuff to talk about, so we started playing games. SS8 and DH were about halfway through the list of spelling words.

By 8:30 DH goes to put SS6 into the bathtub because SS6 was getting sleepy and I wasn't going to do it.

By 8:45 SS8 was almost in tears because DH was frustrated and kept saying things like "I don't understand why you make this so hard", "your story is a little boring", "are you even trying", etc

By 9:00 SS8 was in the bathtub and headed for bed, story unfinished

At 9:15 DH was back at the table writing the last few sentences of the story for SS8 to copy this morning before going to school. Afterward DH was out for the rest of the night.

This morning, DH told me "I'm sorry, I can't believe you have to deal with that every week".

Mission accomplished I think.

I absolutely refuse to deal

I absolutely refuse to deal with the homework issue. I helped my son with homework when he was younger; I'm not doing it again. Especially with kids who manage to turn an hour of homework into 3 or 4 hours of agony, complete with whining, crying, and tantrums. Hell no. Good for you for making your DH do HIS job as a parent!

YES! I spoke with SS8's

YES! I spoke with SS8's teacher at the beginning of the year and she told DH, SS8 and myself that homework is supposed to take no more than 45 minutes. So why are we still doing homework at 6, 7 or 8 o'clock? And don't get me started on special projects!
DH normally doesn't get home until 6:00 or later and in the past I have refused to have my night ruined by homework, so we get it done before he comes home so we can do other things. Let's just say I've changed my opinion on that. I sit the kids at the table, we read the instructions together and I leave them to their work. If they finish before DH gets home, great, if not, that's great too, because DH can take over while I find something else to do.