Who's smarter than a deux grader?

One of the perks of having children in my later years I thought, would be the opportunity to experience grade school again. After all, when the brain gets a little rusty, what could be better than a daily review of basic math and spelling. Enrolling Lil in french immersion however, has resulted in me being left in the academic dust as on a good day, I have no idea what she is talking about.

Unfortunately, she has also figured this out, and has had some notes home from the teacher with incomplete work...also written in french. The merde (see I know some french words) hit the fan recently when her multilingual father took a look at her books last week, had a few chats with the teachers and discovered that Lil truly sees school as a social rather than an educational experience. Having Mom as a homework coach has reinforced her behaviour as if Mom doesn't understand it, it just ain't worth knowing.

It is with some shame that I admit to my mental block with french language. When people hear that my maiden name was Poisson, they exclaim "you don't speak french?" to which I reply "I don't swim either". All of this I blame on my french teacher, a 5 foot tall nun who resembled a mosquito and carried a yard stick which she applied at random to her students. In a competition between watching the yardstick and learning french, my brain chose the yardstick. And so french class prepared me for working psychiatry and ER, but left me uni lingual.

The upside of our homework dilemma is that it is one duty that cannot be delegated to yours truly. My dear man insisted that he would help the kids with their homework faithfully if we sent them to french school forgetting that he arrives home most days long after bedtime. The real tickler in all this is that the religion homework is also in french and the family atheist is none too pleased about having to take on those discussions with the junior partner.

I have promised that when the time comes, I will help her with her molecular genetics or abnormal psych homework (as long as it is in English). However, I have heard a rumour that she's going to an English pagan school next year.

I was very encouraged however, that the small but mighty one has begun talking English in paragraphs...finally someone to communicate with...until this week when she said Knee How Ma in a beautiful mandarin accent. "Momma did you hear Grace say Knee How Ma? That means How are you, in Chinese" interpreted Lil.
"How does she know that?" I snapped
"Because she is Chinese" said Lil
Noting my expression, Lil explained to Grace "you can't speak to Mom in Chinese or French, she only speaks English and dog"

Thank goodness I don't have french poodles.