There is no box.
You might find this quite surprising, but I didn’t always think outside the box. In the really-not-so-distant-past, this conversation happened.
Scene: I’m on the phone with my homeschooling friend whose children are a few years older than mine. Her middle child, a tightly wound young women, was a highschool sophomore who was attending the local highschool.
Friend, covering the phone mouthpiece, and hollaring to said middle child, who was in the middle of a meltdown, “Put that math down! You may not do any more math tonight! Shut that book now. You can go take a bath, you can go watch television, you can go read a book, but you may not do any more math!”
Then she returned to our conversation, but quickly noticed something wasn’t right. It was me, mouth agape, holding the phone and having an epiphany. “Jen?”
“Are you allowed to say that?” I was pretty sure this wasn’t a thing — if you kid goes to school, she gets homework, and then you make sure it gets done. That’s how that works, right?
And that was the moment, dear reader, when I realized that not only was there not a box, but that any box there might have been was of my own making.
~Jen
Parents are starting to do this in public schools, too. This is a good trend.
http://www.mumblingmommy.com/2016/05/why-my-kids-arent-doing-their-homework-anymore.html