Yesterday I made a deal with my kids.  If they do their homework without whining, then they can keep their privileges: after school activities like swimming, football, gymnastics, basically anything fun.  If they wish to do anything outside of this, they need to refer back to to the deal of this day.

One day after the deal, they were compliant, sitting down to do their Mummy initiated spelling test!

About 32 spellings in, I asked them to spell ‘bike’.  DS1 and DD looked at me quizzically.  The hairs on my neck bristled.  ‘Are you serious?  You must know how to spell ‘bike’.  It’s a 4 letter word that rhymes with ‘like’, I thought to myself whilst trying to convey that silent thought to my spelling Bees!

DS1 piped up ‘does that end in ‘itch’?’

Silently, I worked that out in my head…it starts with a ‘b’….and you are asking me if it ends with ‘itch’?

With eyes tightly shut, and my lips forbidding a giggle to escape my gob, I desperately tried to deflect attention from that word: spell ‘people’ I ordered with the ferocity of a teacher in need of the Christmas break now and not 4 weeks from now!