Welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's Parenting Podcast for Tuesday, August 25th, the Lazy Parents Survival Guide Edition.

I'm Jamila Lemieux. I am a contributor to Slate's Karen Feeding Parenting Column and Mom to Naima, who is, and we live in Los Angeles, California.

I'm Elizabeth Newkamp. I write the homeschool and family travel blog, Dutch Dutch goose.

I'm the mom to three littles, Henry 8, Oliver 6, and Teddy 3.

And I'm located in Navar, Florida.

On today's show, we're going to be talking about how to get your kids to complete their homework, effectively and efficiently, with as little parent intervention as possible.

Thank God.

We'll also be talking about how you can help your kids form good study habits.

But before we get to that, we have, as always, triumphs and fails.

Elizabeth, do you have a triumph or a fail for us this week?

So this is a fail from my youth.

I was still am a extremely gullible person.

And so when I was in kindergarten, we had a homework assignment to define a sentence. And my father,

being the perpetual jokester, you know, gave me a definition, helped me memorize it. So I went back

into class and I, you know, raised my hand because I wanted to be the one to answer and stood up in

front of the whole class and told them,

a sentence is what the judge gives at the end of the trial with a completely straight face

having no idea that this would not be an appropriate answer.

And my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Deach, looked right at me and said,

please go home and tell your father he's not funny.

And you know what, though?

I remember this very vividly because it was like this moment in which I realized that my

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