OUR school holidays start with a piece of paper. When school resumes, P2 will be studying Ancient Egypt as their topic for the term. Their mission is to create a 3D artefact for the class Egyptian museum. Ideas could include an amulet, jewellery, a scarab beetle, a death mask or sarcophagus…

Finally! A chance to put my arts education and woefully underused supplies to good use. In this wee piece of paper, I was vindicated for ditching my law degree in pursuit of graphics – European constitutional law has little crossover with primary school homework tasks. We could go to the museum. The art shop. Talk to my archaeologist friend. We could finally watch Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher like I’ve been meaning to. Win/win.

I have a whole itinerary planned, when the grand plan caves in. The balloon bursts as I remember that I’m not on holiday. I have to go to work. And I have two other children who have their own very important holiday homework task. Then there’s the one who has no idea what homework is until August. The guilt sets in.

I’ll need to spend the two days I’ll be able to take off doing homework with them. So no trip to Dynamic Earth or to visit my grandparents. I need to preside over the schoolwork. If not, these will not be the most brilliant and best hand-ins, and they’ll suffer for my lack of input. I’ll be parenting in absentia, and they’ll turn up on the first day of term with their cobbled-together projects. They’ll be Ralph Wiggum as Idaho – the kid whose efforts are so painfully their own.

What’s surprised me most as someone who wants the best for her kids is how much I’ve come to resent homework. I value their education so much, so why does the thought of homework inspire a heavy dread that far surpasses that of my own childhood?

It seems I’m not alone, though. Canvassing my fellow parents, the situation is commonplace: the homework battle. One that’s waged in silence, behind most doors in the country.

Homework starts early these days, almost as soon as children start school. The “no more than 10-minute” task often becomes so torturous and drawn-out a task that it inspires a double dread in kids and parents alike. What is supposedly gained is cancelled out by stunted evenings and fractious family time. Overloaded kids and overloaded parents are not a dream team. We can’t produce the best work. So why are we enduring it?

We know homework isn’t supposed to be an instrument of torture. It’s planned to extend, enhance and enrich learning outside of the classroom. With teachers under the pressure of constant benchmarking, it’s no wonder that so much comes home. We do our best to keep up our end of the bargain at home because we too want our children to succeed. So we tolerate the workload, the battles, the tears. All the while ignoring how little time our children have to just be kids.

Two years ago, I had the joy of watching my twins start primary school. This warm and fuzzy parenting high was quickly grounded.

Two kids. Two separate classes. Two disparate sets of homework. One trying to write with his right hand, the other with his left, one managing, the other struggling. One finishing quickly while the other sits invisibly chained to the table, sobbing over his jotter pages and a hand that won’t do what he needs it to. I have to draw the guidelines again on a fresh page, because the school sends home plain paper.

Once the literacy is done, it’s onto reading, and a role reversal. One boy glides over every word, the other takes his time. One gets frustrated, and for the first time really lashes out at his brother. We haven’t even started the maths. It’s almost 7pm and we’ve not eaten dinner. My nine-year-old is soldiering through her own tasks, waiting for her own opportunity to pick my brain.

If ever there had been a moment in my life where I’d wished to be an earthworm, this was it. Cleaving myself in half would have been far preferable to this juggling act, and ensuing familial meltdown each night. A meltdown that has continued with dogged determination since. Two years on, there’s only more to do, and more complex tasks to squeeze in. And I’ve surprised myself with a wish. A torrid, unparently, wish.

More than anything, I wish we could just say “screw it”. I wish we really could feed it to Gilbert. For them. For me. For our evenings together. So I can play with them, or cuddle them while we watch Star Wars without feeling guilty. So they can indulge the luxury of childhood in the small window they’re granted to do it.

If they can do this work in class, why are we doing it again? I’m not a teacher. If they don’t know what they’re doing, all I can offer is a poor facsimile of education made with Google and vague memories.

Yes, I know this sounds selfish. I know there will be plenty who will take great pleasure in reminding me how lucky I am that my children are educated. There will be others who grumble about working parents and their constrained schedules. All I can offer in riposte is that this is the reality of a modern, working family.

We have long days and wear many hats, and sometimes we forget which one we’ve got on, and how to play the role. The quick costume change is often fraught and confusing for us and our little people. The struggle is real.

In the grand scheme of things it may seem like a truly paltry quibble, but this is what we live. This is the impact it has on our family, and negotiating our way through it is part of our every day.

It seems the penny is dropping, though. A sweep of studies have recently shown homework is of little value to primary aged children. In some cases it even negatively impacts them because surprisingly, just like us, kids need downtime too.

Nothing pains me more than when one of my little people appears at my side and I have to say no. They’re there, clutching a football, or Monopoly, or Roald Dahl or asking to bake and I say no. We don’t have time tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week.

They all appear at my side, eyes alight with expectation, and I know one day it’ll be extinguished and they’ll stop asking. I don’t want them to develop a learned rejection of their own childhood. Before long, they’re going to be in high school, facing exams, and then out in the real world where we work too much and live too little. We’ve taken our own crappy work-life balance and superimposed it onto childhood.

I hold little hope of my fantasy becoming reality – the best I can hope for is a better understanding of the chasm between school and home. I’d love to find the time to give it some real input, and advocate on behalf of their childhoods, but for now we have a canopic jar to make. This papier-mâché isn’t going to make itself.