It was 10:30 pm, my favorite time of the evening. All was quiet on the Elder front, and I was in my most unsexy pajama set with the owls all over it, ready to watch a little late night TV before bed. I left the bedroom to get a glass of water, when I heard a little sniffle. One of our lovely 14 year old twins was in the family room with her laptop, looking really unhappy and very much like a scared little 6 year old . All of my senses screamed, “Don’t make eye contact! Get your water and retreat to your bedroom, stat!”, but of course I looked over at her, and asked her what was wrong. She lifted her sad, red, eyes and said those fatal words: “Mama, can you help me with my project?” We spent the next 90 minutes brainstorming, Googling, Wikipedia-ing, and cross-referencing, mixed in with some bickering, whining, and complaining – by me.

I can’t begin to count the number of school projects that I, I mean, we, worked on over the years. On some of them, I was the Trusted Advisor, dispensing a little guidance here and there. Those were the easy ones. On a lot of them, I was an Equal Partner, inching towards owning a majority stake in the success. On every one I was definitely the Venture Capitalist, providing unlimited funds and going on many trips to Target or Michael’s 15 minutes before closing time, searching for glue sticks and stock paper.

The big question is – how much of their projects should we, as parents, do? Now I know the “correct” answer is that our kids should do everything themselves, but come on! Let’s be honest here. How many of us can resist the urge to help them “tweak” their work just a tad, or give them access to some materials or a resource that will move that project from B level work to A+? And we all know the parents who had their Research & Development team at work build little Juniorette’s science project. I never went that far, I promise.

As much as I whine about working on our girls’ projects, I admit that I get caught up in giving them a little somethin’ somethin’ that will give them an edge. To their credit, the girls know where to draw the line if I go too far. A few years ago, our oldest daughter was preparing a speech for a debate competition, and I volunteered to take a look at it. I became the Texas Chainsaw Editor, slashing through entire sentences with my red pen, changing verb tenses, and rewriting paragraphs. She took one look at my handiwork, gave me a steely stare, and said, “We’re 14, Mama! We don’t sound like that!” I forgot that it wasn’t my project, and I slunk back into my cage.

I know it’s their project, but I still feel a little responsibility to help them when they need me. They deserve full credit for all the work they put in. But can I get an Executive Producer credit, at least?