The Mother Of All Cheaters

(I work as a tutor for local college students. I have one student whose mother is way too involved in his schoolwork. She claims she wants to learn the material herself so she can drill him on it at home, but she does a really bad job of hiding the fact that she’s actually doing a lot of it for him.)

Mother: “Today, I want to go over these practice problems that I couldn’t understand when I was trying to help him study, and then we have an assignment to work on.”

(We go over the practice problems. By “we,” I mean the mother and I — the son is eating lunch.)

Mother: “I think we’re ready to start working on the assignment. [Son], is there anything you want to go over with [My Name] first?”

Son: *silence*

Mother: “All right, let’s pull it up. [My Name], don’t help us at first; we want to try it on our own.”

(I work on other things while they do the assignment, but I still hear a lot of their conversation, and while the son knows several of the multiple-choice answers, the mother does all the math.)

Mother: “Okay, [My Name]. Do you want to take a look at this?”

Me: “Looks like most of these are right, but you should take another look at these two. Can you show me how you got those answers?”

(We go over the two questions, and with some prompting, the mother realizes where she went wrong and corrects her answers. After they’ve turned in the assignment…)

Mother: “Lord, forgive me for cheating. At least I tried to do it all myself.”

(So, doing her son’s work for him wouldn’t be cheating, if only they hadn’t asked me to look over it before turning it in?)