I had a similar type of mom... I can remember her putting off helping me with my very first hand-written research paper ever for my grade 3 science class, the paper the teacher even tells you in class they expect your parents to help you with since it is your first one, until the night before it was due. Suddenly I'm at fault for not reminding her enough, and an awful, lazy brat for making her pull such a late night with me to get this finished. I remember once we got it organized, she left me at the table alone to write the actual report while she went to bed. In the morning when she awoke I was just putting the loose-leaf pages into the 3-prong folder. She yelled at me some more for being a procrastinating, slow, lazy brat and then said to go to bed, as she couldn't send me to school looking so tired.... since I was "sick" the teacher didn't take away points for being a day late, and I got a high mark for it, but mom wouldn't let me even be proud of it because of my lack of foresight that led to the late night.... ugh, I now know that I didn't deserve all that blame, as she was the parent and it was her responsibility to teach me things like time management, and a kid only asks for help so many times before they realize other things are more important to the parent than they are.

wow, until I typed that out, I didn't realize that could be a part of where my issues with research projects for school even started. I know another major issue for me was that not only was I left-handed but physically writing things got painful for me after more than a few lines. Since this was the 1980s, computers weren't as cheap as they are now for the home buyer, the school I attended had some computers but not enough staff to allow unlimited access to them for students outside of the curriculum or the once weekly computer club (which while fun was more like an art club, making cards, banners, writing stories, than really learning about computers), so my only option was to hand-write everything.

every year I'd ask for a computer at the top of my birthday/xmas wish list, and every year that got denied in favor of things I didn't need and/or didn't ask for. So when nMom decided she wanted a word-processor in 1995 for herself to work on a personal project, while it wasn't the computer I prayed for, I was grateful that I could finally do my reports without physical pain.