I agree with the logic in them, Helen, but it's not easy explaining to a kid who is still grappling with the crazy rules of English and has a hard time understanding why the past tense of 'strike' isn't 'striked', or 'run' isn't 'runned'. Truth be told, even though verb tenses of French change according to which personal pronoun applies, etc, it does make more sense. It's been years since I studied French, but it's amazing how those verb tenses just stick with you.

Here's a tip: Get a couple good, fully-conjugated, really FOUL sentences full of nice, conjugated curse words in different tenses (use a different sentence/verb per tense, not multiples of same). I guarantee if your kid remembers nothing else, they'll remember the cursing. And interestingly enough, they can build on that knowledge.