Picket Fence Post

My fifth graders are going to start middle school this fall and, because they’re my oldest kiddos, I attended a recent principal’s coffee where parents of incoming sixth graders were given a tour of the middle school and a primer about middle school life.

Among the handouts parents were given was a pamphlet that provided moms and dads with advice on how to help make our child’s academic experience in middle school a positive one.

So where’s the “Friday Funny” in this, you may be asking. It was in the pamphlet’s seventh tip: “Encourage your child to keep his/her locker tidy — feel free to come in after school with your child to clean out unwanted items.”

This is one step removed from this kind of helicopter parenting advice: “Please meet your child in the cafeteria at his/her designated lunch time in order to properly cut the child’s foods into bite-sized pieces so the student does not choke. In the event of choking, you should be pre-certified in the Heimlich Maneuver and execute the maneuver if given permission by the lunch room monitor to do so. Your certificate must be on file in the office before entering the cafeteria.”

Actually, that one about cutting up a kid’s food and being certified in the Heimlich Maneuver was not included among the tips, but seriously, asking parents to clean out their kid’s locker is ridiculous.

When I posted this on my Facebook page, I was delighted to read some of the responses from my friends:

“Just bring a scraper, some diluted hydrochloric acid and proper protective gear. And proper containment apparatus,” one wrote.

Another added, “And a wheelbarrow for all the papers not brought home.”

A current college student who attends the university where I used to teach, provided the most salient response when he wrote, “If my mom came to school to clean out my locker it would have probably taken until college for me to forgive her.”

Image credit: School Outfitters.

First full week of 2010. The kiddos brought home a total of 89 pieces of paper from school, including several holiday-themed items they’d, for some reason, not brought home from school during the previous week.

The Youngest Boy brought home a gingerbread house he’d made, along with a sweet winter painting of the boy and me (*awww*) outside along with two fundraising flyers from the parent-teacher association. The Girl brought home a four-page creative writing project and The Eldest Boy brought home 17, count ‘em, 17 pages of math worksheets, seven pages on magnets and seven pages of holiday fun puzzles.

This brings the grand total of papers sent home during this school year to: 1,067.

The Christmas/New Year’s holiday break caused a bit of a backlog here at the Picket Fence Post’s Paper Project, where I’ve been attempting to tally the pieces of paper my three kids bring home from school in a single school year.

During weeks 16-17 (week 17 was only a half week due to the Christmas holiday) the children brought home a total of 96 pieces of paper.

Among the items that came home were: Three copies of a flyer about local ice skaking events, a six-page worksheet about electromagnets, a fifth grade muscle test, several spelling tests and pretests, a six-page third grade Colonial days booklet and a last-minute notice telling parents of kids who play in the fifth grade band that there was a winter concert. (The Eldest Boy is in the percussion section.)

That brings the total number of papers to a grand total of: 978.

There are some news stories that cross my desk and make me blurt out a variety of profanities or other exclamations. Like the story this week about how, despite the horrendous fall-out from the Jon & Kate Plus 8 debacle (where the Gosselins’ marriage fell apart in front of a national television audience while their kids continued to be filmed by a film crew), 47 percent of 1,000 moms surveyed by Parents Magazine said they’d agree to let their children appear on a family reality show. Is that about money? Fame? Cluelessness? I wondered.

Then there are stories like this one that I found out about from a friend via Twitter: A second grader drew Jesus on a cross while he was at school. His depiction (see the image above) sent shock waves through the school after officials declared it “violent.” Here’s how the Boston Herald reported it:

“An 8-year-old boy from Taunton was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on a cross.

. . . [The father] added his son drew the picture shortly after visiting the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro [MA] to see its Christmas display. He made the drawing after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.”

That sound you hear is my head hitting my desk.

Image credit: The Taunton Gazette via the Boston Herald.

During the fifteenth week of school — when, get this, all three of the Picket Fence Post children went to school and didn’t stay home sick, although there was a snow day — I saw lots of papers come my way.

Included among the 78 papers that came home during the week were: A hilarious 2-page cartoon drawn by The Youngest Boy where a character named Little Bug defeated a masked robber who was trying to steal televisions and included a depiction of a battle atop a skyscraper; a Bingo game where info about explorers was used to fill in the boxes; tons of fact sheets about explorers, the moon and the solar system; a two-page worksheet for my third grader’s “holiday family traditions” homework and a beautiful, large colorful nutcracker that The Eldest Son made in class before he and his fellow fifth graders went to see The Nutcracker.

That brings the total amount of papers sent home from school this school year to a total of 882. Anyone want to take bets on whether we’ll crack 1,000 by the end of the month?

The call came in at 5:41 a.m.: No school today because of the morning snowstorm.

Contrary to my constant carping about the kids being home all the time (illness, half days, vacation days, etc.) making working from home difficult, I considered this morning’s news to be a good thing.

Allow me to explain:

The Spouse had been away all weekend (went to the Patriots game in Miami while I carted The Ungratefuls around to various sporting events, to church services, to packed stores in search of snowboots after the first snowfall and to a sports-themed birthday party). His schedule over the past few weeks has been rather tight and hasn’t afforded us much of chance to go out as a family and select a Christmas tree. When he got back from his tough weekend — of watching his favorite professional football team lose, eating nice meals at swanky restaurants where no one openly farts at the table or asks for cereal instead of roasted chicken, swimming in the ocean and reveling in tropical weather — he and I examined the calendar and decided that right after school was the best time to get a tree. We’d give the tree’s branches time to warm up and fall a bit and plan to decorate it after dinner.

Now when you tell your kids that you’re going to go buy and decorate your Christmas tree, you expect an outward expression of excitement, not complaining.

The Eldest Boy, who did some of his homework when he came home from school, objected when we loaded everyone into the Picket Fence Post family vehicle to go and look for a tree. Why? He hadn’t yet completed his assignments and he, a Type-A kind of student, couldn’t stop thinking about the remaining work he had to do. It was stressing the kid out.

His lamentations continued as we commenced with the decorating of the tree after dinner, with Christmas tunes blasting in the background as I held Max the puppy to prevent him from gobbling up the ornaments. (Last week Max gnawed a few Star Wars action figures and has been teething quite a bit lately so we’re going to have to watch him closer than the Secret Service watches uninvited attendees of White House dinners to make sure that he doesn’t destroy the Christmas tree.)

At one point during the decorating, The Eldest Boy was curled up on the sofa fretting about the lateness of the hour and how he’d never get all his homework done, bellowing, “I have homework!” The kid’s 11 for God’s sake.

“It’s not like you’re going to flunk out of fifth grade because you decorated the Christmas tree with your family tonight,” I, the sometimes-Grinch, responded. We told him that he could get up early and finish up his work (he didn’t have THAT much more to complete) in the morning because family time decorating the tree came first. “You can tell your teacher that I said that.”

Thus when the call came this morning alerting us that school was canceled, I actually welcomed it so that The Eldest Boy could chill.

After breakfast this morning, the three Picket Fence Post kids charged outside in the snowstorm with Max — who has to hop through the snow like a rabbit because he’s got such short, stubby legs — and had a blast in the snow . . . until tree branches started cracking and falling to the ground. At that point, I pulled the puppy into the house and told them to stay away from the trees until the wind died down.

Now that it’s started to sleet, the kids are starting to come indoors one by one. Hopefully The Eldest Boy will just finish the damned homework so I don’t have to listen to him fret about it anymore. Until tomorrow.

Even though the Picket Fence Post kids didn’t have school last Wednesday — in honor of Veteran’s Day — and The Youngest Boy went on a field trip to Plimoth Plantation all day Thursday (I chaperoned and had to repeatedly prevent third graders from killing the chickens that were running loose on the 17th century inspired village), the kids still brought home from school a grand total of 79 pieces of paper last week.

Among the paper items were: Projects on Mayan life, papers and worksheets about the moon and Plimoth Plantation, as well as fliers about an ice cream social/fund raiser and a bunch of handmade flashcards.

This brings the grand total of the number of pieces of paper brought home by the three Picket Fence Post kids this school year to: 663.

The swine flu and other insanities delayed the posting of my weekly tallies of the number of pieces of paper brought home from school by the three Picket Fence Post kids. (For the background on this project, go here.)

Here’s the latest update:

Week 9: This was a week in which The Youngest Boy brought home a voluminous package of information about selling cookie dough to finance “parent awareness programs,” an announcement of and solicitation for volunteers for an ice cream social/fundraiser at one of the schools and two progress reports. The total number of papers sent home: 59.

Week 10: The Girl also brought home her own informational packets on selling cookie dough, as well as a number of Halloween/autumn-themed art projects, grammar and cursive writing worksheets. Total number of papers sent home: 72. (Note: The Eldest Boy was not in school during this week due to illness.)

When I add the tallies from weeks 9-10 with the school-year-to-date numbers, the grand total is: 584.

Item #1: Controversy Over H1N1 Vaccine Availability

After posting on Facebook the news that this week one of my kids was diagnosed with H1N1 (swine flu), many folks lamented the fact that they’ve been vigorously trying to obtain vaccines for their children but can’t. People are, in a word, pissed.

First of all, the president last week declared that the United States is in a state of emergency when it comes to the swine flu as the media have been hyping the death stats from H1N1 with scary stories of healthy pregnant women and children being fatally stricken with the disease — like the constant, ominus, beating of a drum — and making it seem as though the plague is awaiting us on our front stoops.

Secondly, there’s been an unforeseen production shortage of H1N1 vaccines, vaccines for which the Centers for Disease Control is urging parents of young children and pregnant women to obtain. And, in the midst of this federal-government-declared emergency, there’s currently not enough of the vaccine to go around right now.

Third, another unseemly factor was thrown into the mix this week: The government has been releasing dosages of the hard-to-find H1N1 vaccine to various groups including corporations, a practice they typically utilize to distribute the seasonal flu vaccines every year. However when people read the news that Wall Street banking and trading companies like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are obtaining doses of H1N1 vaccines (for which the companies had previously ordered from health officials) while other groups like pediatricians and ob/gyns don’t have enough to meet the needs of their high-risk patients, folks get irritated, to put it mildly.

Seeing NBC’s Today Show report below, which says that New York’s Goldman Sachs got as many doses of H1N1 vaccine as an entire hospital (200), you can see how this issue is quickly spiraling into the haves vs the have-nots, or, as the Today Show put it, Wall Street vs Main Street, yet again:

Item #2: Dads Are Important

While this news story falls into the, “Well, yeah, of course, you idiot” category, I found some of the points made in the New York Times’ piece, “Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (And Mothers)” — about how having dads around is important to children — are worth mentioning. The story said that institutionally, dads feel excluded from places where parents and children gather because the physical environment and the practices utilized by staff in such locations are geared toward children and mothers, sending clear signals that taking care of the kiddos is for mothers, not fathers.

“The walls in family resource centers are pink, there are women’s magazines in the waiting room, the mother’s name is on the files, and the home visitor asks for the mother if the father answers the door,” a University of California Berkeley psychology professor told the Times. “It’s like fathers are not there.”

This happens all the time in schools as well when there’s an assumption that the volunteers for school-related tasks will be women, hence the phrase “room mothers.” (I’ve yet to hear anyone invoke the phrase “room fathers.”) One time The Spouse volunteered to be a chaperone for one of our kids’ field trips and, after the chaperones had been selected, a note was sent home saying that I had been among those chosen volunteers to go on the trip, when it was The Spouse’s name that had been submitted.

Additionally, the Times story pointed out that, in order to allow children to benefit from their relationships with their fathers, mothers need to back off and stop micromanaging everything. The paper paraphrased a child psychologist as saying, “Fathers tend to do things different . . . but not in ways that are worse for their children. Fathers do not mother, they father.”

Item #3: Parents Should Back Off Kids’ Homework

Speaking of backing off, syndicated columnist Betsy Hart asserted in a new essay that she doesn’t think it’s necessary for parents to micromanage their children’s homework assignments and drill the children to prepare them for tests, especially in the younger grades. The mother of four believes that her children should learn how to manage their schoolwork, and, when they fail to do so, learn from the consequences fo their failure. An excerpt:

“I worry that if a parent is stressing about [his or her child's] tests and advanced placement in the third grade, these might be the same parents who are literally checking in on a child’s tests and assignments in college on a regular basis. Or even going to job interviews with a grown child after he gets his degree.

But once again the older I get, the more wisdom it turns out my mother had. When it comes to what we do for our kids, she would say, so often less is more.”

While watching NBC’s Nightly News last night, there were two outrageous news segments involving children and families that demonstrated the utter absence of common sense and empathy on the part of an school district and a health insurance company which only serve to fuel people’s suspicions and skepticism toward them.

School District Officials Run Amok

A Delaware 6-year-old first grader was suspended from school and his mother was told that he’ll have to spend 45 days attending a reform school. Why? Because he brought his favorite camping utensil — a fork/spoon/knife/bottle opener combo — to school without telling his mother, a utensil he routinely uses to eat breakfast and dinner. The utensil fell out of the little boy’s pocket when he was in school, which is in a school district with a zero tolerance policy for “weapons.” Soon thereafter, his mother received a call from school officials saying that he’d brought a “dangerous weapon” to school, would immediately be suspended for five days. Now he’s been told he’d be sent to reform school for 45 days.

No common sense was applied to this situation. No one examined why this kid brought this to school and whether he had threatened anyone or anything with it. No one said, “Hey Zachary” (the boy’s name) “don’t bring things like this to school, okay buddy?” followed by a letter home to his mother reiterating that he can’t bring the utensil to school. Poof! Problem solved, unless he kept bringing it to school, THEN you’d have a disciplinary problem on your hands. If he had been threatening anyone or anything, that would’ve been a different story, but to blindly following a policy such as this is pure silliness.

Health Insurer Run Amok

On the same broadcast, there was another insane story, this one about a healthy, breastfed 4-month-old baby (who weighs roughly 18-19 pounds now) who was DENIED health insurance by a Colorado health insurance company which decided that he was too fat and was uninsurable. We’re in the midst of having an intense debate about the future of how health insurance will be paid for and what kind of care will be dispensed, and a health insurance company decided to simply confirm the very worst stereotype its industry: That it’s filled with the heartless and the profit-greedy who think nothing of casting aside a healthy child based on unreasonable “rules.” Following a public outcry, you should know, the insurance company relented and offered the baby coverage.

Seriously, when you have an innocent 6-year-old sent to reform school for bringing a camping utensil to school and a healthy 4-month-old who lives on breastmilk being denied health insurance because he’s deemed “too fat,” you’ve got to wonder what’s going on in the minds of the people making these decisions.

UPDATE: Following a spate of intensely negative national publicity, the Delaware school officials who suspended the 6-year-old camping utensil-toter have buckled under and allowed the first grader to return to school, USA Today reported.

That’s great for little Zachary, but what about all the other kids who don’t get to go on the Today Show and NBC Nightly News to plead their cases when school districts make boneheaded decisions? Hopefully their parents will take a page from Zachary’s mother and stand up to such nonsense.