Picket Fence Post

Actually, it’s not me who has the homework. Not nominally anyway. It’s two of my kids who have the assignments.

Which is apparently now my problem. Because they’ve been given assignments that require that I (or their father) drop everything and make sure that they’re completed TONIGHT.

My second grader has informed me that for tonight’s homework assignment, he and his parents must conduct a family fire drill, test all the fire alarms in the house and discuss what we’re supposed to do in the event of an emergency. (That’s on top of the 20 minutes of reading a parent is supposed to supervise each night.)

My fourth grade daughter told me I have to let her use my computer TONIGHT so she can go to a web site, “look stuff up” and then write some paragraphs about it. (Yeah, I’m lettin’ a 10-year-old near the internet without my supervision or a parent lurking around. Not. And, by the way, I’m USING my computer right now. For work.)

My twin fourth graders also have these delightful fluency assignments where, on Mondays through Thursdays, a parent is supposed to listen to the student read aloud an excerpt from a book (sometimes a poem) they’ve been given. (A few weeks ago, the passage was about ants and how ant queens would go to other colonies and kill the reigning monarch.) Depending on what skill is being tested that day (accuracy, expression, rate of speed, or all of ‘em), you have to grade the child on a four-point scale. And you have to do this three times in a row each night. That’s when it’s not Thursday and all three kids have to study for a spelling test, and my daughter has to complete a math worksheet in three minutes while you watch her, time her and then grade her work.

Don’t get me wrong. I love knowing what my children are studying and witness them progressing academically. It’s part of my job as a parent to look over their homework. I want to know what books they’re reading. Those things are important, as is the ability of the children to safely navigate the internet and complete math problems correctly.

What I don’t like is the fact that assignments get dumped on the parents with no notice, when we might have other things to do, such as our own work, shuttling other children in the family around, and, oh, I don’t know, life? It’s one thing to give the children an assignment that they can complete on their own; it’s another to give them an assignment that requires direct parental involvement and is due TOMORROW. A little notice would be much appreciated. Many families I know are already harried and running on the power of caffeinated beverage alone (particularly given the hideously late night antics of the Red Sox). It doesn’t take much to send our delicately balanced days off-kilter.

But, I’ve got to go now . . . I haven’t graded my daughter’s fluency assignment yet, nor have I overseen the Youngest Boy’s reading (make sure he does his reading) or helped him with his fire escape plan. I also have to track down the Eldest Boy, because there’s certain to be some parental assignment lurking in his backpack. I was planning to take the kids to the library late this afternoon, since this is the only day when they don’t have some sort of sports practice or game. But, with all this homework I’ve been given, I don’t know if that’s going to be possible.

If I’m not mistaken, I finished the 2nd and 4th grades a long, long time ago, in a lifetime that seems so very far away . . .

My town doesn’t have neighborhood schools. It doesn’t have crossing guards. There’s virtually nothing that encourages students to walk to school.

When my three kids were attending the grade school less than a mile away from my house, I spoke with the principal about having them walk to school and was told that there were no crossing guards therefore I’d have to walk with them each way because there was a street to cross. When I inquired about having them ride bikes, the principal paused — this, apparently was an odd inquiry, even though there is a small bike rack in front of the school – and repeated that a parent had to accompany the kids.

So for the one year that my children attended the same school, we tried to walk and/or ride bikes or scooters as often as possible, enabled by the fact that I was working from home. By the time my older children reached an age where I’d consider allowing them to walk to school solo, they’d already moved on to another school across town.

I was reminded of my kids’ walking to school experiences when I read a page one story in the Boston Globe today about parents who are trying to spark a ”walk-to-school movement.” “One major obstacle remains,” the article said, “parents who are fearful of letting their children leave home on their own.” The article mentioned that in several Boston suburbs parents are trying to organize “walking groups” of children supervised by adults, and that school districts are hiring “walking coordinators” and enlisting the help of crossing guards.

One stat in the article stood out: 42 percent of school children walked to school 40 years ago, compared to only 15 percent today. Why is this the case? The article indicated that the trend away from neighborhood schools, as well as busier schedules could be blamed. Plus, if today’s kids require a parental supervisor that wouldn’t work if parents have jobs where they can’t show up late in the mornings or if they can’t leave work in order to walk the kids home. And, if you’ve got students attending multiple schools, there’s another strike against walking. Meanwhile, all we hear about is childhood obesity.

The answer? I wish we could go back to the days of neighborhood schools and retiree crossing guards like when I was a kid. I don’t think that’s going to be happening any time soon, at least in my town.

If, however, you live close enough to a school where you could consider having your children walk, check out the Fearless Walkers web site, by a Stoneham, Mass. parent who told the Globe, “I feel when [the students] walk the half-mile to school and get the fresh air, they sit more comfortably in their seats in class and are ready to learn.” There’s also the Massachusetts Safe Routes to School web site which promotes “alternative” ways to get to school, and a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program called Kids Walk to School.

Image credit: Michigan Safe Routes.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has the opportunity to inject some sanity into Massachusetts school systems when it comes to the classroom placement of twins, triplets or what’s called ”higher order multiples” (meaning quads, quintuplets, etc.). A bill to allow parents to choose whether they want their twin or triplet children in the same or different classrooms has made it through the state House and Senate and has landed in Patrick’s hands.

As a mother of twins, I heartily cheer on this empowering move for parents who know the children better than anyone else. In August 2002, I wrote a piece for Parents and Kids Magazine about classroom placement for twin kindergartners and found that a vast number of education specialists believe that the decision should be left up to the parents. However in Massachusetts, many school principals continued to cling to policies mandating separating multiples, treating their unique status as if it were a virus that needed to be stamped out.

As I researched the piece, I spoke with folks who’d been involved in a local mothers of twins organization,  many of whom opted to separate their children in kindergarten because they felt it would be the best move. When my boy-girl twins were entering kindergarten, The Spouse and I wanted them together (had to buck the “we always separate twins” mantra), but by first grade, we wanted them separated. A one-size-fits-all-just-separate them policy is outdated and doesn’t reflect contemporary research in the field of multiples, nor does it recognize that parents of multiples have a variety of opinions on the subject.

The authors of The Art of Parenting Twins wrote, “It is the single most important event in the expansion of their children’s social environment (after preschool and day care), and signals a major separation from parents and home.” A Boston University professor told the Boston Globe that stripping a twin of his or her lifelong partner at a time of major change was an unnecessary move, if the children weren’t ready for it: “If a 5-year-old child would feel more happy with their twin with them, why would we not do that?”

The National Organization of Mothers of Twins, which has a produced a booklet on the issue, says no studies support the age-old contention that twins are better off separated and advocates a “flexible placement policy through the early elementary school years.”

When we received our children’s school calendars in the mail last month, I sat down with my digital and old fashioned paper calendars to plug in the important dates, including Curriculum Night for my twin fourth graders this coming Thursday.

On previous Curriculum Nights/Open Houses, The Spouse and I have brought all three of our kids along with us. We’ve all listened to the school principals, school nurses and so on, until it was time to visit individual classrooms. During Open Houses at my twins’ schools, The Spouse and I would play man-to-man D, each accompanying one of the twins to his or her classroom. If there was time (which there often wasn’t), we parents would swap and race to see the other twin’s classroom. That’s precisely what we were planning to do at this week’s Fourth Grade Curriculum Night. Then we received this letter on late Tuesday afternoon:

(more…)

I’ve gotta hand it to Bruce Handy, a writer and deputy editor at Vanity Fair. He created a sarcastic and sharply humorous phony school form for the New York Times that hits the inanity of the dynamics between parents and schools squarely on the mark. (Go here to see the fake form in full.)

The faux parental registration form for a school known as the “Elm Street School” starts off by saying:

“Greetings, parents. We’re sure you’re every bit as excited about the new school year as we are. (Sigh.) Please take the time to fill out the following registration form. Send it in on the first day of school with your fully inoculated, adequately medicated, lice-free son/daughter.”

Among the pieces of information requested on the form:

– The name of the student’s test-prep tutor.

– The name of the student’s playdate coach.

– Whether the child has dietary restrictions, allergies, biting problems, attention-seeking disorder, mange or early-onset despair.

My favorite part: After the line, “This year I will volunteer for,” there are the following volunteer opportunities from which to choose:

“a. Class parent.

b. The auction.

c. The spring fair.

d. All of the above.

e. None of the above? O.K., then excuse us while we go and work on those college recommendation letters, if you catch our drift.”

Second favorite part of Handy’s satirical form: Asking parents to promise not to “check my BlackBerry during the holiday concert and/or think unsupportive thoughts during the fifth grade string section’s performance of ‘Dreidel, Dreidel.’”

Dear Teenaged Staples Employees with Whom I Spoke Yesterday,

You were all so very pleasant yesterday when I asked several of you where I could locate Trapper Keepers in your store.

Clutching three sets of school supply lists for my three kids (for items which ultimately cost me $130 . . . and I didn’t buy everything on the lists and made many unauthorized substitutions with store brands) I must’ve looked like a crazy lady to whom you gave quizzical looks. Was my scary/stressed out demeanor the reason why, when I asked, “Where are your Trapper Keepers?” you kept showing me intricate $20 zippered contraptions which were clearly meant for high school or higher-level students? Or were you just not in the mood to deal with me?

“No, that cannot possibly be what the teacher wants,” I said, pointing to one of the lists. “This if for a fourth grader.”

When I continued to get nothing but vacant looks, I dashed back to your humongous school supply display, grabbed a two-pocket folder WITHOUT fasteners (per teachers’ requests) and held it up to an employee. “See? This says ‘Trapper’ on it. That means that somewhere, there’s a Trapper Keeper for this to go into.”

More blankness. “Sorry,” one kind young girl said with a smile, returning to her work of stacking merchandise.

I received similar responses from other staffers whose glances bestowed unspoken pity upon me, the poor woman who, minutes earlier, had been muttering to her fourth grade son, “The teacher’s just gonna have to deal with these substitutions . . . HOW many of those? Ten? No way.”

Then, after 45 migraine-inducing minutes of trying to locate the nearly 40 items on the three lists (not including the ones I didn’t buy), I accidentally stumbled across a small Mead display. With Trapper Keepers. For $6.99. I brought a light blue Trapper Keeper to the front of the store where the nice young girl was still stacking the $20 zippered items and said, “I just thought you should know, THIS is a Trapper Keeper. It’s at the end of Aisle 3, in case any other parents come in here looking for it.”

In the future, perhaps you kind, polite and smiling young folks could put in a little effort into discerning if your store actually carries an item for which an already frazzled parent, clutching a vast school supply list, is looking instead of just providing blank stares.

Happy Fall!

Sincerely,

Meredith O’Brien

Image credit: Ironically, from Office Depot.

That’s the conclusion of Philip K. Howard, who, in a Wall Street Journal piece entitled, “Why Safe Kids are Becoming Fat Kids,” said that by trying to rid our children’s lives of risks on the playground, we’re not only sucking fun out of their lives, but we’re driving them to the relative “safety” of TV, video games and computers where they sit, sloth-like, munch on Cheetos and gain another half-pound with each tick of the clock.

Quoting the American Academy of Pediatrics as saying that unstructured play is crucial to children’s development, Howard wrote:

“The harmful effects of our national safety obsession ripple outward into society. One in six children in America is obese, and many of them will face a lifetime of chronic illness. According to the Center[s] for Disease Control, this problem would basically cure itself if children engaged in the informal outdoor activities that used to be normal. But how do we lure children off the sofa? One key attraction is risk.”

He added that when we adults seek to eliminate pediatric risk — like the potential risks involved in falling from playground equipment, sledding or playing tag at recess — we rob the kids of their chance to figure out how to navigate such hazards in the future. And he’s right. If children don’t try to test their limits while under the care of engaged parents who do not hover and suffocate them, what are they going to do when they’re finally on their own, like, for example, at college?

Certainly I don’t want my kids to break their limbs, require stitches or sustain concussions, but I likewise don’t want them to be reticent to go outside in their backyard or school playgrounds and figure out how to play on their own without having adults there to guide their activities.

My kids’ three teachers have made contact with their new pupils via snail mail. Along with their pleasant letters — which attempt to psych the children up for the new school year – came the obligatory school supply lists. I know that I say this every year, but something about these very practical, but ever-growing lists bugs me.

See for yourselves:

One of our fourth grader’s supply list:

• One pair of Fiskars pointed-tip kid scissors
• Two rolls of 3/4″ Scotch tape
• One ruler, plastic
• 10 (.74 oz.) white glue sticks
• Three packages of #2 pencils with erasers
• One box of 12 count Crayola washable markers (conical tip) (fat)
• One box of 12 count Crayola washable markers (fine tip) (skinny)
• One box of 24 count Crayola crayons
• One box of 24 count Crayola colored pencils
• Three (Sanford) Sharpie markers, ultra fine point, permanent, black
• Nine twin pocket folders, one of each color, no clasps inside: tan, yellow, light blue, dark blue, orange, green, red, purple, white. (NOTE: Has anyone seen a tan pocket folder? I’m afraid this is going to be difficult to locate.)
• Two gummy erasers
• One pencil bag with zipper that has three holes to fit in your trapper
• One trapper (NOTE: I’m assuming this is like a Trapper Keeper from when I was a kid and not a trap of another sort, like a bear trapper, or cranky mother trapper.)
• Two packages 4 X 6 ruled white index cards
• Three Mead composition books, black and white firm marbled covers
• 100 sheets, wide-ruled
• “During the school year, I will be asking for additional glue sticks and pencils.”

The aforementioned list is not to be confused with the second list for my other fourth grader:

• One pair of Fiskars pointed-tip kid scissors
• Two large glue sticks
• Two packages of 12 #2 pencils with erasers
• Two boxes of 8 count Crayola washable markers (conical tip, fat)
• Two boxes of 12 count Crayola colored pencils
• Two plastic, two-pocket portfolio folders
• Six twin-pocket folders, one of each color: red, green, blue, purple, orange, yellow
• Three 100-page, wide-ruled Mead composition books, black and white firm marbled covers
• Two 70-page, wide-ruled, single subject, spiral-bound notebooks, one red, one blue
• One 4 X 6 spiral-bound memo book (at least 50 pages), solid color
• One plastic accordion style folder (string, snap or elastic closure)
• One plastic pencil box
• Three postage stamps
• Two boxes of tissues

And last, but not least, the supply list for the second grader:

• 24 count crayons
• 12 count colored pencils
• One pair Fiskars pointed scissors
• One binder, 1-inch, 3-ring View Binder (clear front to insert a cover page)
• Six glue sticks
• One bottle of Elmer’s glue
• 24 count #2 pencils (Dixon Ticonderoga are the best)
• Three block erasers
• Four pocket folders (1 red, 1 yellow, 1 blue, 1 green)
• One pencil case or box
• One letter-sized clipboard

One of the letters explicitly tells us not to label the supplies because “the items on the list will be used by the whole class . . . We will do any required labeling together in class.”

There’s one lingering question that has been bugging The Spouse and I for years that we keep forgetting to ask: What happens to all the scissors we buy, year after year for the classrooms? Do they disappear? Are they melted down and recycled someplace? Is there a black market for scissors? Why couldn’t we just have each kid buy one pair of scissors, be responsible for them the entire year, then take them home in June and bring them to the next classroom he or she is in the following year? Why a new pair every year? That isn’t very green, now is it?

Image credit: Fiskars.

While eating lunch today, I leafed through the massive stack of mail neither I nor The Spouse have looked at in several days. Included among the bills and guidelines about our town’s new “transfer station” (i.e. — the dump) stickers, was the Lands’ End school uniform catalog.

My kids all attend public school and I’m not entertaining the notion of sending them to a private educational institution, HOWEVER, there was something charming about looking at the photos of children in school uniforms. My favorites were the tan and navy pants (for both genders), polo shirts and sweaters in solid colors. Envisioning those being my children’s only in-school clothing options instilled me with a sense of . . . oh, I don’t know, how do I describe the feeling? Calmness? Wishful thinking?

It’s not that I’m a fan of plaid skirts or blazers and ties for little boys. Those things are just cruel. But if all my kids had to choose from when they get dressed for school in the morning were the same clothes everyone else in school would be wearing, think of how simple my life . . . oh, I’m sorry, THEIR lives would be. No more arguing over what’s appropriate. No more fights (about attire at least). No more tales of being told by classmates — when you’re in THIRD grade — that your clothes aren’t cool. (Yes, that junk’s happening already. With both of my 9-year-olds.)

While I’d be satisfied with having an established set of clothing that could be worn to school (not a plaid uniform or jacket per se) for grades K-8, I could even toy with the idea that this could be a good idea for the walking hormonal cocktails known as high school students . . . although the teens would likely rebel and file some sort of lawsuit while being defended by the ACLU saying that their right to expose their bellies and the back of their boxer shorts are protected by the Constitution.

I asked my kids what they’d think of having to wear tan or navy pants (or skorts), along with polo shirts and plain sweaters for school. Here’s what they said:

The Eldest Boy: All right. I love collared shirts. (He’s my little Alex P. Keaton.)

The Girl: (Nothing verbal, just a full-body cringe and a look on her face as though she’d just eaten poo.)

The Youngest Boy: (Flipping through the catalog, pointing to the gym clothes — plain T-shirts, shorts and sweatpants) If we could wear this stuff all the time, okay.

Just for kicks, I Googled “school uniforms” and “public school” and learned that many public schools have been toying with this idea, or have implemented it.

What do you think of the idea of having your kids’ schools adopting a dress code and/or uniform?

Caps and gowns.

Graduation speakers.

Proms.

Manicures, pedicures and limos.

“After-parties” at homes or even hotels.

Professional party planners.

Not for college graduations or even high school graduations. We’re talkin’ eighth grade graduations, at least ones highlighted recently in the New York Times.

During a Father’s Day speech, Senator Barack Obama commented on such celebrations, saying: “This is just eighth grade. So let’s not go over the top. Let’s not have a huge party. Let’s just give them a handshake. You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”

My kids are years away from eighth grade, so what say you middle school parents: Is the eighth grade graduation scene over-the-top or is the Times just highlighting extremes? Do you think the media are sensationalizing this and that there’s nothing wrong with having a big, happy party?