The Yellow Bus

Girl Scouts

2011-12-20T21:03:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know, it's been a long time. So long that I've forgotten what my default font is, so I apologize if this doesn't match my previous posts.

Anyway, yesterday I'm minding my own business surfing the web when I get an email from Lucy's Girl Scout leader, who is actually a lovely person and, it must be said, is doing a job I would never in a million years want to do. So automatically she gets an extra 100 yards of slack, at least. This email informs me that I will need to stay at the Girl Scout meeting that night, because the Cookie Mom is going to explain about selling cookies to all the parents. This is a little bit of a pain in the ass, because I had planned to have John drop Lucy off at GS on his way to another meeting, which means he won't be able to stay, which means I'll have to take her after all. Still, as pains in the ass go, this is not even the biggest one that day, so no big deal. Far more concerning is the implication that the cookie selling will be explained to the parents.

So we show up at the meeting (five minutes late, sorry, sorry) and Lucy hustles off with the other girls to work on constructing Christmas tree ornaments out of toothpicks, or some other equally valuable skill. I, meanwhile, am waved over to the Parent Table (or, more accurately, the Mom Table, with one dogged Dad sitting off to the side looking too exhausted to be offended by the genderedness of it all). There the Cookie Mom is explaining all the Important Cookie Information, like how to fill out the order form and not to knock on strangers' doors and how to take donations for our troop's charity, which by the way we need to choose. And all this time I am thinking one thing, which is that I am not a Girl Scout.

Finally we get to the part where she tells us that we have to set the individual selling goals for the girls and the total selling goal for the whole troop, and I just can't take it anymore. "Um," I say, "shouldn't we be discussing this with the girls?" I say this in what I hope is a casual and offhand way but probably comes off as judgmental and bossy, because hey, it's me. They all look stunned. Discuss it with the girls? Why? Oh, I don't know. Because it's their troop and they're the ones selling the cookies to earn money for their troop and I thought the whole point of Girl Scouts was to teach girls independence and responsibility and of course to make Christmas tree ornaments out of toothpicks but really isn't the independence and responsibility just a teeny bit more important? I can't help but imagine Juliette Gordon Low sobbing in despair as she watches the parents set goals while their daughters attend to the important work of gluing bits of sponge onto poker chips (don't ask).

The Cookie Mom, to her credit, says that yes, that's a good idea. We should run all this by the girls. We should come up with the goals first, though, because they're not really able to set their own goals. Plus, another mom points out, we're the ones selling the cookies.

Wait, what?

Now, I understand that taking the cookie order form to the office is a time-honored tradition, having ordered many cookies that way myself before I had a Girl Scout of my own. And I had already made a mental note to take advantage of another mom's suggestion to post on facebook. But, fundamentally, isn't this supposed to be a girl-driven project? Aren't they supposed to be the ones invested in it, planning it and making it happen? And if they can't set their own goals, well, isn't that part of what they're supposed to learn from an activity like this?

Because, let me tell you, that would be a fantastic thing for them to learn, and I'm not just saying that as someone who would like to think that her daughter might someday be able to schedule her own doctor's appointments and do her own grocery shopping. No, I'm saying it as someone who deals on an almost daily basis with nearly-grown-up kids who can't do those things. Kids who have no concept of how to set goals, let alone achieve them. Kids who have never really worked at anything, who often seem to not even understand what that might mean. Kids who, in spite of never working hard, have never failed, either, and are so risk-averse that I feel like telling Occupy Wall Street to just wait a few years because there's no pipeline in place to replace those Wall Street people anyway. Too risky.

I won't lie. I'm disappointed in the Girl Scouts. From a noble beginning rooted in empowering girls, they have degenerated into a cookie-selling machine in which the girls don't even get to sell the cookies. But really, they're just following the crowd. I can't remember the last time I was at an activity for children that didn't involve parents hanging over the backs of chairs "helping". Parents often seem physically unable to drop their children off somewhere and, you know, leave. But I'll tell you what, we'd better start insisting that they do, or we are really screwed. Wall Street isn't the only thing that's going down if we don't start raising our kids with an eye toward their someday being adults.

Come on, Girl Scouts. Let's get ahead of the curve on this one.

Breakfast

2010-08-26T13:05:00.003-04:00

The kids are at a new school this year. To make a long (very long) story somewhat less long, there was a county-wide redistrict, and it turns out that we were one of the families who had to switch. So now instead of going down the mountain to a small, overcrowded rural school, we go up the mountain to a small, under-enrolled rural school. Frankly, although many of my neighbors will tell you otherwise, it's not a very big change.

Except for breakfast.

The new school has a higher percentage of students in the free lunch program than the old school did (and yes, this is the root of the reason my neighbors are so upset). This puts the school over some arbitrary threshold set by the federal government and means, among other things, that the school also has to provide free breakfast. To every child in the school. That's right, every child, even the ones who ate breakfast at home. Oh, sure, a parent may forbid her child from eating the breakfast. A parent may even notify the classroom teacher of this prohibition and the classroom teacher will have to enforce it. (Sounds like a good way to get off on the right foot with a teacher, doesn't it?) But the default is to offer all the kids breakfast when they walk into the room in the morning.

On the surface, this may seem like a fine idea. So the kids eat an extra bowl of oatmeal when they get to school in the morning. Big deal. In practice, however, there is no oatmeal on the menu. Pop Tarts, yes. Coco Puffs. Pastries. But no oatmeal.

So here are my options:
1. Look the other way while my children tank up on empty carbohydrates every morning,
2. Forbid them from having it and become both Mean Mommy and Problem Parent, or
3. Call the county's Director of Food Services and try to get the menu changed.

Three guesses which one I picked.

The Director of Food Services, like so many of the school system employees who field my complaints, agreed with me in theory. "But," he said, "I'm sure you've seen Food Revolution."

"Sure," I said, because I wasn't about to trash my credibility by admitting that I don't have a television and instantly being pegged as Crazy Hippie Lady who Probably Feeds Her Children Tofu for Breakfast. Plus, everyone says this to me, so even though I haven't seen it I actually knew what he was talking about.

"Well, that's what happens when we offer them healthier options," he said, meaning that the kids refuse to eat those foods. When the school offers, for example, yogurt and fresh fruit, the kids simply don't eat. Since they haven't eaten at home, this means that they don't get any breakfast at all. Furthermore, if they do eat at home they get things that are even worse than those that the school offers. At least the Pop Tarts the school serves are whole grain.

"ARGH!" I thought, but did not say. "Well," I did say, "everything we know about children's eating habits tells us that you have to keep offering them healthy foods over and over, and eventually they'll try them."

Unsurprisingly, he was familiar with this research. I told you, they all agree with me in theory. "But when they don't eat it, we have to throw it out," he said, "and we don't get reimbursed by the government for meals we don't serve."

"AH HA!" I thought, but did not say. "Well," I did say, "um." Because, to tell the truth, I couldn't really think of anything to say to that. Basically, he was telling me that the school system can't afford to provide healthy meals for the students. The free meals program is rigged, in fact, to make this impossible. Children are used to eating sugary, processed foods at home, and therefore that is what they expect at school. When they don't get it, they refuse to eat. When they don't eat, the system doesn't get the money it needs to provide food the next day. Thus, the schools are forced to offer choices that the children are familiar with so that they will eat them and the program will survive. For the school system to break this cycle would require a massive input of resources that it simply does not have.

Compounding this problem is the fact that the nutritional guidelines for school lunches (and breakfasts) are woefully out of date. The United States Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services are required by federal law to jointly issue updated dietary guidelines at least every five years. The most recent document is from 2005, and a new one is due out this year. But the nutritional requirements set out in the National School Lunch Program (which, curiously, is also administered by the USDA) are based on the guidelines from 1995. Why? Good question. To give you an idea of just how long ago 1995 was, those guidelines do not even mention whole grains or trans fats.

I told my kids that they have to eat their healthy breakfast at home, and then if they're still hungry they can have some of the school breakfast too. So far, at least according to their reports, they haven't been eating much at school. If that changes, maybe I'll reevaluate. But there's a bigger problem here than just my kids finally finding out what a Pop Tart is. These kids who refuse to eat fruit and yogurt are going to be running things when we're old, and it would be good if they didn't all have type 2 diabetes and chronic heart disease by then. The whole School Lunch Program needs a serious overhaul, starting with the way it's funded and going right down to the Pop Tarts. Get busy, Congress.

Like I Said

2010-05-25T13:27:00.002-04:00

Turns out that the Alliance for Childhood (the fact that such an organization even exists speaks volumes, don't you think?) agrees with my assessment of the Common Core Standards. They have "grave concerns" about the standards, which in their view "conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades." Well, duh.

To paraphrase, they are worried that the new standards will:

lead to age-inappropriate types of instruction
push out play-based learning
encourage more standardized testing
leave no time for crucial learning in areas other than reading and math

Furthermore, they point out that there is no research-based evidence to suggest that teaching this way even works. There is no established link between intensive instruction in discrete academic skills and later success, yet there is clearly established cognitive science indicating that this is not the best way for young children to learn. What is clearly established, of course, is the link between intensive instruction and higher standardized test scores in the short term.

Like I said.

Curriculum

2010-04-28T09:05:00.005-04:00

In case you missed it, the draft version of the new Common Core Standards for K-12 education came out last month. The document was developed by the commissioners of education of 48 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, (Alaska and Texas, to answer your question), and its purpose is to set uniform academic expectations for public education across the entire country. According to the authors, "the draft standards... seek to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce." They "define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs."

Whether or not this is a laudable goal will be discussed in a moment, but make no mistake that it is a major paradigm shift. Public education as we know it has been around in this country for about 150 years - the first compulsory attendance laws were passed in the mid-1850's - and during that time curricular control has always been in the hands of local or, at most, state educational authorities. Over the last 50 years or so, the federal government has made efforts to control the outcomes of public education (the ubiquitous testing of the No Child Left Behind act is the most recent example, but such efforts date back at least as far as Sputnik), but never before have they attempted to control the inputs. To put this in perspective, it is akin to the difference between having an annual checkup to make sure you are staying healthy, and having someone dictate what you must eat and do in order to be healthy.

Now, to be fair, a lot of people do a lousy job keeping themselves healthy, and they would probably benefit from someone telling them what to eat and do. Similarly, local educational authorities have not exactly done a fantastic job of educating our kids over the last couple of centuries, and having common, cohesive expectations is very likely to help fix that. The problem is that in our culture we value autonomy. If people want to sit on the couch all day watching reality television and eating Big Macs only to die young from heart disease and diabetes, then they have the right to do that. The question is, does this autonomy extend to education? Is it a good idea for the federal government to kick the local authorities off the couch and make them go for a jog, or is that a violation of some deeply-held belief in local control and, more broadly, states' rights? Does Kansas have the right to teach creationism (oh, sorry, I mean intelligent design), or should the feds step in and prevent such folly?

To be honest, at first this seemed like a no-brainer to me. Of course there should be common standards. In an enlightened democracy (hey, we're getting there), the quality of your education should not depend on where you happen to grow up. Also, Kansas should not be allowed to decide for itself what constitutes science.

Then, on Monday, I toured my county's brand new high school for the arts. Housed in a beautifully restored and updated old theater building in the scrappy little downtown area of the county seat, this school represents the creative vision and superhuman effort of many, many people. For over an hour, I listened to the school's principal passionately defending the idea of a school for the arts against my hostile witness-type questioning. (You may not be surprised to learn that I tend to take an oppositional stance in just about any discussion. I'd like to tell you that this is a way to get all the information, but the truth is I just like to argue.) As I did, I began to wonder what the impact of top-down curriculum development would be on a school like that. Would they be permitted some kind of exemption? Or (more likely) would they be expected to meet all the standards for a typical high school and fit in their arts education, the core of their mission, around it? As it stands now, that is more or less what they do, but because the curriculum is state-mandated they have (perhaps) more flexibility than they would have (probably) under a federally-mandated curriculum. Would these new standards mean the end of schools like that, either actually or effectively?

Well, from there it's just a slippery slope, isn't it? I suddenly remembered what a disaster the intrusion of "standards" into early childhood education has been. Instead of play-based preschools and kindergartens where children experiment with activities that interest them and spend most of their time moving around, now we have four- and five-year-olds at desks being told to sit still and color inside the lines. This in spite of an ongoing stream of pretty conclusive research suggesting that young children need active, imaginative play to grow up into healthy adults. There is really no reason, then, to believe that the research on the value of arts education will be heeded any more. Or technical education. Or any other alternative path to adulthood.

And, for me, that's really the issue. One size does not fit all. Again and again, research has demonstrated that different kids learn different ways, and that to reach them we must have a wide array of flexible options for teaching them. Common core standards are fine in theory, but in practice will they mean a loss of that flexibility? Will the subjects considered "core" be taught at the expense of other things that are equally important for healthy development? The answer is probably yes. Treating kids as individuals is a lot of work. Expensive, too. Easier, and cheaper, to just give everyone the same thing and then test them on it.

Properly implemented, the common core standards could be a great thing indeed. But when was the last time anything in education was properly implemented? I'm nervous about this. Really nervous.

Grades

2009-11-05T09:33:00.007-05:00

Sometime over the past year, while I was not paying attention, Lucy started bringing home papers with actual grades on them. Not smiley face stickers, which were the extent of the grading in kindergarten, or comments like, "good work!" or even corrections to mistakes, which sometimes happened in first grade. But actual percentage scores, obtained by way of a grading rubric and often translated into a letter. And if you think that she has not noticed this, then I can only say that I wish you were right.

As you have probably worked out for yourself by now, I am a college mathematics professor. This job, like all jobs, has its own set of joys and frustrations. The joys are probably obvious: the times when students get excited about the subject, have breakthroughs of understanding, ask (and answer) interesting questions, that sort of thing. Many of the frustrations are simply the complementary experiences: when students are bored, or uninterested, or frustrated themselves. But perhaps the principal frustration of my job is the almost universal fact that students work for grades. Even students who genuinely value learning for its own sake, and these are considerably less common than I might hope, usually aim their efforts not at learning itself but at earning good grades.

In a perfect world, of course, grades would reflect learning. But even if grades reflected precisely the learning that we hope to evaluate (which they do not, the world not yet being perfect), there is a fundamental difference of approach between learning for its own sake and learning to earn a grade. Grades are the mother of all extrinsic motivators (money, I suppose, being the father), and like other extrinsic motivators they teach students to look outward, rather than inward, for their rewards.

Young children understand that learning is an intrinsically rewarding activity. Infants learn to walk, toddlers learn to draw, preschoolers learn to count, and kindergartners learn to read, all because those things are fun to learn and interesting to be able to do. Then, suddenly, we start grading them. In the space of less than one academic year, children are no longer proudly announcing their new skills, they are proudly announcing their grades. Or, in some cases, not so proudly. And what is a grade, really? A grade is a summary judgment of a person's ability and achievement, distilled, usually, into a single character. How absurd is that? I mean, come on! Twenty years of multiple intelligence theory and this is still the best we can do?

I am publicly on record as being against assessment, at least the excessively quantitative forms of assessment that are currently so popular in education. But not all forms of assessment are created equal. Qualitative feedback helps students learn, and helps them hold onto the enjoyment of learning that comes so naturally at the beginning. All grades do is encourage students to become obsessed with performance, and discouraged if they do not perform well. And I can tell you from experience that when students enjoy learning, the entire process of education is more rewarding, and more successful, for everyone.

I am not naive enough to believe that we can eliminate grades at the college level, at least not in my lifetime. I have my doubts about the high school level, too. But could we not, at the very least, stop grading children in elementary school? Could we postpone, just for a few years, squelching the joy kids take in learning? Because it is painful to watch a child begin to worry about grades, but it is hard to fight and damn near impossible to correct later.

Motivation

2009-09-30T14:35:00.004-04:00

When I was in elementary school, if you were naughty you went to the principal's office. What happened there I never knew, because I was never naughty. Well, I never got caught being naughty, anyway. Ask my brother. While you're at it, ask him what went on in the principal's office.

Anyway, children today still get sent to the principal's office, but, like almost everything else about elementary school, the process has gotten significantly more complicated in the intervening 20 (OK, 30) years. At Old Forge Elementary, for example, they have the stoplight system. Here's how it works: each child has a clothespin with his or her name on it, and in the classroom there is a big poster of something resembling a large traffic light. All the children (clothespins) start the day on green. When a child is naughty, he (his clothespin) moves to yellow. If he shapes up, he moves back to green; if not, he stays on yellow. If he gets worse, he moves to red. If he punches the teacher in the nose, he goes to the principal's office. Or something like that.

At the end of the day, the teacher puts a stamp in each child's Behavior Folder (yep). The color of the stamp corresponds to the color on which the child (clothespin) ended the day. Regardless of the color of the stamp, the child's parent must sign the BF each night to show that she has seen the stamp. At the end of the week, children who got green stamps all week get to choose from the Prize Box (yep). The Prize Box is stocked with all manner of rejected Happy Meal toys, all of which are highly coveted by my non-Happy-Meal-eating children.

I told you. Complicated.

However, I'm pretty used to this by now. The kids come home, dump their backpacks in the kitchen, and make for the snacks. I unload the backpacks, sort out the multitude of forms, homework, and advertisements for soccer teams, and sign the BF. At this point, if I may say so, I could do it with my eyes closed. And apparently that's just about what I was doing, until one day two weeks ago. I was mid-sort, mid-snack negotiation, just lowering the pen to sign Ben's BF, when I stopped. Looked. Frowned. Squinted. What WAS that? It didn't look like it usually did.

It was a yellow stamp. I'd never seen one before.

Well.

There was a second yellow that week, and two more last week. This means that in addition to being subjected to (presumably) embarrassment in front of his peers and (definitely) interrogation by his parents, Ben did not get to choose a prize either week. This was definitely a Big Deal. And, indeed, this week he has all green stamps and is excited that he will get to choose a prize. So it works, right? Not so fast.

Here's the thing: this kind of behavior modification program relies heavily, perhaps exclusively, on extrinsic motivation. In other words, the kid is behaving because of what he gets, or doesn't get, from the outside world as a result. Research shows that this works great on little kids, which is undoubtedly why it's so popular in places where there are a lot of kids to control (like elementary schools). The problem is that it stops working as kids get older and, worse, teaches them that they deserve to be rewarded for doing the right thing.

If the Stoplight/Behavior Folder/Prize Box setup were the only one of its kind at Old Forge, I could probably overlook it. But it's not. Indeed, far from it. In addition to the BF there is the BUG (Being Unusually Good) award, in which a student who is especially kind to another student gets a lollipop and a certificate. The Golden Table award, in which a student who exhibits "good character" (the subject of a whole other post, let me assure you) gets to eat lunch on the cafeteria stage while wearing a medal. The Leopard Dollar system, in which students earn pretend money for doing things like their homework. Their homework! The Perfect Attendance award, in which a student with perfect attendance in a given month gets a certificate, some Leopard Dollars, and an invitation to an ice cream party. I could go on.

The trouble with all this is that it teaches kids that they should expect to be materially rewarded for doing the right thing, and that, if they are not, there is really no reason to do it. Even worse, it makes whatever provides a material reward appear to be the right thing to do. Can you think of any examples of behavior governed by that kind of skewed code of ethics in our recent history? Gee, let me think.

I'm not saying that the global financial crisis is Old Forge elementary school's fault. At least, not exactly. But I am saying that raising kids who respond primarily to extrinsic motivators is a bad idea. Really bad. Instead of, "here's your prize!" how about, "you should be really proud of yourself for behaving so well!" Or instead of, "here's your perfect attendance certificate," how about, "I'll bet you learned a lot this month since you were in school every day." Or instead of, "have a lollipop for being so nice!" how about, "doesn't it make you feel good when you help someone else?" No Happy Meal toys required.

T Plus Two

2009-08-22T08:57:00.007-04:00

Ben started kindergarten on Thursday.

Like virtually everything else, the experience of sending number two off to school was completely different from the first time around. I just couldn't seem to get worked up about it. Indeed, over the last few weeks quite a few people (who apparently actually read what I write here) have asked when I plan to post something about this, and I had started to feel a little guilty about not giving Ben's departure the same maternal angst that I so generously lavished on Lucy's. Right up to Wednesday night, I was completely cavalier about the whole thing. Even on Thursday morning, I was busily making special lunches and snapping first day pictures without a care in the world.

Because it was his first day, I drove him to school, and we chatted happily the whole way. I parked and walked him in. We found his seat, and he got out his brand new 24-pack of crayons, the one he wasn't going to have to share with his sister. He started to draw.

I said, "I can stay for a few minutes, but then I'm going to have to go to work."

He said, "Bye."

So I gave him a kiss and left. Wow, that was easy.

I walked back to my car, got in, and burst into tears.

Which is exactly what happened the morning I dropped Lucy off for the first time, except that this time I wasn't expecting it. This time it was kind of like when you stand up and whack the back of your head on something you didn't realize was there. Part of the resultant pain is from the whack, but part of it is just surprise, your brain going, "what was THAT? I didn't know there was something behind me!"

I cried all the way to work, absently wondering what was going on. Through meetings and lunch and more meetings, I sniffled and wondered. When I got home, I was greeted with enthusiastic hugs and stories of the first day, and I realized that I had not been worried about him. That wasn't it. What, then?

It wasn't until the next day, after the kids were at school and John was at work and I was getting ready to do my usual Friday morning chores, that it hit me: I'm alone here. It's over.

So that's what this is about, I thought. I don't have little kids anymore. I have... big kids. Schoolkids.

I haven't been home alone on a weekday in over seven years. It's very... quiet. I vacuumed the whole house without once stopping to play with legos or fix a transformer. For some reason, it took twice as long as usual. This is going to take some getting used to.

Party Favors

2009-05-16T18:18:00.002-04:00

I don't mean to be ungracious, but really, what is up with party favors these days? When I think, "party favor," I think, "balloon," or maybe, "ziplock baggie filled with cheap, unnecessary plastic objects that will break within 48 hours and be in the landfill by next week." Although I'm not exactly a fan of this kind of party favor, it is at least on a scale appropriate to the observation of an elementary school birthday.

Lately, however, it seems like party favors are escalating. Lucy has been bringing home from the seemingly unending stream of birthday parties she attends a series of "favors" that, in my opinion, would more accurately be termed "gifts." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that in our culture it is the birthday child who is supposed to get the gifts, not the guests. Maybe I'm old-fashioned (OK, I'm old-fashioned) but it seems to me that the party itself is the gift to the guests. Imagine if, every time I had a dinner party, I not only served the guests dinner, wine, and dessert, but sent them home with tote bags full of jewelry and toenail polish. Absurd, right? Yet that's what happens at these parties.

Recent party favors have included tee shirts, flip-flops, picture frames, dolls, even live potted plants. And actually, none of these things would be so bad if they came alone. ("Here's your cute little potted geranium to remember Suzie's birthday!" I'm down with that.) The trouble is that they come grouped into increasingly larger containers. First came the paper gift bag, full of stuff. Next came the cloth tote bag, correspondingly full. Most recently, Lucy actually brought home a bucket full of favors. That's right, a bucket. Stickers, activity books, stuffed animals, clothing, makeup (yes, makeup), pens and pencils, and, of course, candy. Always candy.

Fellow parents, I am begging you! Stop this madness. Kids don't need more stuff. They need to have fun playing with each other, and that is what you are so generously giving them when you invite them to your child's birthday party. Skip the bucket, OK? We'll all be happier in the long run.

Corporate

2009-04-30T16:26:00.008-04:00

Somehow, don't ask me how, I got sucked into being on the silent auction committee at Lucy's school this year. This is a job involving mostly begging for donations, which in the current economic climate is not exactly a rewarding endeavor. Nonetheless, begging I have gone, asking at stores all over the county and beyond for a little something for the auction. I have asked at coffee shops and malls, yoga studios and department stores, even gas stations and supermarkets.

Now, believe me when I say that I am sympathetic to the position that one should not have to give donations to the public schools, particularly when one does not even have children attending them. Did we not all pay thousands of dollars to the federal government for this very purpose just last month? Do we not sell tens of millions of dollars' worth of lottery tickets to the quantitatively illiterate to ensure, among other things, the financial health of our schools? Why, yes, we did, and we do. So why is this crazy woman with the redheaded boy in tow asking for a free half pound of coffee? I get that. I do. Furthermore, I get that the recession has been very hard on the retail sector, and that altruism may not be at the top of their list of motivators at this particular juncture.

So I expected a lot of rejection at the outset. I figured that most of the mom-and-pops would turn me down, having been hit the hardest. I thought a lot of regional chains would probably say no, too. My best chance, I decided, was the huge national megastores, which were presumably large enough to weather the downturn with their $20 gift cards intact. I figured, for example, that Wal-Mart was doing OK, since in times of economic hardship people previously unwilling to shop there might be forced to cede the high moral ground in order to afford clothing for their kids. Places like Toys R Us, The Gap, Home Depot. They have a little something to spare, right?

Wrong. Here is an approximate transcript of a visit to one of these stores:

Guy Behind the Counter: Hi! Welcome to Toys R Us [Wal-Mart, The Gap, Home Depot, etc.]! Can I help you?

Me: Hi! Yes! I'm with the Old Forge Elementary PTA, and we're having a silent auction in May to raise money to buy technology packages for the classrooms [proffer official letter]. We're hoping you might be able to donate something for the auction. Anything would help - a gift card, an overstocked item, whatever.

GBtC: [eyes glaze over, speaks in a monotone] I'm sorry. I can't handle that here. You'll have to contact our corporate headquarters via our web site, [quotes web address].

Me: Oh. OK. Thanks anyway.

I must have had this conversation 50 times over the last month. I ask for a donation, I get referred to Corporate. OK, so, I'm no stranger to the internet, I went ahead and hit those web sites, which are absurdly difficult to navigate (unlike the main sites for the stores themselves). I filled out web forms, I sent emails. Here, then, is an exact transcript of an exchange with one such corporate headquarters, which shall remain nameless:

My email:
Hello,
I am on the PTA at Old Forge Elementary School in Maryland. We will be having a silent auction next month, and I visited your store in the Valley Mall today to ask if they would be able to donate an item or a gift card for the auction. I spoke with Brittany, the manager there, and she told me that I needed to contact you electronically about this. I am attaching a letter containing more information about the auction and our school. Our taxpayer ID number is available on request. I know many of the students and parents at our school shop at your store - I hope you will be able to help us!

Thank you,
Kira Hamman

Their response:
Thank you for your inquiry. [Name of company] is committed to investing in the communities we serve. We believe we should go beyond the basics of ethical business practices and embrace our responsibility to people and to the planet. We believe this brings sustained, collective value to our shareholders, our employees, our customers and society. Social responsibility is fundamental to who we are and how we operate as a company. We invite you to visit our web site at [address] to read about the projects we are currently supporting.

If I can be of any further assistance, please let me know.

[Name]

My response to their response:
So is that a no?

Yeah, so, it turns out I was right about the quantity of rejection, but dead wrong about its source. It turns out that, in hard times, it's the people in your own community who help you out. The local hardware store. The dog groomer. The dentist's office. The dentist's office! They put together a gift basket for us! The hair salon. The local pizzeria (Domino's said no). The bowling alley. And so on. Here's an approximate transcipt of a visit to one of these stores:

Lady Behind the Counter, who is also the owner: Whaddaya need, honey?

Me: Hi! I'm on the Old Forge PTA, and -

LBtC: Oh, my kids went there years ago! Such a nice little school. Is Mrs. Waterman still there?

Me: Uh, I don't think so. I'm not sure. My daughter is only in first grade -

LBtC: Oh, that's the best age! They love school so much at that age! And how old is your little one [gesturing to Ben]? Isn't his hair something else?

This can go on for some time, until finally:

LBtC: So you need something for the auction. Why don't you go ahead and pick something out? Something under $20. Whatever you think would sell.

Me: Thank you so much!

I feel like a jerk and an idiot for being so off-base on this. Now, of course, it makes sense. These people know who I am. They know the school, they know the kids. Their kids, or grandkids, or neighbors, or all of the above, go there. Unlike Corporate, they actually care whether or not Old Forge kids have what they need. Furthermore, being businesspeople, they hope that being generous to the local school will bring them much-needed business that they might not otherwise get. Corporate knows it already has our business and doesn't need to work for it.

It's not like I needed another reason to hate megastores. I am firmly in the bleeding-heart-liberal camp of people who avoid Wal-Mart like the plague that it is (except, of course, when I'm begging for auction donations). I understand that if I don't support local businesses then they will fail, irrevocably changing the landscape of the small town in which I live. I know I should buy lumber at the local mill instead of Home Depot, books at the independent bookseller instead of Barnes & Noble, toys at the little store downtown instead of Toys R Us. And most of the time I do.

But I won't lie. To me, shopping at Target is one of life's little pleasures, right in there with pedicures and discovering that my husband has folded all the laundry. The convenience of one-click buying at Amazon is as seductive to me as the apple was to Eve. Unfortunately, the consequences are proving to be as dire. I love Quizno's subs. But you know what? I don't want to live in a world where I have to get my subs at Quizno's because they've driven everyone else out of business. And there's the rub.

As I was thinking about these things earlier today, my favorite independent toy store posted a link on their facebook page to the 3/50 Project. I was immediately smitten with their attitude, the upshot of which is that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You don't have to swear never to one-click preorder the latest Harry Potter from Amazon ever again. You can have a Quizno's veggie sub with no onions and extra guacamole. You can even, dare I say, browse through Target's spring collection. Just, please, promise to support the local guys too. Every month, spend at least $50 among at least 3 local independent businesses. Pick up the potting soil you need at the local store instead of the megastore. Go out for dinner at a non-chain restaurant. Get your morning coffee and bagel somewhere other than Starbucks one day. Done. Get it? So simple! So easy! So effective.

Because, to quote Judy Collins, "God help me if I ever have to shop at Wal-Mart because nothing else is left."

Mr. Harry

2009-04-27T15:49:00.002-04:00

On Thursday night I realized with dismay that, because school was conveniently getting out two hours early the next day, the bus stop run would conflict with an important phone conference I had to participate in. Oh, the joys of working from home. After a brief pow-wow, John and I decided to let Lucy walk home from the bus stop alone for the first time. It's only about 100 yards, but you have to walk down the hill before turning onto our lane, and then you have to walk down the lane to get to our driveway. She knows the way, of course, and knows to walk in the grass rather than on the road, and so on, but we had never let her try it on her own before. As with so many things, she was excited, I was conflicted and apprehensive.

Still, the conference must go on, so Friday morning I wrote a note for Lucy to give to her bus driver (known to one and all as "Mr. Harry") explaining that I was at home but couldn't come out to meet the bus, and that it was OK for her to walk down the hill alone today. I confess that I was not paying much attention to the phone conference as the appointed time drew near and I strained to look out the window. You can't actually see the bus stop from the house, but eventually I saw her turn onto the lane and I breathed a sigh of relief. Just then I heard a "toot-toot!" and saw Lucy turn to wave at someone I couldn't see. Mr. Harry, of course. He'd waited until she got all the way down the hill before driving away, even though that put him at least five minutes behind schedule (probably longer, knowing Lucy's walking speed).

It was typical of him. He was the kind of guy who had inside jokes going with most of the kids, who managed to draw shy Lucy out of her shell within the first week and who honked the big bus horn at Ben every day as he drove up the hill before dropping Lucy off. As I went out to get Lucy today I was thinking that I would thank him for keeping an eye on her on Friday. He would brush it off, tease Ben about wearing his rain boots on this 90 degree day, and drive off.

Except that Mr. Harry wasn't on the bus today. A woman I'd never seen before pulled up and, as Lucy was climbing off, told me that on Saturday Mr. Harry was in, of all things, a traffic accident. He died.

As the tears filled my eyes, I thought of how this was the first person Lucy has known to die. I knew I would need to talk to her about it, and that I would consult my therapist mother for advice on what to do. I knew I would have to decide what, if anything, to tell four-year-old Ben. I knew this was something you deal with in life, and I knew we would deal with it. But, while I knew all this, I was momentarily stunned by the suddenness of it. By the vivid reminder that you just don't know, from one moment to the next, what will happen. You can't live your life worrying about it, of course, or you would go crazy and your children would grow up to be agoraphobic. You have to let your kids walk home from the bus stop on their own when it's time and keep your apprehension to yourself. You have to operate on the assumption that tomorrow will come along in due time and that it will be pretty much like today. But every once in a while something happens to make you realize that this, like all assumptions, can be spectacularly false.

I guess the antidote, if that's the word, to the unexpected turns life takes is to appreciate the present as much as we possibly can. To find joy in the things we do every day. To toot the horn at a little kid who wishes he got to ride the bus, too. To take an extra five minutes making sure someone gets home safely.

We'll miss you, Mr. Harry.

RSVP

2009-02-17T20:27:00.005-05:00

Three, maybe four weeks ago I sent seven adorable (if I may say so) hand-designed invitations to Lucy's seventh birthday party to seven carefully selected friends and classmates. The invitation gave all the relevant information - date, time, location - plus a plea to "please respond to..." and included both my phone number and my email address. Hey, I'm not old fashioned. I don't require an engraved response card. Email is fine. Indeed, I even omitted the apparently misleading RSVP acronym, a not insignificant concession on my part. RSVP, of course, means "please respond," but since even fewer people speak French than respond to invitations these days, and in light of past disappointing response rates, I elected to speak English this year.

Turns out no one speaks English either.

The party in question is now three days away, and here are the numbers:
Yes: 4
No: 0
Maybe: 1

Hang on. Maybe? What, if you don't get a better offer? Well, yes, basically. The family has something else to do but will come by if they finish early enough. Wow. What do you say to that? I mean, it's not that I don't want this child to come to the party, not at all. And I know Lucy will be sad if her friend is not there. In fact, I can easily imagine the little girl pleading with her mother to let her go to the party. This is what we in education call a teachable moment. The mother expresses sympathy for her daughter's disappointment but explains that sometimes in life you have to make choices. At least, that's what happens in my fantasy world, also known as 1955. In 21st-century real life, apparently, it's fine to be rude.

Meanwhile, you may have noticed that these numbers do not add up to seven. That's right - two children (or, to place blame where it's due, their parents) have yet to respond. The "maybe" response notwithstanding, it is hard to imagine that these people do not themselves know whether or not their daughter will attend. Surely by now they have made a decision on this. Why not let me in on it? It is to these people that I am always tempted to say, when they call the morning of the party to say breezily that little Betty will be there, that I'm so delighted to have her if only she'll promise not to eat or drink anything, since the shopping for the party was done a week ago. Oh, and no party favors, either.

I don't say that, of course, because I am a very serious Non-RSVP Enabler, also known as a Polite Hostess. But I think it. You hear me? I'm thinking it!

BFF

2009-02-04T17:48:00.005-05:00

Yesterday Lucy said to me, "Mom, Madison is my BFF."

Now, there are two deeply troubling linguistic issues in that sentence, but leaving aside for a moment the entirely open question of whether or not I should allow my child to consort with someone named after a Daryl Hannah character from the 80's, let's instead consider the term "BFF."

No sooner was it out of her mouth than Lucy fixed me with a doubtful stare. "Do you know what BFF means, Mom?"

Oh, the irony.

Now, it happens that I do, in fact, know what BFF means. I know because a friend whose daughter is some years older than mine told me. This happened, oh, about a week ago. The friend mentioned her daughter's BFF in an email, and I responded by saying "WTF is a BFF?" to which she responded, predictably perhaps, "OMG!!!"

So, yes, I know what a BFF is, but not, and I repeat NOT because I am in any way Hip. But did this fact stop me from acting Hip to Lucy? No, it did not.

"Sure," I replied nonchalantly, "I know what BFF means." Implying, of course, "what kind of idiot doesn't know that?"

And yet. And yet. Do I really know what it means? I suppose we've always had this concept, albeit without the acronym, but for me the BFF is a thing of the past. I have dear friends, indeed, and in some adult sense my husband is my BFF, but methinks the BFF is a very adolescent construct. Which, because my own adolesence is mercifully behind me, means that I probably don't really know what BFF means, at least not what it means to an almost-seven-year-old. Furthermore, it was amply clear from her expression that Lucy did not expect me to know what it means.

And so it seems we have entered a new era, one in which Lucy knows and understands stuff that I don't. One in which she knows that she knows stuff I don't. One in which I become less Hip, or perhaps simply in which my lack of Hipness begins to be objectionable.

None of this is exactly a cheerful prospect.

Except - wait - isn't this what growing up is, at least in part? Isn't it just the latest version of all that separating I've been talking about? Growing away from your parents and their (un-Hip) ways. Growing new ideas and, yes, new vocabulary. Having a BFF that they did not choose for you and have, in fact, never even met. Yep. Sounds right.

OMG.

Self-awareness

2009-01-31T08:48:00.002-05:00

Over hot cocoa after an afternoon spent sledding:

Lucy [with conviction]: Mom, if you want someone to remember something, I'm your girl. If you want someone to slide down the ice backwards in a sled, that's not me.

Wardrobe

2008-11-19T19:50:00.002-05:00

Here is what Ben wore to preschool today:

Red silk women's blouse (from his pirate Halloween costume via Goodwill)
Purple velvet girls' leggings (ditto)
Sparkly belt decorated with butterflies (from Lucy's dresser, on loan)
Paul Revere-style black felt three-corner hat (from our trip to Colonial Williamsburg)
Knee-high red and blue Barcelona Soccer Club soccer socks (from, well, Barcelona)
Froggy rain boots (from eBay)
"Rock the Vote" button (from Montgomery College)

The best part? No one said a thing.

Obama

2008-11-06T15:58:00.002-05:00

There is no television at my house. We don't need one - our NPR addiction gets us all the news we need, and on the rare occasions when we watch a movie we just use a laptop. For big events I buy a newspaper.

Needless to say, yesterday was a Big Event.

So I picked up a copy of the Washington Post (which I note is now selling for upwards of $50 on eBay - who knew?) at the gas station while Ben was in preschool. After I read it I left it on the kitchen table, where Lucy discovered it when she got home from school.

She looked at all the pictures carefully, and read most of the headlines. Then she said, "does Obama have brown skin?"

She knew we were campaigning for him. Indeed, she was one of the only children in her class to vote for him in their mock election. Have I mentioned that we live in a red county? But remember - no TV. Apparently she had no idea what he looks like until she saw him on the front page of the paper.

So I said, "yes, he does. He's the first African-American to be elected president of our country."

There was a pause. Then she said, "why?"

Uh... because of the insidious legacy of slavery? Because bigotry is damn near impossible to eradicate? Because people fear change and difference in equal measure?

In the end I said something about the unfairness of slavery, with which she is already familiar, and how it has taken a long time for that unfairness to begin to go away. An insufficient answer to a deep and insightful question. But does not the question itself speaks of the not-very-distant future, when people will think of the time before a black man was president the way my generation thinks of the time before women could vote: as ancient history?

Lucy is amazed by the fact that when her great-grandmother was a little girl she had no refrigerator. That when her grandparents were young most people did not have televisions. That when her father and I were kids there were no computers or cell phones. One day, I imagine, she will tell her children that when she was young, the first African-American was elected president.

And they will be amazed.

Translation

2008-10-13T13:44:00.003-04:00

Ben: Mom, how do you scratch when there are no mosquitoes?
Translation: What makes you itch besides mosquito bites?

Me: Well... sometimes something tickles you a little, and that itches.

Ben: You're kidding!
Translation: When Daddy tickles me, it doesn't itch.

Ben: What else?

Me: Um... poison ivy...

Ben: Like the play.
Translation: Like Daddy had the time that he had to stay home from a play we were all planning to go to.

Me: Right.

Ben: What else?

Me: Um... well... sometimes you're allergic to something, and that makes you itch.

Ben: Why does lergic scratch you?
Translation: What's allergic?

Me: Allergies are when... uh... your body doesn't like something. Something isn't good for your body -

Ben: Like cotton candy!

Me: Well, no, not unhealthy. Well, I guess it's unhealthy, but not like a food. I mean, you can be allergic to a food, but -

Ben: Let's play cars.
Translation: You suck at explaining things, Mom.

Cheerleaders

2008-10-07T11:57:00.006-04:00

Last week Lucy asked if she could have some school friends over to play and, because for once we had a free weekend, I said sure. She chose two kids and I called their parents to see if they were free on Sunday afternoon. The first little girl's father said she would come (without consulting her, which I found a little disturbing), but the mother of the second girl informed me that her daughter is busy on Sunday afternoons because - wait for it - she is a cheerleader.

She is six.

"Wow," I said, "I didn't know six-year-olds could be cheerleaders."

"Oh, they start them at five," she assured me.

"Wow," I said again, not wanting to be rude but not being able to think of anything else on short notice.

"Maybe they can get together when football season is over," the mother suggested. Apparently her daughter doesn't cheer for the basketball team.

"Right," I said, and hung up quickly before I could say something I, and Lucy, would regret.

But now I can say it: five year old cheerleaders? Seriously? Is this a good idea? I mean, I accept that cheerleaders are part of a certain high school culture (although that culture is entirely outside of my own experience, cheerleaders at my large urban public high school having been related to Sandra Dee the way Navy Seals are related to the swim team). But in kindergarten?

It seems that cheering, as it's called by those in the know, has become a competitive sport. Participants are thrown into the air to do various kinds of somersaults and other airborne feats before they are caught again by a teammate. Except when they're not. The Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons reports that more female athletes suffer catastrophic injuries from cheering than from any other sport. A 13-year study in the journal Pediatrics found a 100% increase in the incidence of pediatric cheering-related injuries over the course of the study. It's not exactly safe, is it? And while I imagine (hope) that the pee-wee squad is not doing the kind of acrobatics that result in quadriplegia, I also imagine that those acrobatics are their goal, the pinnacle for which they are reaching.

And then there's body image. Although young female athletes on average have better body image and lower risk of eating disorders than other girls their age, this does not hold true in sports like gymnastics, ice skating, and dance, where a certain body type is expected of participants. My guess is that cheering falls into this category, although it has yet to be studied in this respect. At best, cheerleading is highly sexualized, making it a questionable choice for the prepubescent set.

Luckily, Lucy shows no interest in her friend's cheering career, so I don't have to have this conversation with her. But it makes me wonder what else is coming down the pike. Will there be belly dancing in second grade? Pole dancing in third? Why can't we let kids be kids and just pretend to be cheerleaders (or astronauts, or firefighters, or belly dancers, or whatever) for a while longer?

Soccer

2008-09-04T12:04:00.006-04:00

I like soccer. I do. I enjoy playing it (badly), I enjoy watching it, and I respect the men and women who are so good at it. Well, most of them. But I just don't get the whole Soccer Thing.

When the Soccer Thing hits, entire families can be consumed by the kids' soccer schedules. Some of them are at games and/or practices literally every day of the week, leading one to wonder when they do anything else. Laundry, for instance, of which there must be even more than usual due to all that soccer. Less time and more laundry - it sounds like my idea of hell. Why would you do that to yourself?

Well, because you think it's good for your kids, of course, the same reason we do virtually everything else unpleasant, or difficult, or inconvenient. But is it good for kids? In its policy statement on the topic, the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that organized sports can "create demands and expectations that exceed the readiness and capabilities of young participants." Quite a number of researchers have found troubling trends among kids who play organized sports as young children, from a disproportionately high number of injuries to a surprising disinclination to play sports later in life to a distressing correlation between sports participation and classroom cheating.

All of these researchers hasten to point out that it is not the game itself that is bad. Competition, they write, is not a negative influence per se. Rather, it's the attitude of the adults who are involved in the game that matters; when adults value fair play and teamwork over winning, kids do better. Shocker.

Nothing wrong with soccer, nope. But soccer practice every day? Soccer games every weekend? I don't know. It seems like a bit much to me. Plus, I hate laundry.

Texas

2008-08-21T16:54:00.005-04:00

I feel that I have no choice but to comment on this story about a school district in Texas which is now allowing teachers to carry concealed firearms to school.

It's hard to say what is most disturbing about this. Is it the implication that the world is fundamentally unsafe and we must be prepared to defend ourselves by force at all times? Is it the fact that this implication will hardly be lost on the children, who will come to believe that the world is a place to be approached not with curiosity and enthusiasm but with fear and trepidation? Or is it the inescapable conclusion that there are teachers out there, people whose job it is to nurture and educate the next generation, who think that this might actually be a good idea?

One friend of mine points out that the likelihood of a teacher putting the gun down - in a desk drawer, in a briefcase - and its being picked up by a child is simply too great to ignore. Another notes that teachers shooting at shooters will only increase casualties, as crazed, suicidal teenage killers are hardly likely to lay down their weapons when faced with authority. A third, somewhat more cynical friend says that as a parent she is frequently grateful that she doesn't have a gun, and that for teachers this gratitude must be multiplied by the number of children in their classes, at least.

In other words, the reasons that this is a bad idea are many and varied, but the fact is this: guns do not belong in schools. Period.

Summer

2008-08-13T11:20:00.004-04:00

Lucy's school, along with every other elementary school in our county, gives the children workbooks at the end of the school year to work on over the summer. The goal of this program is to minimize the "skill loss" that inevitably occurs over the months of vacation, and because I am apparently still deeply conflicted about school in general I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, I actually believe that children should go to school year-round and have four or five shorter breaks throughout the year rather than one extremely long break over the summer. This is the subject of a different post, so I'll save you the lengthy explanation. Suffice it to say that I do not see schoolwork in the summer as the blasphemy that some do.

On the other hand, I hate to be compelled to do anything. (I hear my family laughing uproariously as they read that.) My gut reaction to the school telling me that Lucy has to work on something over summer vacation is, "you can't make me!"

So when the workbook came home, I told Lucy she could work on it if she wanted to, but she didn't have to. Naturally, because she was not being compelled and because she is at least as much an academic personality as her parents are, she worked diligently and seemed to enjoy it. I don't know how much she got out of it academically, but it kept her in touch with the idea of school and with the kind of activities one does there. Far from being a burden, it gave her something to do when she was at loose ends. Furthermore, the school hosted three evening events over the summer where kids could bring their workbooks and have them checked by teachers. They did some crafts and handed out root beer floats. It was, dare I say, fun.

And once again I am reminded that school/home and learning/vacationing are false dichotomies.

First Grade

2008-08-11T14:45:00.002-04:00

First grade starts next week. And although this next milestone carries with it virtually none of the angst that attended the start of kindergarten, I nevertheless find that I am not looking forward to it.

I really like having Lucy at home. I like talking to her, I like watching what she's doing, I like it that she can spend the morning reading books in her pajamas if she wants to. Even when I wish she would leave me alone for a few minutes, I like having her around. And when she's in school, it seems like she's never really here. She's getting ready for school, then she's at school, then she's getting back from school. Then it's dinner time and bath time and bed time, and then she's getting ready for school again. There are weekends, of course, and vacations, and the 3:00 - 6:00 window every day, but still, the schedule really revolves around school.

Much like last year, however, I can't help but notice that she is very excited. She can't wait to meet her new teacher, see her friends, learn new stuff. Not be the littlest anymore. And this is good, that she is excited. Being away from us all day doesn't seem to bother her in the least. I guess that means I'm doing my job.

I'll miss her, though.

The Last Day

2008-06-04T07:46:00.001-04:00

She pulls on her shoes
and heads off to the last day.
To her, no big deal.

T Plus 177

2008-06-01T17:45:00.001-04:00

The school year is 180 days long, and we have three more to go. What have we learned?

Well, Lucy has learned to read and write, of course, and add and subtract, and identify Maryland on a map of the United States. Also to eat lunch in under 20 minutes, respond to what seems to me a complex series of clapping signals, and pledge questionable allegiance to a piece of colorful fabric. It could be worse.

But what have we learned really? To be apart, I guess. That she can go off without me, survive, and come back to tell me about it. That she’s not fragile after all. To let her work out her own relationships. That she loves to learn (well, I knew that) and will do it even in settings that are not what I would consider ideal. To provide at home the things that are missing in school, and to recognize that school provides some things that are missing at home. That being around people who think differently than we do is good for her. To let her have her own ideas about things, even when they’re different from mine, but to make sure she understands why I think what I do. To skip school sometimes.

That she is still my little girl.

That she is growing up.

Hillary

2008-05-14T17:58:00.001-04:00

Let me make it clear that I am not a Hillary Clinton supporter. I’m not a rabid opponent, like some, and in fact in the unlikely event that she gets the nomination I will probably end up campaigning for her. But she’s not my first choice. Or really even my second choice.

But one day last week, Lucy came home from school breathless with excitement.

Lucy: Mommy! Guess what!

Me: What??

Lucy: There’s going to be a girl president!

Me: Uh…

Lucy: She’s trying to get yeleted right now!

Me: Right! That’s right. A woman is trying to get elected president.

Lucy: Oooh, I hope she gets yeleted!

Me: Why?

Lucy: Because that would be so cool, to have a girl president!

As a matter of fact, this is my sentiment exactly. It would be so cool to have a girl president! Just not, you know, this girl president. I guess I thought that we’d come far enough that I didn’t have to support her just because she’s a girl (er, woman). But Lucy’s reaction to the possibility of a female in the White House makes me question that belief, because my gut-twisting realization is that having a “girl” president is a big deal to Lucy.

How does she know that this matters? Sure, she knows about the presidency, and she’s understood for quite some time that voting is important. But this level of excitement on her part is usually reserved for things of monumental importance, like a trip to the ice cream stand or permission to stay up past bedtime. How can she possibly have internalized the underrepresentation of women in politics so completely in a mere six years? And what does this mean for me, her unabashedly feminist mother? Do I have to start supporting female candidates based solely on their gender just so that there are more role models for my daughter?

No, of course not. But this is a reality check for me. Maybe we haven’t come as far as I thought.

Guns

2008-05-06T19:21:00.001-04:00

This morning in the garden:

Ben: [picking up a large stick] This is my gun, Mommy.

Me: [alarmed but trying not to show it] Oh?

Ben: Yeah. I’m going to shoot mean people.

Me: I don’t think you should shoot people, even if they’re mean.

Ben: Why not?

Me: Well, it hurts them. It might even kill them.

Ben: [reassuringly] Oh, I’ll only shoot the mean people.

Me: Maybe you could call the police and they could take the mean people to jail.

Ben: Yeah!

Phew.

Ben: And after they take them to jail, I’ll shoot them.

Oh.

Me: Who are the mean people?

Ben: You know, bank robbers.

Well, at least he’s not thinking of someone we know.

Although there is very little hard research on how gun play affects children (at least according to my cursory search), there is no question that many, perhaps most, children go through a stage in which they are fascinated by guns and fighting. Looked at positively, they are learning about aggression and conflict in a safe, non-threatening way. Looked at even more positively, they are acting out fantasies of being a hero, protecting other people, getting the bad guys. Looked at that way, gun play is not so much about hurting someone as it is about protecting someone. Looked at less positively, guns are dangerous and I don’t want my son going around shooting people, real or imaginary.

And there’s the real issue: when Ben pretends that his stick is a gun, to me it’s about the gun, which is dangerous and can kill people. To Ben it’s about the mean people, and he’s going to protect me from them.

I guess he’s thinking of someone we know after all.

Wish List

2008-04-30T15:54:00.003-04:00

At our house, when you do something that is particularly difficult for you (get ready for school on time, for example, or poop in the potty) you get a star on your star chart. When you reach the end of the row, you get the special plate at dinner, and when you fill up the whole page you get to choose a really special activity, like a visit to Tractor Supply Company to sit on all the tractors or a trip to the paint your own pottery studio.

Recently I noticed the following list in extremely large print on the easel in the playroom:

Get a hool hoop!
Go to the podre!
Go to the lake or pool!
Be a car rider aftr scoo!
Go to Dansing Bare!
Sleep in.

TAT'S IT!

At the top of the list is a large 28, which is the number of stars Lucy still needs to reach the end of her chart.

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone's wish list looked a little more like this?

School Spirit

2008-04-22T18:03:00.002-04:00

Every Friday is School Spirit day at Lucy's school. Why? I ask you. There are no teams to support. There is (thankfully) no rival school against whom to compete. As far as I can tell, school spirit at Old Forge Elementary School consists entirely of wearing purple and gold, the school colors. Not purple and yellow, mind you. Apparently this is an important distinction. So where does the average kindergartener get a purple and gold outfit? Ah - glad you asked. Her mother buys her a school tee shirt at the beginning of the year and she wears it every Friday. Of course, they don't tell the mother this until after it's too late to order school tee shirts for this year and her child is the only one in the class without one because she (bad mommy) thought a five-year-old didn't need a school tee shirt.

Argh.

So now Lucy has, courtesy of Goodwill, approximately ten different outfits in varying shades of purple and yellow (no gold at Goodwill), none of which are quite up to snuff but all of which get quite a lot of play. So that's fine. But wait, there's more!

Every week, the class with the most school spirit (how they measure this no one even attempts to explain) wins a trophy. They get to keep the trophy in their classroom for the whole week, until a different class wins it on the following Friday. Now, I would love to tell you that the children see this for what it is: a misguided attempt on the part of adults to get children to care about something which is essentially meaningless. But, in fact, the kids eat it up. They want that trophy. They want it so much that Lucy's teacher felt compelled last week to "help" the class win the trophy (they hadn't had it all year). First she sent home a note asking parents to dress the children in purple and gold on Friday. Then she made each child an Old Forge crown to wear and painted all of their faces purple and gold. Which is really sweet, from a certain perspective, and really disturbing from a different perspective, and you can probably guess which perspective is mine.

They won. They were thrilled. Shows what I know.

Potty Mouth

2008-04-15T19:13:00.005-04:00

I’ll give you one guess as to which child’s teacher called last week to say that the child was using words that do not belong in school. Hint: it’s not Lucy.

Now, it’s true that we have a pretty liberal speech policy at our house (hey, we’re academics), but I must tell you honestly that hearing the preschool teacher recite the offending word onto our answering machine gave us pause. No, that’s an understatement. We were horrified. Our rule has always been that there are certain things grownups may do that children may not. Drink coffee, for example, and operate power tools. Saying certain words falls into this category, and although it is never OK for anyone (child or adult) to call someone else a name, it is OK for an adult to use “grownup words.” The list of grownup words is actually pretty short – we let our kids say some things that other parents might not – but the word on the answering machine is definitely on it.

My extremely grounded friend Kittybelle, a former teacher educator whose opinion on such matters I find invaluable, tells me that a fascination with potty words is completely developmentally appropriate at Ben’s age. When she taught preschool, she says, children would routinely sneak off to a corner of the playground to whisper them to each other. She finds this both unavoidable and, probably because her children are adults, amusing. She said to tell Ben that it’s not a preschool word and he shouldn’t say it at preschool, and then to drop it. Which we did, seemingly successfully – as far as I know (and I think I would know), there have been no repeat incidents.

But this brings me to a broader question: why do we care if children use these words? I have been thinking about that since it happened. With the coffee and the chainsaw, there are obvious health and safety issues governing the restrictions we place on children. With words, the issues are far less obvious, but I have come to the conclusion that they are no less (well, maybe a little less) important. Children are dichotomous thinkers – right or wrong, yes or no. Sharing: right. Hitting: wrong. Water: yes. Beer: no. There is no nuance, there is no context. They’re learning those things, sure, but it’s not there yet. Yet language is all about context and nuance. Witness a recent exchange between Ben and me:

Ben: Mommy, what does “speechless” mean? [a word I must have used in a conversation with someone else while he was listening]
Me: Ummm… it means… you don’t know what to say.
Ben: Oh.

Later…
Me: How was playing with Liz? [a new babysitter he hadn’t met before]
Ben: At first I was speechless, but then it was fun.

You might argue that this is a problem with my definition (and you might be correct), but the point is that the different shades of meaning are still lost on him. Does it mean that or not? Yes or no? I guess what I’m saying is that, while the choice is between yes and no, grownup words are a no. Once he can handle sometimes, we’ll see.

Ben

2008-04-10T14:33:00.002-04:00

It’s time to talk about Lucy’s little brother. At age three years and eight months, Ben is very nearly Lucy’s exact complement. This is to say that, with the exception of the fact that they share the same fundamentally loving nature (and, of course, much of their genomes), he is everything she is not and vice versa.

Witness as exhibit A their respective entrances into the world. Where Lucy was literally dragged into the world by a gaggle of eight or ten medical professionals (I lost count) after 26 hours of labor, Ben arrived less than an hour after we walked in the door to the hospital. His birth was very nearly attended by zero medical professionals, as the extremely alarmed nurse had run out to fetch the doctor and they returned barely in time for the whole catching routine. From there, you can extrapolate to find pretty accurately the kind of children they are today.

While this is no doubt fascinating from a child development standpoint, it is somewhat unnerving from a parenting standpoint. It means, among other things, that the time we’ve invested in learning to parent Lucy is more or less worthless when it comes to Ben. When Lucy misbehaved, we learned to speak firmly but gently to her, without raising our voices, because if she suspected that we were in any way displeased she would burst into tears. To Ben, on the other hand, firm, gentle reprimands are tantamount to permission to continue. He’s more the 1-2-3-Time Out type, if you know what I mean. To say that Lucy is easier to discipline than Ben would be like saying that arithmetic is easier than differential calculus.

On the flip side, here are Ben and Lucy after I got their bikes out yesterday for the first time this spring:

Ben: My bike! My bike! Thanks, Mommy!

[Hops on and pedals/scoots across the grass, topples over, laughs, hauls bike upright, climbs back on, scoots away]

Lucy: Oh. Um. I’m not sure I remember how to ride my bike. Can you help me?

Me: Well, sure. What do you want me to do?

Lucy: Make sure I don’t fall.

Me: OK. You want me to hold it for you?

Lucy: Yeah. And hold me, too.

[I hold the bike steady with one hand and let her lean on my other hand as she laboriously climbs on.]

Me: Ready?

Lucy: No!! Don’t let go!!!

Me: OK, calm down! But how are you going to ride with me holding on?

Lucy: You can walk with me.

Me:

Lucy: OK, go.

[I start to walk forward, pushing her along while she clings to me with one hand and the bike with the other]

Lucy: That’s too fast! I’m gonna fall!

Me: No, you’re not, I’m holding on, see? You can’t fall.

Lucy:

[We inch forward a little farther]

Me: How about if I give you a push?

Lucy: No!!!

And so on. Eventually, of course, she rides the bike and has fun, but I think you see my point. Some things are easier with him, and some things are easier with her. I’m sure there’s a lesson in that, but I’m too tired to figure out what it is. What I really want to know is this: when do we get to the part that’s easy with both of them?

Gripes

2008-03-23T18:53:00.001-04:00

I guess you can tell from the dearth of postings that my angst over kindergarten has subsided considerably. All those things I was saying in August to convince myself that it would be OK, about letting go and all that? Turns out most of it was true.

But this is not to say that I am out of gripes, oh no. Here are the things that have annoyed me in just the last week:

Report cards. That’s right, in kindergarten.
Indoor recess. Also known as “instead of running around after sitting still for three hours, let’s watch a movie because it’s a little chilly out.” Argh.
Antibacterial hand cleaner. They use it every single day and then are amazed that these super-bacterial infections crop up in public schools. Go figure.
Sixteen candy-filled plastic Easter (which last time I checked was a religious holiday) eggs. Count 'em.

You?

100 Days

2008-01-31T19:09:00.000-05:00

Today is the 100^th day of kindergarten, which is a major holiday among the five-year-old set. One hundred days. Shouldn’t I be used to this by now? One hundred early morning wake-ups, one hundred calls of “are your teeth brushed yet?” up the stairs, one hundred hurried breakfasts, one hundred struggles to find matching shoes, one hundred treks out to the driveway. One hundred matching afternoon treks. And yet somehow it all still seems so… new.

She’s learning a lot. I admit I was surprised by this. Imagine – you send your child off to school, and she learns! Who’d have thought? She reads entire books, mostly accurately; she adds and subtracts, also mostly accurately; she can identify a trombone playing on a CD; she entered and won second prize in an art contest. The other day she used the word “infer.” In a sentence. Correctly. And yet somehow it all still seems so… much.

She’s also learning the culture of school. Unavoidable, I suppose, unless you don’t send them at all, but distressing nonetheless. She plays school with her three-year-old brother, who routinely gets sent to see the principal (me) for things like not sitting on his bottom or talking when she’s talking. She corrects me for saying “A hundred and three” instead of “One hundred three.” Who makes up these rules? I have an advanced degree in mathematics, for God’s sake, and I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter! She scoffs at this. Of course it matters – her teacher said so. Rules are important, especially when you’re trying to deal with 21 five-year-olds by yourself all day. I understand this. And yet somehow is all still seems so… rigid.

I guess this is life – you take the good with the bad. You learn a lot, but some of it is pointless, or even wrong, and it may take you years to realize that. Figuring out what’s pointless or wrong and what’s important and correct may, in fact, be part of the learning. A meta-learning, if you will. I guess I’m slow in this respect, since I continue to be surprised by both the pointless, wrong things and the important, correct things. I just didn’t realize that it would be so… hard.

Attendance

2008-01-08T20:58:00.000-05:00

Every month Lucy brings home a little yellow sheet of paper commending her on having been in school every day of the previous month. Every month I grind my teeth, ask her if she wants it, and, because happily she doesn't, I throw it away. Except this month, she didn't bring one home. Not that I noticed, of course, but yesterday she said, "I didn't get a yellow paper today, Mommy."

I acted nonchalant. "Oh, that's because you went to school late on Lucia Day, sweetie."

"Oh," she said. "You only get one if you're there for the first bell every day."

"Right," I said. "It was worth not getting one this month to get to stay home on Lucia morning, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she said, "they don't really mean anything."

That's my girl.

Still and all, has it come to this? Must we reward children just for showing up? Don't get me wrong, I'm not against rewards - ask me about the chocolate chip potty-training system sometime. It's just that I'd like to believe that we could find some, I don't know, accomplishment to reward them for. Doesn't rewarding kids just for showing up send a message that they haven't done anything substantive for which they might be rewarded? Doesn't it say, well, you haven't done much, but at least you were here! And doesn't it seem like if we reward them just for showing up, then they may come to believe that showing up is all that's required? And aren't there some fairly obvious motivational problems with that down the road? Not very far down the road, actually. And, finally, isn't there a fundamental problem with the idea that showing up every day is even desirable? I mean, what about illness? What about doctor's appointments, and family commitments, and educational opportunities that exist outside of the far-from-comprehensive public school curriculum?

I had a student this semester who earned a C in my class. When he got his grade, he was irate and demanded to know how this was possible. "Well," I said, "let's see. You had a C average on the homework, a C average on the quizzes, and a C on the final. That averages to a C."

"But I came to every class!" he said.

Maybe I should get him a yellow paper.

Recess III

2008-01-05T16:02:00.001-05:00

Twenty-minute recess rule abolished. Principals now permitted to decide how long recess should be for their students. Additional training and encouragement for teachers to include movement in regular classes in progress. Funding for additional P.E. teachers to provide expanded P.E. classes in the works.

Moral: speak up!

Field Trip

2007-12-18T14:53:00.000-05:00

Today Lucy goes on her first field trip. She and the rest of the kindergarteners are going to a restored theatre in a nearby city to see a production of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Presumably the story has been embellished somewhat, or the play would be about four minutes long. Lucy is no stranger to the theatre – we went to the Nutcracker Ballet just last weekend, in fact – but this is different. She’s going with her classmates, not her brother, and her teacher, not her parents. She has been excited for weeks.

On the one hand, I am delighted that the school is taking the kids to any play, but this play at this theatre in particular. On the other hand, I have only recently gotten used to dropping Lucy off at school and leaving her there. It is just in the last few weeks that I have not compulsively turned on my cell phone the moment I leave her at the door, in case they need to call me before I get home approximately ten minutes later. So the idea of having them take her somewhere else is a little… unsettling.

Now, my husband and I like our grownup time, and we have been leaving Lucy in the care of other people for entire weekends since she was three months old. Granted, those other people are her grandparents, or, on one memorable occasion, my brother and sister-in-law (heavily pregnant with their own first child and thinking, I suppose, that they needed the practice.) She’s also had babysitters in various capacities for just as long. So why does this seem so different? I guess it’s that the field trip is yet another manifestation of her growing independence. When we leave her with a sitter, I tell the sitter when to show up, and what to do, and when to leave. Even when we leave her with our parents, we make all the arrangements and all the decisions. But with the field trip, it’s out of my hands. What time are they leaving? I don’t know. What time will they be back? They didn’t say. Will they eat lunch before they leave or when they return? It’s not up to me.

I met a woman recently who told me that she has to restrain herself from emailing her daughter’s kindergarten teacher every day. At first I found this commendable, but then it became clear that she restrains herself not because she wants to give her daughter some space, but because she is afraid that the teacher will become annoyed and stop answering her. I’m not sure if this is funny or sad, but I do know that this is the same parent who will check her daughter’s homework every night until the child leaves for college, and will then call (or maybe email) the college professors to intervene when the daughter has a problem. I think parents who do this call it “being an advocate.” I call it refusing to let your child grow up, and it scares me to think of a world in which kids who never learned to be their own advocates are running the show. As a friend who is a retired educator put it to me recently, “thank God I’ll be dead by then.”

All parents worry about letting their kids go. It’s part of our job to worry about it. But the kids aren’t supposed to know that we’re worried – that just teaches them that we think they can’t make it on their own, a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. The difference between the parent who lets go anyway and the parent who can’t was evident to me at a recent visit to the playground: two toddlers, about the same age, were climbing on equipment meant for somewhat older children. Both mothers were right next to them. One mother was admonishing her child to be careful, hold her hand, not climb too high. That child got scared halfway up and had to be helped down. The other mother was silent. She stood behind the climbing child, spotting but not touching. I’m not sure if the child knew she was there or not. That child climbed to the top and went down the slide. True story.

I guess it's obvious which kind of parent I want to be. I’m looking forward to hearing about the play when Lucy gets home, mostly because I know she’s going to love it, and only a little bit because then I’ll know she’s home safely.

Boys

2007-11-28T21:16:00.000-05:00

Scene 1: Kitchen table, evening.

Lucy: Eli is my boyfriend.
Me (dragging concentration away from the book/magazine/email I’m reading): What?
Lucy (impatiently): Eli is my boyfriend.
Me: Umm…
Lucy: We ride the bus together.
Me (putting book/magazine/computer aside with great effort): Ummm…
-Pause-
Me: What makes him your boyfriend?
Lucy: I dunno.
Me: What do you do together?
Lucy: Nothing.
Me: Do you talk to each other on the bus?
Lucy: Not really.
Me: So how is he your [cringe] boyfriend?
Lucy: He just is.
Me (because I can’t help it, it’s just the kind of Mommy I am): Did someone tell you he’s your boyfriend?
Lucy: No. Well, maybe. I don’t remember. I just know he is.
Me: How do you know?
Lucy: Let’s just not talk about this, OK?
Me: Umm…

Scene 2: Kitchen table, next evening.

Me: So, how’s Eli?
Lucy (dragging concentration away from book/magazine/coloring she’s working on): What?
Me: How’s Eli? Did you sit with him on the bus today?
Lucy: Who?

What do you figure? Fifteen, twenty more years of this?

Censorship

2007-10-24T12:48:00.000-04:00

There are many, many books Lucy loves that I would like to see permanently removed from circulation. Poorly written, overly didactic books that talk down to the reader, which, to my chagrin, does not seem to bother her in the least. Barbie Goes Rollerblading, for example, or any of the seemingly thousands of Berenstain Bears titles. We go to the public library and I pick out the old Corduroy, a charming story about a stuffed bear and Lisa, the little girl who adopts him. Lucy picks out the new Corduroy, an insipid tale in which Lisa seems not to exist anymore and Corduroy has a valuable lesson about friendship shoved down his throat. The temptation to “lose” these books between the children’s room and the circulation desk is great.

A few months ago, Ann Patchett had a piece in The Atlantic about her experience with attempted censorship at Clemson University. For those of you who didn’t read it, allow me to summarize: the school chose Truth and Beauty, Patchett’s story of the friendship between two young women and their paths toward adulthood, for its freshman reading program. As you might expect of a true story about coming of age, the book contains some (gasp!) drug use and (GASP!) sex. That’s not what the story is about, but it’s in there. The no doubt well-intentioned parents of some of the Clemson freshmen found out about the book (I say “found out about” rather than “read” because they were quite up front about the fact that they had not read it) and objected. Strenuously. So strenuously, in fact, that when Patchett finally came to campus to give her planned talk on the book, the University assigned her a security detail and hustled her in and out of the auditorium through the back door.

When I read this piece, I shook my head in righteous indignation. What is wrong with those people? I thought. Do they trust their children so little that they won’t allow them to read a book that might make them think? Do they plan to shelter them for their entire lives?

Yesterday, Lucy brought her first school library book home. She had chosen it herself, and we read it last night before bed. It turned out to be about a bully. Bullies are not something Lucy has ever come across, and so this required more than a little explanation. In the process, I could tell she was starting to get worried about meeting a bully, and I started to get upset that it was upsetting her. It’s true – I didn’t want to read her the book, because it talked about a bad thing she didn’t know about and I didn’t want her to worry. I wanted to protect her not just from bullies themselves, but from even the knowledge that bullies exist. No matter that probably the best way to protect her from bullies is to teach her that they exist and give her some strategies for dealing with them; the parental drive to shelter is not rational.

Now, it’s true that there are books that are not appropriate for five-year-olds. In fact, there are books that are ostensibly written for five-year-olds that are not appropriate for them. But the line between screening for developmental appropriateness and censoring is a fine one. And the slope from not checking out The Berenstain Bears Think of Those in Need to not reading the book about bullies to interfering in the college reading program is slippery. I have to ask myself, do I really think she’s not ready to read about this? Or do I not want her to be ready? Or is it maybe that I’m not ready? And then, unless it’s the first one, I have to suck it up and read.

Sweet

2007-10-22T14:11:00.000-04:00

I admit it – I didn’t think it would happen to me. Not so soon, anyway. OK, never, but if she were in high school or something I might have been less surprised. Yesterday, however, I was totally unprepared. Out of the blue, Lucy said to me, “girls like to do sweet things, but boys don’t.” Whoa.

Remain calm, I told myself. She’s only five. There’s no need to go into a diatribe about patriarchy and entrenched roles and sex versus gender.

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

She shrugged. Clearly she didn’t really know what this meant, but had heard it somewhere and was testing it out.

“I think different people like to do different things,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter if they’re boys or girls.”

She looked at me pityingly. “Of course it matters if they’re boys or girls,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because girls are sweet.” Again with the sweet. Ew.

“Most people are sweet sometimes,” I said, “but I don’t think anyone is sweet all the time.” It was all I could do to say the word without scorn in my voice. Who wants to be sweet? is what I was really thinking.

“Girls are sweet,” she insisted. So stubborn! So sure of her own opinion! Where did she get that? And – wait a minute – wasn’t the inclination and ability to defend her own opinion in the face of conflicting beliefs the very antithesis of the sweetness that was bothering me? OK, so she wasn’t exactly defending herself, but she wasn’t giving in. She wasn’t – ahem – being sweet.

I clearly remember when I was a child my mother asking me, on what I now understand were occasions on which I used a word or phrase not my own, “who do you know who says that?” I also clearly remember thinking the question absurd – I said that; hadn’t I just proved it? As a child, I was not self-aware enough to notice someone else’s vernacular infiltrating my own. By asking me to think about it, my mother taught me to pay attention to where my words and, by extension, my ideas were coming from. I sincerely doubt that I ever gave her an answer to that question, and certainly not a correct one. But as an adult I think about those things all the time: where do my ideas come from? Who do I believe? And why? If I can teach my children to think critically, it will serve them better than any indoctrination with my own beliefs. And, in a time when people still get elected to public office not believing that the planet is warming or that Darwin had a clue, it will serve the rest of the world better, too.

Is it alarming that a five-year-old is parroting gender stereotypes? You bet it is. Do I want to know where she heard that? I’m dying to know, because I’d be more than happy to unleash my diatribe on someone my own age. Do I think Lucy might grow up thinking that girls are sweet and boys aren’t? Not a chance. She knows how to think things through for herself, and, with a little guidance for a few more years, she’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

Sweet.

The Letter

2007-10-08T15:34:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Markoe:

I am writing about recess. My daughter is in kindergarten, and before school began, she spent hours outside each day, playing all kinds of physical, imaginative, and creative games. Now she gets at most 20 minutes of recess per day, which is barely enough to blow off the steam from sitting in a classroom for three or four hours and nowhere near enough to get involved in any meaningful games. My understanding from Ms. Ober is that this time limit is a guideline that comes out of your office, and I would like to respectfully suggest that it be changed.

As you are undoubtedly aware, there is compelling evidence to suggest that unstructured play is an integral part of learning for children [e.g. Pellegrini, Huberty & Jones, 1995]. Healthy children play elaborate games of make-believe, which teach them not only social skills but also how to think abstractly [Jarrett et al, 2001]. In addition, physical activity is crucial for healthy development, and our children do not get anywhere near enough of it [Etnier et al, 1997; Waite-Stupiansky & Findlay, 2001]. A physical education class every fourth day, although nice, does not meet this need. When kindergarten was half-day, we could assume (however falsely) that kids played outside when they got home. Now, however, they are in school for six or seven hours each day, plus time spent on the bus. They desperately need more unstructured playtime and physical activity.

As an educator myself, I am acutely aware of the pressure on you to meet local, state, and national standards. I am also aware that the consequences of not meeting those standards can be dire. But many of the standards are at best misguided and at worst actually damaging, and there comes a point when we must push back. We must say no, this is not what’s best for these children, and we won’t do it that way.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sources

Etnier, J. L., Salazar, W., Landers, D. M., Petruzzello, S. J., Han, M., & Nowell, P. (1997). The influence of physical fitness and exercise upon cognitive functioning: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 19(3), 249-277.

Jarrett, O. S., Farokhi, B., Young, C., & Davies, G. (2001). Boys and girls at play: Games and recess at a southern urban elementary school. In S. Reifel (Ed.), Play and Culture Studies, Volume 3: Theory In Context and Out, 147-170. Westport, CT: Ablex.

Pellegrini, A. D., Huberty, P. D., & Jones, I. (1995). The effects of recess timing on children's playground and classroom behaviors. American Educational Research Journal, 32(4), 845-864. EJ 520 960.

Waite-Stupiansky, S., & Findlay, M. (2001). The fourth R: Recess and its link to learning. Educational Forum, 66(1), 16-24.

Recess II

2007-09-25T16:00:00.000-04:00

So the president of the Board of Education turns out to be a lovely woman, concerned, to my surprise, with improving public education in our county. Not only did she return my call and have the good manners to ask if my daughter likes kindergarten, but it took her a full ten minutes to bring up the elephant in the room: the No Child Left Behind Act. And in spite of the indisputable fact that NCLB is the culprit behind the almost fetishistic obsession with “content” that leaves no time for developmentally appropriate activities, she did not try to shift the blame to that most worthy of scapegoats, the federal government. She did, however, tell me that the twenty (ten) minute recess is not a Board policy but an administrative decision, and that I needed to talk to the superintendent. Or maybe the assistant superintendent for elementary schools. She gave me their names and numbers and said she appreciated my call, which, even if it’s not true, is damn polite.

So then I called the assistant superintendent, who not only took my call right away but also seemed to genuinely care about education. I was feeling more encouraged by the minute. I explained my position. She didn’t disagree. I went ahead and blamed the federal government. She still didn’t disagree. I suggested more recess. She continued to not disagree. By now, though, I couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t exactly agreeing, either. What, I asked, should I do to bring about a change in this policy? It’s not a policy; only the Board writes policy. What is it, then? It’s a guideline. OK, what should I do to change the guideline?

I should write a letter to the superintendent.

Don’t touch that dial.

Recess

2007-09-12T10:34:00.000-04:00

The playground at Lucy’s school is a sight to behold, the sort of thing that reassures a parent who is concerned about the lack of physical activity taking place in public schools these days. The equipment on the playground at the school is literally brand new – it was installed last week – and cost thousands of dollars that were donated by the PTA. As an outsider, you would look at this playground and think, Seusslike, “oh, the games they can play! The imagines they can imagine! The running, jumping, climbing they can run, jump, climb!” The children have not actually used the equipment yet because the county hasn’t come to put down the mulch, but you can just picture them out there, flying spaceships to the moon, digging for dinosaur bones, constructing cities and forests and castles.

Which they will get to do, as it turns out, for roughly ten minutes per day. That’s right – thousands of dollars for a beautiful, faith-restoring playground that by dictate of the Board of Education these elementary school-aged children may use for a maximum of twenty minutes per day. Twenty minutes that includes the time necessary to get them out of the classroom and onto the playground and then back off the playground and into to the classroom. If you’ve ever tried this with even one elementary school-aged child, I’m guessing you’ll agree that my estimate of ten minutes of actual playtime is in fact quite generous.

It’s not just that every public health expert who can get any airtime at all spends every available second decrying the obesity epidemic in this country. It’s not just that, in the next breath, those same public health experts lament the spread of said epidemic to our youth, who are, to paraphrase, fat and inactive. It’s not just that a fat and inactive populace presents problems both obvious and obscure for our culture, workforce, and yes, security. It’s not even that there’s a vast body of research telling us that children need both unstructured playtime and physical activity to develop into healthy, happy adults. Notice how recess conveniently provides both unstructured playtime and physical activity in the same time block! It’s positively interdisciplinary! But that’s not it.

No, it’s really that playing is fun. And, as it turns out, also educational. How about that – fun can be educational! Or, put another way, education can be fun. This is hardly a revolutionary idea, seeing how kindergarten (which my brother has informed me I should not be capitalizing) itself was developed almost two hundred years ago on the theory that children learn through play. Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten, did not intend it to be academic. Or, more accurately, he did not accept the premise that play is antithetical to academic learning. Children are supposed to play! It’s how they learn not just reading and writing and mathematics, but also how to live in society. It's how they learn who they are and what it is to be part of a community. Come to think of it, most adults in our country could do with a fair bit more playtime, too.

Twenty (that is, ten) minutes of recess in a seven hour school day? I have a call in to the Board of Education. Stay tuned.

Reluctance

2007-08-28T11:06:00.000-04:00

A friend whose daughter is also starting Kindergarten this month told me she read somewhere that it takes about ten days for kids to start showing reluctance to go to school. After ten days, apparently, the novelty has worn off and the reality of sitting in a classroom six hours a day, five days a week, for the next thirteen years starts to sink in. That’s impossible, of course, since five-year-olds can’t even process the difference between “next month” and “when you’re in college,” so I guess I’m projecting. The point is that in this, as in so many things, Lucy is precocious. It only took her two days to start being reluctant to go to school.

Yesterday morning when I went into her room to get her up, she hid under the covers and didn’t answer my cheery “good morning!” Uh-oh. I sat on the bed.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked. No answer. I decided to act oblivious.

“It’s a Kindergarten morning!” I said.

That’s when I realized she was crying. About a tenth of a second later, the extremely tenuous peace with this whole Kindergarten thing that I’d spent the better part of a year constructing came crashing down around me. They’d made her cry! She was never going back.

I pulled her onto my lap, and we rocked for a few minutes. I tried not to mentally calculate the time left for my shower. “What’s wrong?” I asked again. She mumbled something into my shoulder.

“Did something happen?” I asked. She shook her head. No.

“Are you worried about something?” I asked. No again.

“So why are you crying?” She raised her head.

“Do I have to go to school?”

Crisis. In my heart, I knew I didn’t have it in me to force her to go. At the same time, in what was left of my rational mind, I knew that to allow her to skip just because she felt like it would set a dangerous precedent. So I did what politicians everywhere have done for centuries. I talked, but I didn’t answer the question.

I talked about all the things she would miss if she didn’t go, about how dull it would be staying at home, about how if she got up and dressed quickly enough, I would put the sparkly polish on her toes before breakfast. To my astonishment, it worked! She got up, she got dressed, we polished the toes. We went down to breakfast.

She started to cry again. I started to seriously consider homeschooling.

“I like everything about school except lunch,” she finally said. Ah! Something to work with!

“Why don’t you like lunch?”

“The kids are silly at lunch.”

I resisted the urge to point out that being silly at meals was something she and her brother specialized in, and something that drove her father and me to madness.

“Silly how?” I asked.

“Oh, you know, they make funny noises and stuff.”

Funny noises?

“What bothers you about it?”

“I don’t know.”

At about this point in the discussion, I remembered my wise and insightful friend Amy telling me of her belief that part of what one learns from going off to school is to stand up to, in her genteel words, “influences you don’t care for.” It occurred to me that this might be precisely what was going on here, and that learning to deal with a situation in which not everyone is acting exactly as you would wish them to might not be a terrible thing. Of course, all this was taking place only in the small rational portion of my mind. The much larger Mommy portion was still simultaneously planning the offending children’s court-martial and our enrollment in the nearest Montessouri school.

Eventually, I offered a few lame strategies for dealing with the silly lunch-eaters, which she accepted with the seriousness befitting a fatwa. She left for school, and I spent the day with that feeling in the pit of my stomach which, before I had children, I associated with the five minutes before the starting whistle blew in an important game. So it was with some trepidation that I went out to meet the afternoon bus.

She hopped off, her “I’m in Kindergarten! Bus 153” tag bouncing around her neck. I grabbed her in a big hug.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“Good.”

We walked in silence for a few minutes. Well, in what passes for silence in our family, which is to say that her three-year-old brother kept up a running monologue about the spider we’d seen while we waited for her bus, and what it was likely to eat for dinner. Finally, she spoke.

“The kids at lunch weren’t as silly today.”

My heart leapt as if she’d told me she’d cured cancer.

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so glad to hear it! Are you glad you went to school today?”

She looked at me like I was nuts.

“Yea-uh.”

As in, “du-uh.”

Lesson learned. For now, anyway.

The Bus Itself

2007-08-27T17:16:00.000-04:00

The bus itself is pretty much what you would expect. Yellow, of course, with those stop signs that swing out and annoy the hell out of you before you have children. Bench seats with no seat belts. Lovely woman named Diane behind the wheel who has no doubt watched hundreds, maybe thousands, of tearful parents put their Kindergarteners on the bus for the first time, yet still smiles reassuringly and says, “don’t worry, we’ll take care of her.” You get the impression that Diane would jump in front of traffic for these kids, and maybe has. Diane is definitely my favorite thing about the yellow bus.

But let’s get back to those bench seats. Doesn’t it seem odd that, in this age of five-point harness systems and helmets on tricycle-riders, school buses still don’t have seat belts? A friend told me recently that slip ’n slides now have bumpers at the bottom, I suppose to prevent kids from slipping and sliding out into oncoming traffic. Tell me honestly – would you think to yourself, “well, normally I wouldn’t let the kids careen down the hill towards the interstate, but since that bumper is there…” I mean really. And yet it’s fine for nearly every school-aged child in the country to ride to and from school every day without the precaution that in most vehicles is required by law? Is there an actual reason for this, or is it simply that we’ve spent the money for school bus seat belts on the war in Iraq?

Here is one of the many things I love about Google: you don’t have to reduce your question to search terms, you can just ask it directly, as if this were not a computer you were talking to but an especially friendly and helpful librarian. When I asked Google “why aren’t there seat belts on school buses?” Google informed me that there are about 1,270,000 web sites that address that question. Based on my exhaustive perusal of the top three, I’d say that the reasons boil down to this: some researchers say we don’t need them. Plus, we’ve spent the money for school bus seat belts on the war in Iraq.

Luckily, Diane is behind the wheel, and I’m not worried.

The First Day

2007-08-23T17:04:00.000-04:00

Whose heart aches more as
she clutches my hand...
we await
her first ride
on the yellow bus

- Elinor Pihl Huggett

Kind of.

2007-08-21T21:14:00.000-04:00

Tonight I said to Lucy, “tomorrow is the last day of no Kindergarten! Can you believe it??” And she said, “You know, kind of.”

Hard for me to believe, apparently, but not her. She’s been gearing up for days, weeks, months… since preschool ended three months ago, really. Which might as well be three years, in five-year-old time.

First, in May, we went to Kindergarten registration, where we met the principal and filled out forms listing all the tropical diseases to which she had, or had not, been exposed. Because that was, oddly, both overwhelming and incredibly dull, we then went back just for a visit. We saw the Kindergarten classrooms, the playground, the art and music rooms, the library… far from dull, but at least as overwhelming. We got a few months to digest it, and then, just when the memory had started to fade, we got the Kindergarten supplies list in the mail. Ahh, school supplies. Don’t we all pine for the days of shopping for school supplies? Well, guess what, it turns out to be one of the perks of sending your child out into the cruel world. There was no shopping in preschool, mind you. But now, shopping we went. Fat pencils, glue sticks, safety scissors, sparkly folders… they were all on the list. Well, folders were on the list, the sparkly part was optional. If I squinted my eyes and tilted my head just so, I could still believe she was three and we were just pretending to shop for school, that we would take it all home and she would use the glue sticks to glue the pencils together and the scissors to cut the folders to tiny bits that I would inexplicably find in the soap four days later.

But then, last week, the charade ended. On Friday we went to – no joke – Kindergarten orientation. Which involved – no joke – a PowerPoint presentation about Kindergarten. Which the actual Kindergarteners found – no surprise – incredibly boring. About halfway through the second slide, the Kindergarten teachers were already promising the students they had not yet even met that it would be over soon. Which, much like the five years preceding it, it was.

And now, here we are, less than thirty-six hours from liftoff. Can I believe it?

You know, kind of.

T Minus Three

2007-08-20T08:46:00.001-04:00

So my daughter starts Kindergarten in three days. Actually, in two days, 22 hours, and 51 minutes, but who’s counting? She couldn’t be more thrilled. The fact that she’s still a little vague on the details doesn’t keep her from being excited about it: riding the big yellow bus, bringing her lunch with her, going to school every day, rather than the three mornings a week that preschool offers. She is the picture of anticipation, boldly going where virtually every five-year-old in recent history has gone before.

I, on the other hand, am freaking out.

She’s not ready! my maternal alarm system shrieks. All day is too long! it protests, Five days a week is too many! School changes everything. I know this, and it fuels my fears. I worry that my blissfully television-free child will suddenly know all about characters of whom I’ve never heard and, worse, will want to watch them. I fear that the little girl who decks herself out each morning in some bizarre and fabulous combination of clothing and jewelry will suddenly want to wear what her classmates are wearing, which is to say what their older sisters are wearing, which is to say what Ashlee Simpson is (or isn’t) wearing. And more than that, I am afraid that school will be too restrictive, too structured, too sedentary, too competitive… too different from home. We know her best, we love her most, and therefore we know what’s best for her. So goes my reasoning, if it can be called that.

What this leaves out of the equation, of course, is her.

What I have finally realized is that my apprehension about sending my firstborn off to school has a lot more to do with me than with her. It’s my job to separate from her, and to teach her to separate from me. She’s supposed to go off and do things we don’t do at home, that’s called independence. I am supposed to be a guide, not a warden, providing a safety net, not a cage. If I am afraid to let her go, what does that say to her?

If it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself, I am. This is hard! But so was giving birth, our first act of separation, and weaning, probably our second. So was letting her walk without holding my hand for the first time, and realizing that she could play in her room without me hovering over her. Actually, that last one was fantastic, but that’s not the point. The point is that motherhood, and more broadly parenthood, is at least in part about separation. A little at a time, we teach them to live without us, to blaze their own paths, and to be their own people. It’s hard, yes, but it’s necessary, and if you don’t do it, you’ve failed both your child and yourself.

A famous Ralph Waldo Emerson quote likens raising a child to launching an arrow from a bow. You aim carefully, Emerson says, but when you let it fly it may still be affected by things beyond your control. This is an appealing but flawed metaphor. Children are rarely, if ever, either totally within or totally beyond their parents’ influence. At age 34 I routinely call my parents for advice on things ranging from etiquette to taxes, and of course for help raising my own children. At the same time, I remember asserting my budding independence in myriad ways beginning quite some time before I was officially launched from the bow. No, raising a child is more like exerting some kind of force – magnetic, maybe, or gravitational. The younger and closer the child is, the stronger the force. As the child grows up and moves away, the force weakens, but it’s never really broken. We still float around in the same galaxy (although I understand that during the teenage years this is questionable), and our influence is still felt. With apologies to George Lucas, trying to keep the force strong is both an exercise in futility and an invitation to disaster.

I’m still not thrilled that she gets on the bus at 7 a.m., eats lunch at 10:30, and gets only a 20-minute recess. But she’s thrilled. And, really, it’s all about her.