REMINDER: COKE and TWINKIES FOR SCHOOL LUNCH FRIDAY MARCH 30TH

As reported here, this Friday, March 30th is being called “Coke and Twinkies” for lunch day in Massachusetts.  The aim is to remind public schools and municipalities that parents will decide what is best for their children, particularly in light of widely publicized stories of overreaching actions by school employees.  Simply packing these items in your child’s lunch will send a clear message to your children’s school.

Very High Standards

Here in the affluent suburbs, it is almost time for the fourth-graders to go on their big, 3-day educational expedition an hour or so away. The program requires a certain number of parent chaperones, but the guidelines are pretty clear as to behavioral expectations. Strictly prohibited by chaperones are:

 -drinking on or off the camp site
-use of tobacco or other drugs
-bringing a pet
-use of foul/inappropriate language
-sexual activity
-physical interventions with students for disciplinary measures

Wow – they actually have to spell this out here in the ‘burbs. I don’t see firearms, religious texts, or peanuts on the prohibited list, so I guess I can apply.

Local shortages of Baking Soda, Vinegar, Suggest Science Fair Season

It is Science Fair season in our affluent suburb, and it seems like only yesterday I was shouting at my children to focus and finish their projects only hours before last year’s fair was to begin. Each year, the children decide at the last minute that they would like to participate in the fair, but they can’t come up with anything cool that they can do in the next 10 days (last year’s mummified chicken wasn’t done the night before the fair!).  Then they talk with their friends about doing a project together. Yay!  Then the other parent calls you, being kinda pushy about it, and declaring how her child only has two hours available to do the fair, so are they on or what? We have to figure out if we have to get a poster board!  Huh?  Can’t we just teach the children a lesson in planning ahead, and say “you know what, you kids won’t have enough time to get together to do your best work on this, so we can either do something individually, or just not do it this year”.  I hate to be a downer, but slamming something crappy together seems worse than not participating, right? Children at this age haven’t learned the hideous nature of group projects.  To them, the group project is simply an opportunity to play and horse around, and take part in the mayhem that is the Science Fair. So now we are on the hook for a group project.  The fair is in six days, and the team has spent 40 minutes working on their idea (cue the blank stare as to what there is still left to do).  It is no wonder that the frazzled, baking-soda dappled parents look really fatigued on the night of the fair.  I reckon the PTO would make a boatload of money replacing the bake sale with a cash bar.

BREAKING: Parent Group announces Coke and Twinkies Lunch Day – March 30

METROWEST MASSACHUSETTS: Fed up with the ever-increasing regulations on children’s school lunches sent from home, and reports of unacceptable food “discipline” in other parts of the country, a group of Massachusetts parents have announced that they would like to hold a “Coke and Twinkies” lunch day in all Massachusetts public schools.  The event aims to reinforce the concept that parents make the decisions as to what’s in their children’s homemade lunches (except for peanuts and tree nuts, and strictly banned items, of course). Samantha Freeman, mother of 3 elementary school children in Middlesex County says “One lunch like this won’t hurt anybody, and it will send a message to the schools that our parental prerogatives are being ignored. Schools and teacher groups generally support all those “Occupy” movements, well this is an “occupy the cafeteria” situation.”  Ms. Blackburn suggests that parents pack Coke and Twinkies, or other frowned-upon lunch items in addition to their child’s regular lunch on Friday, March 30th.  The group hopes that word of mouth will make the coordinated presence of junk foods in the cafeteria noticeable to school administrators, who should take note of the “protest”.  The group hopes readers will forward this information to potential participants.

Note: The National Center for Public Policy Research held a “Lunch-In” on February 23rd in Washington DC to protest the aggressive guidelines increasingly applied to homemade lunches.

60 Kindergarteners go into a library…..

…no, it’s not a joke, but an actual real-life scenario that happens weekly at my children’s elementary school.  Not sure whose great idea THAT was, but suffice it to say that initially the scene resembled that of the Filene’s Basement annual bridal gown sale. The temperature in the sizable room goes up to about ten thousand degrees; you can feel the electric hum of those sixty 5-year-olds who don’t really  know their own names or how to read; the three different classroom teachers fleeing the chaos, leaving the library staff to handle the melee.  The little ones cry because they can’t find a good puppy book, or because they forgot to bring back their old book, or because they want the book NOW, or because their best friend got the book they wanted, or because the stupid library volunteers don’t know their names, either! Do you know how much the library resembles a CDC petri dish with 60 kindergarteners-worth of runny noses, fingers in noses, hands in pants, spewing coughs and sneezes?  Since the start of this “class”, things have calmed down a bit: the kids know what to expect, we know them better, they choose from a set of pre-selected books, and they get two stories, all in a 35-minute period! Now the only crying in the library is that of the parent volunteers who still require tremendous patience and effort to get through that frantic period.  Sobbing and crying aside, I don’t know how I’ll ever go back to work with a “real” job – I am SPENT after my two-hour volunteer stint at the library.  “Hard day at the library, honey?” asks my 12-hour a day lawyer husband.  Hard day, indeed!

Chocolate Milk Ire in the Bay State

BOSTON: Massachusetts legislators have banned chocolate milk from public schools in the Commonwealth beginning in the 2012-2013 school year, as part of its “Superior Parenting for You (SPY)” campaign that targets making better choices for your children, because parents are completely unqualified to do so. One of the stated goals of the SPY program is to “provide consistent, state-mandated guidance in as many areas as possible for the children of our Commonwealth”, and to “maximize the state’s positive influences as much as possible during the school day”.  ”We are giving parents a helping hand in this crazy, stressful world” boasts SPY Director Nina “Nanny” Rousseau.  Critics claim that the ban of something innocuous like chocolate milk may cause public school children to seethe with anger when they find that their private school brethren can still swill down the calcium, vitamin,  and protein-laden chocolately goodness, causing concerns about widening the gulf between the “haves and have-nots”. Massachusetts parents need not worry, though: public schools can still distribute condoms and birth control pills without your consent, and in some cases provide gynecological services without parental permission. Private schools can’t do THAT. These education professionals know what they are doing, so just stand back and let them work!

My Two Cents on the whole “Tiger Mother” Brouhaha

I know that the hullabaloo around Tiger Mothers has died down, but I’m putting in my two cents for the record.  A few weeks ago I read the Wall Street Journal’s article about Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” with great interest. I was, of course, intrigued, since I’m one of the most strict mothers I know. I’m not the only one that doesn’t allow screen time during the week? Extra worksheets if you’re having trouble? Setting high expectations? Want to be ahead a grade or two in math and science? I also happen to share Ms. Chua’s loathing of the “Playdate”.  Wow – I could see where she was coming from, since I see both sides of the parenting spectrum here in the affluent suburbs. What I didn’t expect was the foaming-at-the-mouth vitriol leveled at Ms. Chua. The comments came fast and furious after the article was published, mostly in defense of the “Western” way of parenting. What about the child’s self-esteeem? Winning and losing can wait until adulthood! Rank them in order of excellence? What about the child’s creativity? Yowza, you get a trophy for participating in anything around here; where and when do the kids truly learn the relationship between effort and achievement?

After the article came out, I read her entire book, and it is obvious that most people who commented had not. While laugh-out-loud funny at times in the first half of the book, the second half of the book has Ms. Chua sharing the heartache and disappointment and guilt at having the Tiger Mother approach not go so well with her younger daughter. Ms Chua chose the path she thought best for her children, the same path that produced Ms. Chua, yet she ignored even the advice of her own mother (to whom she owes everything, according to Chinese culture). The Wall Street Journal came up with the title “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”, and this is partly the reason that the “Western” moms freaked out. My take on the visceral reaction is that, at least in the affluent suburbs, mothers waited to have children until they were well along in their careers. They left successful careers to raise their children, so any hint that they’re not superior parents chafes as if they got a bad performance review at work, or didn’t get a bonus or something. The reactions seemed emotional and knee-jerk, while some adult children of Chinese mothers weighed in on both sides of the story. I read the book because I saw a lot my parenting style with my children (though obviously Ms. Chua was excessive), and I wanted to be informed before weighing in on it.  Ms. Chua’s book is a memoir, not a how-to book.  She also doesn’t come off looking too good in it, so perhaps writing this book was penance, or maybe looking back she loathed her own childhood, but didn’t really know how to do it any differently.

Are her daughters happy? I guess only they can tell us, but to entirely dismiss the concepts of practice, training, hard work, searching for excellence, expectation-setting, and making decisions for our children against their wishes might just make us “Sheep Mothers”: following the herd, seeking the parental path of least resistance, convincing ourselves that our kids must be great, they live in an affluent suburb! 

Perhaps we could be “Chameleon Mothers” – adapting our methods, disciplines, and expectations to suit the situation, to suit the child.  I’m guessing that many of us could benefit from a little more time sporting tiger stripes.

BREAKING: SCHOOL LOCKDOWN: PEANUT M&M FOUND ON BUS

EDGEWATER, FLORIDA: School officials at the town’s elementary school have implemented a complete lockdown of the campus after a student found an orange peanut M&M on the bus. As students arrived at school, they were ushered to safety in the school’s auditorium, where the waited for their turn to be scrubbed down with Clorox wipes in the school nurse’s office. Edgewater Police Chief Pete Nutterman held a press conference in which he assured parents that the hard candy shell of the M&M had not been breached, but the scrubdowns had to be executed in the event that the children were exposed to other dangerous candies on the bus. A full investigation is under way, and hazmat teams have begun cleanup of the bus. More details as they become available.

Boobies! The birds, I mean….

In my very important role as unpaid parent volunteer at our elementary school library, I observe a lot of funny things.  I mostly like to vex the little people by telling them jokes they don’t understand, or by pulling their little legs about just about anything: like how I sleep under the desk so I can be at library first thing in the morning, how I pretend there’s an earthquake when the kids play roughly with the model of the moon, how I’ll ask “did I mention that I’m an unpaid parent volunteer?” when they’re being difficult.

One consistent source of amusement comes from my efforts re-shelving the millions of books the little dears take off the shelves in their search for the perfect kitten, pony, or football book. Often the unwanted books end up in messy piles atop the shelves, or even all over the floor. Almost every week, I find that the “Boobies” book has been taken off the shelf, browsed, and left on top of a shelf five rows away from where it belongs.  Boobies (Sula nebouxii), of course, are those silly blue-footed, clumsy birds that live in the Galapagos Islands. The third-graders (we think we have it narrowed down to them) are fascinated by them.  One third grader asked the librarian for the correct pronunciation of the bird’s name (asking in front of the whole class), because she just wasn’t sure of it.  Pretty cagey, huh?  The librarian looked at her and said “Boobies.”  Then everybody burst out laughing, librarian included.  It warms my heart to see this kind of thing, because it’s completely age-appropriate taboo-testing.  It’s not like the fifth graders who keep trying get onto Facebook on the library computers (seriously??).  Enjoy the fascination with Boobies while it lasts; next thing you know they’ll be texting…. or worse!

I’ve purposely shelved the Boobies where they don’t belong – in with the frogs.  Let’s see if they find their Boobies this week!

Happy National Punctuation Day?

Oops – incorrect punctuation there (and I think I was supposed to use a dash, not a hyphen). As usual, I didn’t get my cards mailed out on time, so I’m wishing all of you a superior Punctuation Day right now!  Find out how to celebrate on the official National Punctuation Day website.  If your kids ask you what the heck punctuation is, please go to another room and weep quietly.

Update:  Apparently Matt Drudge didn’t get the memo.  Hey, why isn’t New York overrun by ‘bed bugs’?