As the school year comes to a close here in the Northeast, millions of parents are putting loaded guns into their mouths.
Please, please, please let it end. I just cannot manage to help Jonah prep for another six chapter, comprehensive vocabulary test. Then there was Ian's goddamn desert ecosystem diorama. Another freakin' IEP meeting. Intermediate band recital. Don't forget the paper plates for the social skills party at the park. Someone needs to put together the mess kits and roll up the sleeping bags from the Boy Scout rafting trip. Did you send in the forms for the fall soccer program? No. How about CCD? No. Did you get a babysitter for next Friday night? No. I suppose you didn't pop the tomato plant into the ground and it's getting all wilty on the porch. Yup. Loser.
That's it. I'm on strike.
This morning, the kids and I curled up on the sofa under the one blue blanket. We usually watch the Today show for ten minutes or so, until the caffeine kicks in and I start making breakfast. We couldn't watch it this morning, because the boys have started calling each other "Anthony Weiner."
"You're Anthony Weiner." "No, you're Anthony Weiner Dog."
My boys are very mature. They take after their momma.
Instead, we looked at pictures of Cape Cod on my iPad. And for some reason, YouTube videos of Les Miz.
There's a wiff of sea breeze in the air. A hint of vacation time and a book on the beach. Sunburn, here I come!
Apt. 11d 
Apparently, they canceled the middle school field days for 6th and 7th grades here because of lack of parent volunteers. Basically, no one has time! We’re all running around doing 10 other things–and that’s those of us who aren’t working and/or can take off time.
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goddamn desert ecosystem diorama
Put some sand in a shoe box and call it a day.
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yeah, but how to change things? the kids just have to do less. But mine really don’t want to.
I’m really far from figuring this out.
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I don’t want to say how much $ I spent on stupid scrapbook stuff for my daughter’s end-of-year school projects at Michael’s. Let’s just say I already earned a discount on the new rewards card I just got last week.
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My d had to do a scrapbook this year. She didn’t really know what one is, and she doesn’t listen to me, so it wasn’t until she saw a friend’s that she realized that there are huge stacks of scrapbooking materials in my craft room (no, I don’t scrapbook, but I collect scrapbook materials).
I was pretty bitter about the project, but she was pleased with herself and enjoyed it. I think the point of these projects is that it gives kids who don’t want to do the project one way a chance to do it another way. The friend who scrapbooks doesn’t love to write, the way my daughter does. So, one scrapbook (on top of the writing they’ve done this year) gives the friend a chance to shine, well, I’m pleased.
The kids have to do the projects themselves, though. Don’t know how to avoid the shopping trips, though.
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no, I don’t scrapbook, but I collect scrapbook materials
Rep. Weiner has made more convincing statements.
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Now, though, back to the substantive question. How do we trim this list for the objectives we have for *our* child.
IEP meeting
Band recital
Paper plates
Boy scout prepping
Vocab prepping
CCD forms (fall)
Soccer forms (fall)
ecosystem diorama
Tomato plant
That’s my list for how I’d handle L’s list (though I’m guessing it’s not hers). I have decided there’s no time in my life for tomato plants, but then, I don’t garden, or cook, and I live in a place where you have to stand over your Tomato plants and breathe hot air at them in order to get them to grow.
I’d let my kids do a lame diorama if they didn’t get their act together. Vocab spelling prepping is something they both do for fun, and usually gets done over breakfast.
Paper plates/prepping for Boy Scouts aren’t important, but the activities (social skills class/boy scouts) are, and someone has to do the prepping in order for the activities to continue.
Bands can’t exist without band practice.
Forms, well, those have to be done in order to have the activities.
Part of the issue I’ve now seen is that everyone wants to optimize this list for their own kid, but many of the activities involve a group. If band practice is more important to my kid, but soccer is more important to another kid, how do both of them get prioritized so they can both happen?
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PS: And, because I really am obsessed, I’ve realized I’m doing a lot of volunteering right now. I like the volunteering I’m doing (with a few minor exceptions — no fun filling out the financial forms for the GS troop). But, I can see that without help I will get burned out, not the least because if others aren’t investing in the activities, the activities can’t really continue.
Then, though, I realize that although I’m doing a lot of volunteering, my children are also benefiting significantly from the volunteering efforts of others (most notably, I’m volunteering for my daughter’s troops and activities, but my son’s sports teams are being managed by others, with a lot of volunteering by them). And, even in my daughter’s circle, parents who don’t seem to be there for the paper plates are getting a lot done for the school auction, or raising money for the annual fund (activities I’m not willing to do). And then, there are the divorced moms who are trying to navigate the social waters while working to pay all the bills and share custody of their children with fathers.
This mess of social + individual is an inherently tricky landscape.
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My problem right now is that I live 6 miles away from my daughter’s middle school. Is that unusual for any of the other public school peeps on the list? I feel like it’s so far away, and it’s no wonder that the PTO and Band Parents Association is packed with parents from the other side of town, who all live closer to the MS. When I start running Band Parents Assoc next year, I plan to get more parents from my side of town involved, mainly because those are the parents I know well enough to twist arms. 🙂
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“Middle school band” is a very good example of how completely banal words can be combined to create pure terror.
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We live 6+ miles from our school (but it’s private). Distance definitely plays a role in people’s ability to volunteer. And, so does age. A phenomenon I’ve heard about but am just now seeing in operation is the availability of volunteers slowly dissipating with age. The recession, and people’s needs to get paid work is a bar, too. But, many folks worked on the assumption that their children’s most intense need for parental care was when they were little. I’ve found the opposite to be true in my fmaily, but that’s ’cause I had excellent child care that took care of my children’s infant/toddler needs, but now find that they need a parent who can lead, twist other parents arms (or at least gently tug), edit, . . . ., work that can’t be easily replaced by someone I can pay. (Yes, I think this is part of the NY tutoring ethos for people who have the money).
And, MH, if you read the “alumni” web page of the public Junior High I went to, you’ll find that the thing folks found the most memorable about the entire period was band. I’d argue that what strikes horros is Middle School, without the band. Band, drama, sports, other opportunities for the wild beasts to join together in a well-lead joint exercise (and, that’s critical, the leading) is what makes MS bearable.
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(PS: That’s the age of the children)
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My middle school was probably different both because it wasn’t very separate from the grade school or the high school. Both in terms of the physical location and the people involved, it hardly seemed like a transition. But, boy did we suck at bankd.
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Also, grammar, apparently. Anyway, the middle school spent half of the day in a separate quad of the grade school building and half of the day in the high school building. Some of the teachers were the same from 7th through 12th grade. A few kids left and a few kids entered the class, but it was basically the same people.
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Oh, I’m making no claims about how our band sounded. Since it could accommodate a nearly tone-deaf first chair clarinet (I have good fine motor skills; the clarinet is not hard to play in tune), it couldn’t have been great.
It’s the team working together (with a teacher who prevents the kids from damaging each other) that I think is so important in MS even if they sound/perform/play terribly.
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the clarinet is not hard to play in tune
It was for me.
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I loved band so much that my first degree was as a clarinet performance major! Total music geek. But we had an incredible music program and good musical schools that fed into the high schools. The stars were in alignment at that time and place.
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“…no, I don’t scrapbook, but I collect scrapbook materials…”
I believe you.
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I suppose I have a bunch of tools that I’ll never use, but I wouldn’t say I collect them. People (or rather, my father in law) give them to me.
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Oh, I actually do collect them. I also have a vast collection of crafting books, including knitting, origami, paper crafts, bookmaking, polymer clay, beadweaving, and quilting (with a few extra miscellaneous crafts thrown in, like dollmaking). I also have painting & photography books, but I do actually paint and take photos, so those aren’t a collection.
I’m guessing there’s a treatment program for people like me, but I (and others around me) have grown to accept it as a quirky part of my personality.
(And it comes in handy for school crafting projects. Too bad that my daughter is an anti-crafter).
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My son’s middle school band is actually quite impressive. They have an amazing teacher and a wise man. The end of the year concert is always a month and a half before the last week of school.
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Okay, I didn’t get in before the band convo, but I’m with you. My school year ended Friday in a kind of crazy race to the finish. I’ll say to all of you that once high school hits there’s much less of the paper plates and diorama kind of parental involvement. But there are graduation parties, riding the kid for the final projects and finals, crossing fingers that everything turns out okay. And now I’m in the mode of getting all the crap done that I can’t do during the school year–dentist appointments, eye appointments, car inspection, haggling with the credit card company who is charging me interest even though they’re not supposed to, double-checking we have enough homeowner’s insurance, and generally cleaning up the house (which is a slow and painful process). So this week feels completely crazy. I’m not really seeing a break until mid-July.
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“And now I’m in the mode of getting all the crap done that I can’t do during the school year–dentist appointments, eye appointments, car inspection, haggling with the credit card company who is charging me interest even though they’re not supposed to, double-checking we have enough homeowner’s insurance, and generally cleaning up the house (which is a slow and painful process).”
Very similar around here (with the exception of the cleaning). The hair apts, doctors, dentists, optometrist and so forth claim a fair chunk of the summer. The one thing that is better is that the flow of very important school emails stops (you know, the ones where within a few minutes, you have 20 emails about a single end of year party) and there’s less paperwork. We have much more driving in the summer, but there’s no homework, so that’s a plus. I kind of like our current summer schedule of doing a lot of educationalish camps and classes (zoo, archeology, gardening, sewing, Red Cross swimming, etc.).
During the school year, I’m actually kind of nervous about opening up my email. You never know what you may be drafted into (make five gallons of punch–I’ve never made punch in my entire life!).
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