The New York Times has about three stories about parents that they recycle over and over. One of their favorite story topics is "The Crazy Parent" — that hysterical, grade grubbing parent who pushes their poor children way too far and buys that Harvard sticker for the car when their kids are still watching Elmo. I'm not saying that there aren't parents like that, but I do get tired of that story line in the Times. 

I'm not sure why the Times keeps going after that topic, when most parents are completely normal. Since this article from Kate Zernike is on the most e-mailed list, we'll will probably get a lot more of "Crazy Parent" articles in the future. 

Zernike writes about parents who sign up their kids for Kumon to get them reading before kindergarten. The horror level at those Kumon parents was a little over the top. 

My kids learned to read early probably because I read them stories every day, they had ABC books, and they watched Sesame Street. I didn't do all that because I wanted to give them an edge in the cut throat world of kindergarten. It's just part of the parenting package, and the kids liked it. I suppose if you don't have time for one-on-one reading time, then you might want to send your kids to Kumon for an hour a week. Does it hurt the kids? No. Does it help the kids? Probably not. 

While Kumon and other after school supplementary services are probably not going to propel pre-schoolers to Harvard, those programs are very helpful in older grades, because schools aren't drilling kids on multiplication tables anymore. I'm looking around for a good writing program to supplement my older child's sixth grade curriculum. I have friends who send their kids to reading programs. Ian has nearly six days of after school specials.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to do this stuff. In an ideal world, we would be all educating our kids like Tilda Swinton, in alternative private school in a Scottish town. And we do do a lot of free-style educating of our kids, but there's some stuff that I just can't on a canoe trip or at an urban garden (posts and pix to follow).