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Posts Tagged ‘kids’

Motherhood: Growing your own friend from scratch

Posted in Home life, tagged , , , , , , on May 12, 2013 | 1 Comment »

Being out of the country and away from my four daughters for 8 days recently, I was struck anew by how much I not just love them — because of course I love my offspring — but how much I like them. I’ve never been gone from them this long, and in the past when my husband and I went on trips together, they were younger. I missed them, but when they were little and the days were endless cycles of feeding, diapering, clothing, and just keeping them alive and well, I was largely relieved to have a break from that caretaking cycle.

Now they keep me just as busy, but in completely different ways. They can be their own caretakers in most ways: they can go potty by themselves now (diapers are a distant memory), they can feed themselves (even cook), get dressed, and even get themselves places on their own (oldest has a driver’s license). Now my job is to make sure they’re learning and becoming who they should and could be. It’s to make sure they are nurtured in so many more complex ways as they make their way through tricky adolescent and pre-adolescent years. It’s to support them in their activities, volunteering as a band booster and so on. The job title is the same — Mother — but the duties and job description are very different and much more complicated and nuanced. I don’t have to just show up and go through the motions; I have to bring my A game.

What’s happened, though, in the course of their becoming these independent selves, morphing from little eating and pooping machines who cry to communicate or just repeat “no” or “why?” ad nauseam is that they have become people. They are completely their own selves, with amazing personalities and unique mixtures of traits, talents, and quirks. What’s more, we have become friends in many ways. Sure, I’m not one of those parents who is more of a pal to their children than a parent, but it’s absolutely true that my daughters are my friends. My oldest in particular, who’s turning 17 this week and will fly out of the nest next year (cue the leaky eyes), is such a fun person. She’s nearly an adult, and she is mature in so many ways and simply fun to be around. We have all kinds of inside jokes and we can look at each other and grin at something we just know we’re both thinking. She is so delightful and pleasant to be around that I miss her presence when she’s not.

brianna as flower

And I felt that keenly while in another country. I didn’t talk to my girls for more than a week. I emailed and Facebook-ed a little, with one short chat session. (Even then, though, they were all using my mom’s account, but I could tell when a different child started typing. I knew exactly who I was “talking” to because of just how they phrased things.) But as much as I enjoyed my time alone with my husband and loved all the great scenery we soaked in and famous sites we visited, I missed my friends back at home. There were so many times I thought, “Oh, Brianna would like this. Oh, Cami would love that.” I was sure one would respond a certain way with a certain phrase to something we saw.

And as much as I loved (but often just plain endured) the different phases of mothering, I am loving this one, in which I can see how the little seeds I sowed have grown into full-size plants. They’re still here in my own garden, but in not too long they will be transplanted to other gardens. Right now, though, I marvel at how much I like them, how simply miraculous it is that I was growing my own friends all this time and didn’t quite realize it. I love them, but, even better, I really, really like them. Today, I will celebrate Mother’s Day with some really amazing friends. I can’t imagine life without them.

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Farewell to E.L. Konigsburg

Posted in Reading life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 22, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

FrankweilerSo I just read that E.L. Konigsburg, author of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, died. I can’t let this opportunity pass to write a short thank-you to her for that charming book, which I enjoyed so much as a young reader and which I have enjoyed just as much reading with my own young ones.

In a day when it’s easy for anyone to publish, and books for young readers are particularly hot items, we’re surrounded by thousands and thousands of choices for reading. I love to read the great new books that are coming out and contributing to the best of all genres, but there are some classics that still hold a special place in my heart, and Mixed-Up Files is definitely one of those. It’s a clever premise, one that any child who’s had those moments of wanting to run away can relate to, but which makes the destination very cool: two kids pack up and escape to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they manage to live secretly for a short time. Even now, it gives me little butterflies of excitement to think about the notion of being able to live in that awesome museum!

Then there’s the element of mystery added in to the story: is a statue the museum’s acquired for a bargain price actually the work of Michelangelo? And then there’s the interesting character Mrs. Frankweiler, who knows more than she lets on. All in all, the book is so fun to read, particularly because it’s so good at letting the reader step into the shoes of the characters and step off on a flight of fancy. It’s just the right setting for letting the imagination run wild. And personally, I’ve always loved museums, especially art museums, and my daughters love them too, so reading this story together doubled the pleasure.

Thank you, Ms. Konigsburg, for creating this story. I expect I’ll enjoy reading it to my grandkids one day too. And that is what makes a classic.

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Safety: is it just an illusion?

Posted in Full life, tagged , , , , , , , on January 18, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Again, in reference to recent hotly debated issues, I’m not going to address gun control. I do think, though, it’s interesting to think about what constitutes true “safety,” or implied or felt safety. I’ve been thinking that most of the safety measures that are being implemented in schools right now, for instance, are really more there to create the illusion of safety than really, truly making our kids completely free from danger during school.

Kids are smart enough to figure this out really quickly, too. I have children at a high school, a middle school, and an elementary school. Soon after Sandy Hook, all three schools immediately started sending home letters and providing recorded information via phone calls about their stepped-up efforts to ensure students’ safety. Honestly, my first reaction on hearing the first phone call message was, “Right. Like changing which gates are going to be open at which times and which will be locked all day is really going to change things that much.” Yep. I was skeptical, and I’m still skeptical a month later.

fenceThe high school started locking more of its gates two days ago. When I picked up my child and a friend at the end of the school day, I heard a good amount of reasoning from the backseat about how they viewed the new policies. Mostly it was this: it’s not going to do any real good. For one thing, the fences surrounding the school are just about six-foot-tall chain-link numbers. My little teen girl has jumped them any number of times (for good reason, let me just say; she’s not a rule-breaker) when she’s been at school outside of regular hours. So locking more gates isn’t exactly going to keep anyone out who really wants to get in.

The kids also observed that the recent threat that actually occurred at the school was by a student, and he had told a classmate about his intention to harm someone the next day at school (I think on a Facebook page). Allowing only students in to a few particular gates in the morning would not have kept this kid out because he belonged there!

The door to my kindergartener’s class is now locked every day the second the kids have all lined up and marched inside. If we arrive even 30 seconds late, then she has to stand outside, knock, and wait for someone inside to open the door. This is the only change I could see as making some kind of difference. The classroom’s only access is that door, and because of the design of the schools here (we’re in California, so the weather’s temperate, so the buildings all have rooms that open directly to the outside, not using any hallways), the room is then secure if the heavy door is locked. There are some smallish windows, but it would be difficult to get in through them. So I think this is the only measure that makes sense, though it stinks if we’re running late. That’s OK, though.

Aside from that, all the gate-locking in the world is like having a basic home alarm system: it helps the most as merely a deterrent to the casual intruder. But someone who is absolutely determined to get in will easily find a way around it.

These are just a few simple examples of how the schools are trying to demonstrate their increased commitment to our children’s safety. But really, it doesn’t mean much to me. Life is impossible to secure. Wacky, random, and tragic things happen everywhere. It’s impossible to fortify ourselves or everywhere we go to a point that we will be completely safe from any threat. Stuff happens. People are crazy. They do stupid, crazy, horrible things sometimes. Yes, it’s good to do what we can to reduce the harm, but so much of what the schools are doing really just seems pointless. I want to be safe, and I sure as heck want my kids to be safe. But neither I nor anyone else can guarantee their safety anytime, anywhere.

That’s the thing: we can talk about gun safety, about gun control and rights, we can talk about making security better in all kinds of contexts. But (yes, TSA) there are always holes in the systems and loose ends and cracks of some kind or another, whether it’s human error or breakable machines, etc. Stuff slips through all the time.

Thinking we can actually keep everyone safe in any situation is just fruitless and ridiculous. We can try. I’m not saying we shouldn’t. But in the end, all the measures in the world are merely an illusion of security. Because life and other people are unpredictable and not safe. We can just do the best we can to go about our business and take care of each other in the meantime.

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My resolution? Not to make any resolutions

Posted in Full life, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2013 | 1 Comment »

I triumphantly announced a couple of days ago that I’d managed to check a couple of major items off my to-do list. Rather than being excited for me, my husband countered, “Well, are you going to add any more things onto the list?” Sadly, he knows me all too well.

2013I am a type-A personality, capital A. I have always been goal-oriented, planning and working for the future. That personality served me well in school, leading me to be valedictorian of my high school class and earn a full-tuition scholarship to my desired university. Since then, it’s not been quite as useful, at least in day-to-day life. In fact, it’s probably downright detrimental when raising children. ‘Cause honestly, it’s pretty difficult to get things done efficiently when the house is full of children. They do not care that I have a list of things to do. Their raison d’etre is to prevent me from doing anything for myself, having any quiet time, or reaching goals.

Even so, I don’t know any different way of doing things, so I forge through every day with kids, taking care of them and squeezing in my goals and to-do’s and trying to think straight in the moments they’re not asking me for something. It’s like swimming upstream in molasses. But since I am so programmed to check things off a list, I just keep swimming, regardless of how thick the water is.

So making resolutions at the beginning of a calendar year is completely pointless. One, I make goals (aka resolutions) every single day. I simply CAN’T HELP MYSELF! Two, I’m already so busy with the goals I’ve already set for myself that coming up with new ones simply because it’s January means I don’t have time to work on the new ones; I barely have time for the old ones.

Therefore, I am resolving to not make any more goals, at least until I’m caught up on the lists that are scribbled on scratch paper on my desk, on the yellow sticky-note program on my computer desktop, and the ones that just crowd my head. Perhaps I can demote myself from a capital-A type-A personality to a lowercase-a. We’ll see. That’s the most grandiose resolution I’ve ever considered.

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The best of (mothering) times

Posted in Home life, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 19, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Motherhood did not come naturally to me. Babysitting, on the rare occasions I consented to do it, was a rough job, one that wasn’t worth nearly the small pay I got to do it. So once I gave birth for the first time and was presented with a tiny little stranger, I was absolutely flummoxed about what to do with her. Even looking at pictures of me with that first child, I can see the confusion and nervousness in my eyes: “What now?” I was thinking.

And that first child gave me fits. She was a very demanding baby. She didn’t eat for half an hour and then settle down quietly for the next four hours. She snacked for ten minutes and then needed to eat again two hours later. She did NOT like to be put down. I had to hold her constantly. For someone who was pretty independent and used to going about my business, having the little seven-pound interloper in my arms nonstop made it pretty difficult to get anything done.

So that darling child did not ease me gently into motherhood. It was a bumpy ride, and I did not enjoy it. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and overloaded. I remember many times that first year thinking, “I can’t wait til I’m done having children and they grow up a bit.”

Time slowly went by, and I gave birth two more times and adopted once. I knew what I was doing the second and third times, and the second baby was just the most easygoing child ever. She would eat and then sit in her bouncy seat or car seat and smile beatifically up at me, doing whatever I needed to do. Third child was somewhere in between. But by then I had help: two older sisters to distract her (and one time push her off the couch…). Fourth baby was a breeze in many ways because I didn’t breast-feed her, so everyone else could take turns feeding her a bottle. And changing diapers. And holding and playing with her. It was so much more fun that time around to have a little baby. I enjoyed her.

They all went through the terrible twos and their early stages of independence and potty training. Those days are now behind me. My oldest is now 16, and the youngest 5. They’re now all in school. They can feed and dress themselves and read to themselves, except for the kindergartener. Yes, I am finally getting to that magic place I imagined when I had that first demanding baby. And it’s struck me that this time is finite. The oldest is now not a squalling infant; she’s a high school junior. And she is amazing. She’s delightful and smart and talented and beautiful and makes me laugh. She can talk my ear off about her day. We can share jokes together. She’s one of my dearest friends, and I am loving life with her in it. Now the day of her leaving the nest is actually in sight (less than two years!), and it’s paining my heart to even think about. I DON’T WANT HER TO LEAVE!

Ah, what a difference 15 or 16 years can make.

So I have realized that, despite the absolutely crazy, hectic pace of my daily life with four children in school and all the needs they have, these are the best of times. In a few years, one daughter will be gone, and the others will be making their way towards that direction as well. The clock is ticking. And at this stage of my life, it’s not a biological clock. It’s the clock reminding me with every tock and tick that while motherhood is permanent, having children at home is not. I bemoan the lack of peace and quiet and sufficient time to myself now, but even in the midst of this busy-ness, I can’t imagine my house being quiet all the time. I love knowing that I can cuddle and squeeze all of my girls any time, that I can talk to them, listen to them, just study their faces. That we can laugh together.

I’m going to keep reminding myself during the tough days or moments that these really are the best of times. It might take a loud reminder during those moments, but I hope I can somehow still remember and appreciate what I have now.

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Pinferiority: dodging a complex

Posted in Home life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 12, 2012 | 4 Comments »

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about how Pinterest can be really useful, and also how it can be just another brick in the backpack full of guilt that moms carry around. I read a great column yesterday by another blogger and thought it was just along the same lines of what I’d been pondering. As Tiffany writes, “I have this real and palpable fear that on my deathbed, surrounded by my children, they will say something like this: ‘Yeah, you were a pretty good mom, but you never, you know, made us apple snacks in the shape of ladybugs.’” Isn’t THAT the truth!

Because as any Pinterest user knows, here’s the breakdown on boards: 25% of pins are recipes, 25% home decor, 15% crafts, 15% exercise and diet tips, 10% jokes and inspirational quotes, and 10% everything else. And the recipes and home decor ideas have their own breakdowns: recipes are maybe a quarter cutesy kid-oriented, as are the home decor and crafts. Recipes show these darling cupcakes and unbreakable kid plates festooned with hot dogs and spaghetti noodles or vegetables or fruits cut and meticulously fashioned into animal shapes.

And kids’ rooms? They’re filled with professionally painted wall scenes, organized and clever bunk-bed arrangements, or fairy-tale canopies and related frou-frou. Pinterest is now the haven for moms gone wild decorating and cooking fantastical items for their adored little ones, who have endless ideas for educational and fun projects they do with their preschoolers. I’m guessing they sleep three hours a night, don’t work outside of the home, and focus all their time and energies on their kids.

Sixteen years into this parenting gig, I have mostly made peace with the fact that I can only do so much for my kids and everyone else. I have to sleep; I have to write; I have to take some quiet time for myself. I definitely need to take time to be with my husband. Alone. I decided I wouldn’t put my girls into lots of lessons and keep them busy all the time; I wanted them to have plenty of free-play time to just imagine and create on their own. Since I love to read, I did take the time (and still do) to read to them. Since I like to cook and bake, and since I want all of us to be healthy and use our food budget wisely, I make almost all the meals we eat. We don’t do much take-out or restaurant eating (maybe a couple of times a month). I don’t tend to make the kids a fancy breakfast most school days, but I do make something nice on weekends and maybe throw some muffins in the oven on an evening for breakfast the next day (because I’m not baking at 6 a.m.).

What I don’t do are these time-consuming jobs: home decorating. To me, function comes before form, and almost everything (except the pictures of the family on the walls) is useful in some way. Shelves hold toys and books. I don’t decorate for every holiday; I don’t, for instance, go all-out for Easter or Halloween, including a candy-corn-shaped nightlight (for instance, which I have seen) as part of the hundreds of orange/black or faux-scary decorations in October. I don’t do a lot of crafts. I do sew maybe a couple of times a year when I get the urge or when one of the girls needs something in particular for school or something else. I typically make skirts or dresses. The sewing machine otherwise sits quietly in its closet, awaiting my next yearly burst of sewing energy. Particularly, I don’t combine the two by crafting cutesy decorations, particularly not for transient seasons. I am not going to take the time to swap out dozens of decorations every month. Nope.

And yes, I like to cook, but I am not going to spend any extra time making the food look kid-friendly. I never even called broccoli trees. The girls love it, but I didn’t have to give it a cute name so they would eat it. It keeps me busy enough making weekly dinners and then breakfasts and lunches during weekends or school breaks. I can’t imagine doing any more prep or finishing work. It exhausts me thinking about it.

I’ve been able to largely be satisfied with my strengths and be OK with not doing all the other stuff over the years. I’d visit friends occasionally and be impressed with their decorations or cute kid bedrooms, but it was easy to brush aside feeling inferior because those were brief forays outside of my own good-enough child-rearing sphere. But then Pinterest came along, and it reminds every single mom out there that pins just how much we’re not doing. Well, now I have to steel myself against feeling inferior every time I get on Pinterest to look for recipes or great ways to get out stains (or the occasional really good laugh). I think I should just put a permanent pin up on the corner of Pinterest that tells me, “Being a good mom doesn’t make crafts mandatory” or any other reminders of reality.

Yes, Pinterest has its usefulness and a place in my life. But I refuse to let it make me feel bad. It’s just another time for me to go to my happy place and chant “I am a good mom, I am a good mom” until I stop looking at boards for the day.

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Down syndrome discrimination in the skies

Posted in Home life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve concluded that I’m not really much of the litigious sort. When I fell down and broke my foot on the DMV sidewalk, I didn’t immediately figure out some way I could sue the state. Whenever I get the little postcards or emails about class action lawsuits involving some company or other I have patronized, I don’t just jump on the bandwagon to “get mine.” Most of the time, those suits seem pretty petty, and I haven’t had any problems with those businesses.

But once in a while, my “sue-’em-for-all-they’ve-got” side gets incited. Yesterday, my husband told me about a story that got me fired up. And it even involves a family in a town near us. The short story is that a teenage boy with Down syndrome was refused access on one airplane and on another wasn’t allowed in first class (which his father had upgraded to), instead being forced to “the back of the plane.” The airline even kept other passengers away from the family, keeping two empty rows between the teen and his parents on the back row and the rest of the passengers.

WHAAAAAT??

Yep, my girl is a great traveler.

As some of you may know from reading my blog, I have a 14-year-old daughter with Down syndrome. I wrote a post about her on World Down Syndrome Day. I’ve also, incidentally, written about traveling with kids and how airlines have been making it more and more difficult. I am quite sure airlines would be very happy to only allow business travelers to fly with them. They’d make more money and have no delicate issues to deal with. But they still do allow everyone to travel, so for now they’re stuck with families and people with disabilities. SORRY, poor little airline businesses. Boo-hoo. So I know what it’s like to be a parent and have to fly with a posse of little ones. It can be tiring and annoying on the best of days and absolutely crazy-making on the worst. I have flown a number of times over the years with all my children, including my child with Down syndrome.

I have also been able to get to know lots of great families with children with Down’s over the years, and I know that parenting a child with DS can sometimes pose some extra challenges. But I have not found the kids I know with DS to generally have lots more behavioral issues than other kids. I know that mine doesn’t. She is extremely eager to help and listen to instructions, sometimes more so than her siblings, and is really well behaved. I’ve been blessed over these years of travel to have other passengers on airplanes gush over how well-behaved she and all my kids were (at the end of a flight).

So it just rankles me to hear that an airline and pilot had the nerve to discriminate against this young man. If people with Down’s really had a known history of having behavior problems, and if this young man had truly been extremely disruptive in the gate area, then maybe I could see their concern. But I know the first isn’t true, and it doesn’t sound as if the second is true.

Yep, if it were my daughter in this situation, I’d be out at my lawyer’s office at dawn the day we were back in town, chomping at the bit.

I hope this family does pursue the case, not to make money, but to raise awareness. I’m all about raising awareness about all kinds of things, and it’s just the principle of the thing. Someone who has a disability (and in this case, what I consider to be a fairly “minor” one) is and should always be protected under the law against this kind of knee-jerk reaction. From this mama bear to another, go out there and show ‘em how great our DS kids can be!

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Mothering squirrels

Posted in Home life, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 3, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The days are slowly getting shorter and just slightly cooler, school is back in session, and I have a little time to take stock of how my house is looking. So I’ve fallen this past week into “fall cleaning.” I started with the youngest girl’s bedroom, because I knew there were some toys and puzzles and such under her bed that I could sell or donate.

Naturally, the job turned into an hour and a half of sweaty work. Aided, I’m sure, by my second-oldest daughter, the youngest had a few huge squirrels’ nests of stuff stashed away in her room. The first I discovered was the most daunting and astonishing: a tall, empty box that had been used to ship a riding toy for my third daughter had been stored in the little one’s room (at her request, I believe, so she could play with it). I looked at it and noticed that there were some clothes and other things sticking out of the top. Turns out when I picked it up, the four-foot-tall box was completely filled. I tipped it over and dumped it and just about shrieked. Gaaahhh! I ended up pulling out all the storage containers from under the bed and all the containers off the shelves and having to pick one little item out of the nest at a time to restore it to its proper place. I ended up toting out a large bag of recycling and a small bag of trash and making a smallish pile of things to donate/sell at the consignment store. Afterwards, I felt great satisfaction in seeing the lovely, organized room.

Two of my daughters sort their own rooms, so I don’t generally have to spend any time in their rooms. I did help the 10-year-old get better organized in the spring, but she manages fine by herself usually. The 16-year-old likes to reorganize and sort as well. But that 14-year-old, well, my husband’s always called her “Mouse,” but I think that “Squirrel” would be a better nickname. Or maybe “Rat,” since she brings to mind Templeton’s ways, but that doesn’t sound very cute, does it? I have been putting off even looking in any of her storage containers because I know I’ll find all kinds of nests. Her room looks wonderfully neat as long as you don’t look INSIDE any of the under-bed or shelf containers. But take off those lids… AAAIIIIIEEEEE! It’s just better for me to practice a “don’t look, don’t scream” policy.

So here it is Labor Day, and as all mothers know, it’s not much of a holiday (unless you go on a vacation or trip of some kind, and even trips with children aren’t relaxing). The kids are home, sometimes a little bored. Me, I’m just putting them to work a bit in my fall cleaning sweep. And then we’ll go see a movie at the three-dollar theater. Happy holiday to us. I suppose it’s appropriate that my little squirrels and I are going to see a film about talking animals.

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Mama bears unite

Posted in Home life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 29, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Education nowadays is topsy-turvy.

I ran into a friend in a Wal-Mart parking lot yesterday after dropping off my youngest at kindergarten. She asked how I liked the teacher, and we ended up launching into a fiery discussion about the schools. Issue after issue arose, and we resolved to get more involved and have a say by going to school board meetings.

This isn’t the first time the education of my little ones has caused me to rise up in righteous indignation. Before we moved to California, we lived in a small town in the South in which there were a number of problems with the school system in town. One big problem was that of “white flight,” quite honestly. Even though the town was maybe half and half whites and blacks, with a very small sprinkling of other minorities thrown in (which included our family since my husband is Filipino), a huge percentage of the students in the system were black. Now I had no problem with that at all except that things basically had split along economic lines. Many whites and the more educated and better-off-economically blacks had moved to different neighboring towns or the county (which all had separate school systems: don’t get me started on the craziness of that: what a waste of resources), and most families left behind were poor. Again, not a problem in terms of how I viewed them, but it definitely had an impact on the system and how things ran. Before I end up having to write a lengthy discourse on all the issues, let me just cut it short here by saying there were many issues, and I started going to school board meetings and speaking up. I didn’t want to just join in the “white flight”; I wanted to see if I could stay and make things better.

Needless to say, I realized that it was a fight I simply couldn’t fight alone. We ended up moving to California, where we found a great neighborhood to live in and in which the school setup is a much better one, with small neighborhood elementaries that seem to work well. But that doesn’t mean that all is great.

First off, the economy is bad. Like THAT’S a piece of news for everyone. But it certainly has affected our schools. In California, the economy and the schools have been hit particularly hard. What once was a wonderful, thriving system is now scraping by.

I could write a whole doctoral thesis on each of the facets of the larger issue here, but let me just say a few things as I see them.

First, there is no question that the breakdown of the nuclear family has contributed to the difficulties we face in schools today. Divorced and single parents have it harder in terms of trying to parent their kids and be available for them when it comes to schools. The economy has made it incredibly challenging as well. When every parent out there is working and no one is able to stay home even part-time, it makes it difficult to have the parental support needed for great education (volunteering, fund-raising, time just spent teaching children at home casually). Collapse of family structures has led to children not being taught or modeled all the things they need to help them be secure, (somewhat) well-behaved citizens of society. What has happened is that schools (and teachers) are now expected to teach young people EVERYTHING they need to know to be good members of our society. And that is impossible. Historically, families have nurtured and taught children, and schools have simply focused on making sure they know how to read, write, do math, know history and science. Now the schools have to teach citizenship and get kids to learn to behave, when that should have been a priority at home. Again, simplifying here tremendously, but this is the Cliff’s Notes version. Suffice it to say I have heard so many stories from teachers about the issues they have to deal with and what they are expected to do to, basically, parent children. Teachers have never been paid enough for the work they do, and they certainly aren’t paid enough to parent 30 or 100 kids.

Second, I have had to conclude that the more the federal government has tried to get involved, the worse schools’ situations have become. It’s been well-intentioned, I’m sure. But as more and more laws and guidelines have been created and passed down (with badly needed federal dollars attached by a thousand strings), the more hamstrung districts, individual schools, and teachers have become. They’ll do anything to qualify for those federal monies. What infuriated me yesterday was learning that our school system had instituted a new teacher-inservice time that’s incredibly inconvenient for just about anyone (parents and teachers alike, as far as I can tell, and any parents, whether working or stay-at-home) just because having the meeting every Monday morning from 8 to 9 a.m. would allow fewer kids to arrive late to school. Yes, they’d had such problems with students arriving late that the district then could not count the students as present. And an absent child means no money that day from the government. So the district thought, “Hey, we’ll have this meeting at this precise time so kids won’t be late and we’ll get the money.” I can appreciate that in some way, but it just riles me up that 1) the district had to inconvenience everyone with this new stupid plan and 2) the district is in such dire straits and in such desperate need of every penny from the government that they’d have to do this. Again, the government should not have such power over the schools as to cause this kind of stuff to happen.

I could write pages here. But what makes me angry is that as a parent who cares deeply about my children’s education, I have had to put in a ton of time and effort to make sure that it’s a decent one and they’re getting all they need. I shouldn’t have to check up on every little thing or be mightily inconvenienced. Education should be something that I can trust in. But I have to figure out how to squeeze in yet another thing in my already heavily-loaded schedule (which, might I add, is not full because of trips to the spa; it’s loaded with things that benefit my four children, who range in age from high school junior down to kindergartener) to just be sure that crazy things aren’t going on.

Sure, there are definitely places and people who have it worse. Sure, I’m grateful that we have a free country and one in which it’s a priority to provide a free education to all citizens (and non-citizens…). I’m generally glad to participate in the process and do my part to volunteer. But my mama-bear instincts sometimes make my claws come out when I find out about all the problems that exist.

I don’t know for sure how to solve the problems. I know one solution would be to strengthen families. But that’s certainly a big one, isn’t it? Another is to get the federal government less involved in education and cut a lot of the strings tying funding to a ton of regulations. I’ve learned that No Child Left Behind has flopped. There are still tons of children being left behind. More testing of students, more teachers being judged by frankly meaningless numbers, and more oversight by big government isn’t going to fix anything. It’s just made things worse.

Yep, this mama bear is super-busy already. But now I’m going to figure out how to find some time to get even more involved. I wish it were possible for more people to do the same.

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Favorite teen books, part 2

Posted in Reading life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2012 | 1 Comment »

So since I wrote about my take on NPR’s top-100 young adult books, I realized I had a lot more to say on the topic. First, I felt that there were a fair number of books on the list that were just so-so and wouldn’t really stand up in 20 years or more to be “classics.” So then I thought, “Hm. So what books are missing from this list that should be on it?” And I realized, looking through all of the books I’ve kept and lugged around with me through thousands of miles of moves and lots of years, that I didn’t really have a lot to add to the list, for a few reasons. First, some of the books I remember loving and reading over and over were actually more like middle-grade books, rather than for older teens. Second, I’d like to see more Madeleine L’Engle books on the NPR list, but at least her teen books were represented with A Ring of Endless Light. (The wonderful series that starts with A Wrinkle in Time, of course, is really more aimed at middle readers.) Third, I just couldn’t find any other books I’ve read and enjoyed that weren’t on the list already or were really what I’d call classics. Yes, there have been some great books written in the past 25 years or so since I wasn’t a “young adult” myself, but I think most of what I have read more recently as an adult has gotten represented. Honestly, though, I think the list would be better if it were just a “top 50.”

So I’m going to write today just a bit about some of the books that I did absolutely adore as a younger reader, books I either kept from buying them way back when or that I bought later on to have copies of in my home library. They’ll fit into a few different categories, but I’ll just kind of lop them together in this post.

 

  1. Middle-grade books I adored and read and re-read: These are easy: The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and A Wrinkle in Time and sequels by Madeleine L’Engle. I have no idea how many times I went back to savor these. I will say now as an adult that I have read some with my daughters, and I still enjoy them for various reasons but am not quite as captivated. I’m guessing that has to do a little with the age level. Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence is so complex in its world and how it is written that it can be read by middle readers but still is great for older readers, and it’s held up well for me as an adult. I don’t think that this means anything negative about the middle-grade books I loved so much back then, but they were, I think, really well-aimed at those ages, rather than being for a broader age group. But others may very well disagree with me on that opinion.
  2. On to L’Engle’s teen books: as I just mentioned, there is a definite difference in target audience between A Wrinkle in Time and the Austin family books, even though there are connections in characters who appear in the two major sets of books she’s written (about the Murrays and Austins). The characters are different ages, as are the target readers, and have different kinds of struggles and experiences because of their ages. I love how I was able to grow up with Madeleine L’Engle’s characters, moving from middle reader to teen.
  3. On teen books that were my absolutely most-read: thank you, Beverly Cleary. She, like L’Engle, wrote books for a variety of ages of young readers, and I grew up with her characters as well. I enjoyed Ramona and then went on to gobble up her teen romance stories. I really could have added in Cleary’s teen romances to the great clean romance list I contributed to and wrote about here. I read two books countless times: Fifteen and The Luckiest Girl. They are so well-worn they’re soft to the touch. My 16-year-old, who has kind of grown out of gobbling up books the past few years, still has read and re-read Fifteen almost as many times as I read it (at least 15). Some teens today might think that the stories are dated, and while it’s true they are most definitely set in a “simpler” time, they are still swoon-worthy and absolutely delightful. They’re clean, romantic and absolutely true. I wish more books today were as good as those.

And there you have it. I may revisit the topic and talk more about middle-grade books in the future, but for now this is how I view some of my old faves.

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