Kids just want to have fun.

So far, we have limited our kids to 1 -2 extra-curricular activities at a time during the school year. For the girl, this means piano lessons and soccer. The boy has chosen baseball and soccer. (And they can walk to almost all of them - very little car transport necessary)

When they only have 1 -2 activities, we can still manage to eat dinner as a family 5 nights/week. I don't go too crazy from carting kids from activity to activity. They look forward to their activities and don't get too overtired or over scheduled. It works for us.

But.

But...we are seemingly alone in this philosophy. All their friends are in 3, 4, or even 5 different activities. Daughter D. didn't do Girl Scouts, because of the 2-activity limit. Son D didn't play on a basketball team. And so on...you name it, they didn't get to do it.

It's uncomfortable to be the only family with a certain rule. And as the kids get older, we are finding ourselves in that position more and more. We have stricter rules about a lot of things (video games, bedtimes, etc.) and the kids are starting to notice that. (Did you know that my son is the ONLY six year old in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE who has to go to bed at 8 pm and is not allowed to get a Nintendo DS? Really, he is.)

I can totally see them adding activities as they get older. But now - they are 9 and 6. They still like to run over to the park and play a pick-up game of some made-up sport with whichever kids they can collect along the way. I don't want to fill up every afternoon with some scheduled activity. When will they have time for unbridled fun?

For now, I'll take the unstructured play over another activity. Husband D and I are both coaching soccer teams this spring and I can tell you - some of these kids are burned out. They don't want to go to a practice and play an organized game. They want to run around and be silly and have fun with their friends. This makes coaching a tad more challenging!

Of course, in 10 years, when my kids get rejected from their top college because of a lack of extra-curriculars....well, then they can prove me wrong.

Another thing I don't understand

At least I'm not alone.

Deke and Laura don't get it either.

I watched the Susan Boyle video. I was touched. She has a beautiful voice and it is always heartwarming to see someone achieve one of their personal dreams.

But....international news? Really?

Her voice is lovely.

But every church choir in the country has someone with a voice like that. Every Madrigal group in any high school has someone with a voice like that. (And no, they aren't all beautiful.)

I just can't get over my feeling that Simon Cowell set us up. That he has some secret Facebook-savvy publicist behind the whole thing.

Hmm....maybe that's why the white house hired Kal Penn (actor from House and and Harold/Kumar fame) to help with communications. Perhaps he is working, at this very moment, on a Tweet to get us all sending Facebook gifts to each other shaped like the Bybee Torture Memo.

Skip, skip, skip to my Lou

I feel that I am very much on top of the education of our eldest child. She's been tested, prodded, and poked and put in every possible applicable enrichment group that exists. 

We have clear lines of communication with the teachers and have gotten involved wherever necessary to further her educational experience: 

Extra Parent-Teacher conferences.  Check.  

Meetings with the Principal. Check.  

Gift and Talented Coordinator meeting in our home. Check.

But the second kid? Ha. Pretty much dropped him off the first day of school in the hands of his incredibly wonderful and capable Kindergarten teacher and said, "Here he is.  Do whatever you think will work with him." 

So, it was a bit of a surprise yesterday, when I was having a casual conversation with his teacher and she mentioned, "They asked if you were willing to have him skip a grade next year."

Huh?

We are still working out the details on who exactly "they" are and I had to sign some paperwork to allow all the necessary prodding, poking, and evaluating of him that go into such a decision.

Our first reaction is to only do grade skipping as a last resort. He's the happiest and most easy-going kid in the universe - he loves school, loves his teacher, loves his classmates.  Why mess with that?

Anyone else out there skipped a grade?  Was it good? bad?  I guess if we are going to do it, this is the year to do it (Kindergarten into 2nd grade)  But still.  It seems a bit extreme.

Besides, won't that make him smaller for football?

(that's a joke - I haven't even watched a complete football game in over 20 years!)

So here's my idea

What if all the people who received those awful bonuses at AIG meet tomorrow morning and decide to give up most of their bonuses to a single charity.

What if tomorrow, $100 million was donated to a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter or a school....voluntarily by the employees of AIG?

What if Congress didn't have to spend 4 straight days getting all long-winded and pompous about this?

What if the media didn't have to focus on this little bonus thing, because they don't really understand the intricacies of the entire banking system or the real economic problem we are all facing?

What if the employees of AIG, on their own, decide to take this horrid lemon that they created and we've all been dealt....and decide to make a tiny bit of lemonade?

Because, in the grand scheme of things, these bonuses don't really matter. In the big-picture of all the other things that are going on - the bailouts, the stimulus, the near-nationalizations....this is small potatoes.

But what if.....what if they could turn it into something huge? Something that may inspire millions of others around the country to donate what they can? Something that would turn "AIG" from a 4-letter word into something more hopeful and promising.

What if.

School stuff

Lots of interesting PTA posts here, here and here.

One thing I find interesting is the assumption that a school with lots of poor kids is a bad school - a failing school - a school in which no child would ever achieve.

I disagree with that.

Yes, there are very real problems at a school like ours, in which 70% of the kids are on some kind of public assistance.  We have a constant shortage of mittens, glue sticks, and snacks. We have kids who arrive at school hungry and kids for whom spring break simply means a week without regular meals. Childhood poverty is a serious issue, and one that I fear is widely misunderstood.  Poor kids are an underrepresented voice in our society.

But, our school?  Our school is fantastic. Our Principal?  Amazing. Our teachers? Best in the country. (OK, that may be a subjective bit of analysis there....but seriously - they are that good.)

Yes, our test scores are low.  (But your test score would be low too if you were taking it in your second or third language.)

Yes, our school population has more melanin than the average school. But that just makes us more interesting to look at.

I would even argue that our school is BETTER than some of the more wealthy schools.  Yes, I said better.  My third grader has 11 kids in her class.  Thank you SAGE program (Wisconsin's answer to Title 1.)

Some of the PTA posts included comments of parents complaining about PTA sponsored things like insufferable talent shows that they are forced to sit through. Our talent show is later this month and it is one of my favorite events of the entire year. I suspect that other (more wealthy) schools have showcases for rich kids showing off their piano or violin lessons. Not our school.

At our school, there is not a dry eye in the house at the end of the talent show.  The kids group together to create amazing acts. An African-American 3rd-grade boy raps while a Caucasian 4th-grade girl dances as a 2nd grade Hmong girl jump-ropes and a 5th-grade boy, who happens to be seriously autistic, sings along. It never once occurs to them that kids of lawyers wouldn't hang out with kids whose parents work at McDonalds.  Or that the seriously disabled shouldn't be part of the show. 

Frankly, there might not be a lot of actual talent at our talent show - but you are fighting so hard to hold back the tears that you don't notice. Right before your very eyes, the promise of what you believe America stands for, at our core, is unfolding. It's pretty powerful.

So, while I am the first person to recognize the very real problems of childhood poverty, I just want to point out that a school full of poor kids can still be a great school.  A really great school.

Some lessons in life can't be measured by a test score.  Some take a choreographed rap song, accompanied by jump rope.

Dear Diary

Daughter D has been begging for months to read "Diary of Anne Frank" and I put it off over and over again. Explaining genocide was just not something I was prepared to do. But finally, I caved and we got the book and started it. She regularly reads the world news in the newspaper. I figured if she could handle Rwanda, we could tackle the Holocaust.

I haven't read the book since I was a pre-teen. Like just about everything else I've re-read, it is a completely different book when you read it at the age of 40. It is horrifying. Absolutely and utterly horrifying. Humans did this to other humans.

Daughter D is doing fine with the book. Me, not so much.

As we were reading, I told Daughter D that I used to keep a diary or two and that I thought they were somewhere in the basement somewhere. She immediately wanted to see them, so we went searching and found a huge box, full to the brim of various notebooks/diaries/journals/datebooks.

I couldn't believe it. There were more than 25 of them. I remember keeping diaries and at one point, I must have thrown them all into a box. But I had no idea that there were so many. I started in 5th grade and really didn't ever stop until I had my first child.

I had visions of us reading them together and gleaming great pearls of wisdom from my life experience.

ha. That is NOT going to happen.

It turns out that I went slightly boy-crazy sometime around 6th grade. I think it is safe to say that 60% of my writings were about the boy-du-jour. And about all sorts of other adventures that I seem to have blocked from my memory. My recollection of my childhood was that I was a perfectly behaved slightly nerdy good student. The nerdy/good student part seems to be correct. But evidently, I was not perfectly behaved.

Is this another symptom of parenthood? Do you subconciously block out all the crazy things you've done in life as you try to show your children the straight and narrow path to success? Because seriously, half the stuff I'm reading - I didn't even remotely remember until I read it.

Should I burn these damn diaries? Or save them for my grandchildren? (my children will NOT be reading them!)

Navigating the brave new world of sports

Sadly, blogging seems to have been displaced by my one-line daily updates on Facebook. (I'm 'Kristen Harrald Nelson' there, if you'd like to read those....and Dad - really, we need to get you on Facebook!)

I'm entering a stage of parenting for which I am ill-prepared. The sports stage.

Growing up, I could do any sport, as long as there wasn't a ball involved. I could swim. I could run. But as soon as any sort of equipment was added, I failed miserably.

My natural reaction is to cover my eyes and duck as soon as a ball comes my way. My volleyball team did not appreciate this. Neither did my tennis partner or the other people covering the outfield with me in softball practice. I quickly learned to stick to sports with no rapidly traveling projectiles. Or better yet, non-sport activities like piano, choir or reading.

But my son - he is all about sports. The more equipment the better. And, he actually seems to be - dare I say - good at them. This is completely new territory for me.

We got a phone call yesterday from a Little League coach. Little League doesn't start for a few more months here in Wisconsin. (The snow on the ground makes it hard to see the ball in February and March.) But this coach wanted to recruit son D for his team. Son D is 6. This team is a group of 7-8 year olds. It's not T-ball - it's real baseball.

I'd planned on putting son D on a basic T-ball team with all his Kindergarten friends. But I talked to the coach for about 20 minutes and I think he convinced me to let D try the real baseball team.

I think.

I don't want to turn into one of those mothers. In my childhood world, they were the "stage mothers" - the ones who pushed, pushed, pushed their kids into getting the best roles or the highest marks in the piano competitions. My parents weren't like that at all - and for that, I am eternally grateful. If we wanted to excel at an activity, great. But they didn't really care if we had a staring role or a winning team.

Son D really wants to be on this team, so we are going to let him join it. I hope that is the right decision. It's a fine line between pushing too hard and letting the kids have an opportunity to shine.

So, if you read a post by me in 6 months complaining about how his team isn't winning because he hasn't been practicing his bunts, please schedule an intervention.