A Kinder, Gentler Failing

Let's not leave anything to assumption: I am decidedly NOT participating in NaBloPoMo. And that should settle that guessing game once and for all.

The list of daily and nightly and everywhere-in-between obligations, that I have been racing around to meet lately is just too long to detail. And probably not that interesting. And detailing them might come off as whiny or attention-seeking anyway, and that is contrary to how I am actually feeling about all of these involvements, which is actually invigorated and satisfied. I can't say that there has ever been another time in my life when I have felt as invigorated and satisfied as I have been feeling these past few months. And if that is not the most boring, gag-inducing sentence I have ever written, then I don't know what is. So let's just skip all the regurgitation and jump ahead to last night's PTO meeting.

Last night's PTO meeting was riddled with all the usual PTO crap - the budget, the volunteer "opportunities", so on and so forth - but the highlight of the agenda was the introduction of the New Report Cards. Apparently, the teachers have been grueling over the development of New Report Cards for quite some time. As they (the report cards, not the teachers) are about to be piloted to the school for the first trimester, they (the teachers, not the report cards) thought that the PTO deserved a little preview.

The mention of the New Report Cards in the newsletter that came home ahead of time was enough to lock me in to attending this meeting. Because, what? New report cards? Why? Doesn't anyone believe in tradition anymore? Besides me? Anyway, I schlepped myself to the school library and sat through thirty minutes of mind-numbing discussion about...I can't even remember... with one eye trained on the library door awaiting Boyfriend, who was coming to pick up the Tornadoes and take them home. Just as the New Report Card presentation began, I saw Boyfriend's silhouette pass by. I know that at this point you think I have meandered far away from my story, but Boyfriend's appearance here is important. Okay, it isn't really. But he did look really handsome and distracted me momentarily from my purpose, which was to find out why yet another American institution was being tinkered with. Anyway. Back to the story.

The thing is, they've done away with the F. Because the F is demoralizing. Let me repeat that. They have taken away the grade that signifies a complete lack of effort, on the part of the student, to produce work that is adequate. Because it's demoralizing. This is what the teachers have been grueling over. To quote one of the presenting teachers: "Our job at this level of education is to create model students, not to judge."

Therefore, failure is hereby abolished. The new grading system involves A, B, C, P, and D. A, B, and C retain their traditional meanings, for the most part, except that C now simply means "working at grade level." And here I thought C meant "try a little harder, kid." P is new. P basically means that your kid is trying really hard, but it's just not happening. And okay, I get it. It makes sense to have a grade like this. IEPs, special education, so on and so forth. I get it. I'm down with the P. But what about the kid who just doesn't care? Who doesn't care and who makes no effort and who turns in sucky work, or no work at all, and is possibly a disruptive presence? This kid gets a D. Because? Anything lower would be demoralizing.

I'm not trying to judge here, I'm really not. But I kinda sorta do expect these teachers to judge. At least I expect them to judge the quality of the work being done in their classrooms. Why is everything for this generation of kids being watered down and turned into a big ol' hug? Why are we ELIMINATING failure? I don't know. Maybe it's me. But I couldn't help but walk away from that meeting feeling flabbergasted. And you know what else? A little demoralized.

Then I came home and actually gave my girls a big ol' hug, because in the scheme of things, that is where I come in. I count myself lucky to have kids who want to achieve and who do not have any additional learning hurdles to overcome. And unless something goes horribly wrong along the way, this new grading system isn't really going to be a direct issue for us. But I just don't get the whole elimination of failure/everyone gets a trophy/"don't worry be happy" attitude that is manifesting with and around the next generation.

Well, guess what? I am all through generating controversy for today.

NaBloPoMo, You Are a Cruel Suitor

Well here we are, back in the fated month of NaBloPoMo. Back where it all began. Two years ago this month, AficioNada was born - and if you don't recall, she was borne of spite: slightly impure, somewhat narcissistic spite, but, admittedly, spite nonetheless. Actually, wouldn't all forms of spite be narcissistic? I mean, otherwise, why bother?

Anyway, two years have passed and I'm still here, blogging. Well, semi-blogging. I'm not so much on the AficioNada upkeep these past few months. And I do find that bothersome, you know. Because truth be told, I've come to enjoy blogging. Not just the writing of one, but the reading of others. I have found and followed an inspiring -and often totally hilarious - list of other people's blogs over the past two years, gleaning the spark and motivation to keep my own writing going. Sadly, though, I find that when I do not come to the keyboard to write my own, I often fail to read others as well. And that is just shameful. I deserve a spanking.

So what do I make of the fact that I still sometimes let entire weeks go by without posting anything? What do I make of the realization that, if you neglect your blog, if you do not write it, they will not come? For one thing, I'm pretty sure at this point I'm talking to myself. For another, while I don't find it AT ALL weird and dorky that I am talking to myself while placing my innermost thoughts on the Internet for anyone walking by to read...see, that's just not a true statement at all, because I actually find it completely weird and dorky. What would help it to feel not so weird and dorky is if, once again, I embraced the whole blogging process and actually did all the things I have come to enjoy about blogging in the first place. Like reading yours and writing mine. And, hey: what better time to begin the embracing than NaBloPoMo?

It would be fairly outrageous of me to make any kind of a statement right now that implies I will actually participate in NaBloPoMo. You know, given my record . But it would be fairly symbolic if I at least gave it a little hug. So that is my goal for the remainder of November: to give NaBloPoMo a little lovin'. Just a small squeeze. We'll see what it leads to.

Life is certainly ripe for the writing right now: We are about to embark upon the new gymnastics meet season. Sixth Grader is serving me up a whole new batch of disturbing "I'm Growing Up Whether You Like It Or Not" material. Fourth Grader is becoming less cheeky and more pre-adolescent-y by the day. All kinds of changes are afoot. Before I sat down tonight to write this post, I thought of them as Reasons I Don't Have Time to Write. But now? They are Things I Will Talk To Myself About (...on the Internet...dorky...) Until I Am Once Again Worthy of Readers.

Let the dorkiness begin. Again.

Could Be Worse. I Could Be a Condescending Late Night Talk Show Host.

There's a certain irony that occasionally pops up in the realities people create for themselves, or should I say in the pictures of themselves that they paint with very broad brushes. It's a bit of a stereotype, I suppose: the teacher with the high school dropout son or daughter, or the cop whose kids are always in trouble with the law. I had a doctor once who went to jail for stealing prescription painkillers. My ex-husband was the "son of a preacher man". And now he's my ex-husband, so how's that for an explanation of what it was like to live with him?

As for myself, I work in the world of dollars and cents. That's about as specific as I ever care to get here about what I do for a living, but my point is that I spend many hours a week concentrating my attention on the proper use of one's money. And admittedly, because I have seen a thousand ways to make mistakes with it, I can be a bit of a tightwad personally. I prefer to think of myself as "frugal", or a "saver". But these were not the words of choice used by the aforementioned ex. But anyway.

This is my long-winded way of setting you up for the story of how I spent a good part of my weekend arguing with Sixth Grader about financial decision-making. Sixth Grader wants an iPod Touch in the worst way. And because "Santa" spent many hours last year store-hopping in search of Sixth Grader's current 4th generation iPod in the highly coveted purple hue that she requested, I am insisting that she save up her own money for it.

Where does Sixth Grader get money? From me, of course. But I do make her earn it. She and her sister have a whole list of potential chores and a very workable system that I created last spring just for the purpose of teaching this valuable lesson. To date, Sixth Grader has earned and saved more than half of what she needs to get her upgrade. She's so close. And then the mall gets her. Or, at least, it tries very, very hard to get her. This is why we found ourselves once again in a tangled mess of tears and yelling on Saturday afternoon. I took the girls to the mall for the express purpose of making my twice-a-year pilgrimage for work clothes for myself (yes, I shop for myself twice a year. And that's two more times a year than I did for about a decade.) I felt pretty good about the fact that I was exhibiting the payoff of my financial restraint right in front of their eyes - that I wait for the store I love to have its semi-annual sale, and to send me my 20% off coupon, and then I score BIG - but Sixth Grader didn't see it at all. Because she immediately deserted me.

She came back an hour later, clearly stressed. She had seen about a million things that she couldn't live without. She had her money with her. She bought nothing, because she is saving for her iPod Touch. It was NOT FAIR, she said. I said something very sympathetic, I'm sure, but she started to cry anyway. WHY can't I just give her some money to spend in the mall, just this ONE TIME? Uh, because I already gave you all that money in your little wallet there, sweetie, I said. Go ahead and buy something if you really want it, I said. More crying. She'll NEVER have enough money for an iPod Touch. NEVER. I reminded her of the many ways that she can continue to earn the rest of what she needs as we made our way out of the mall. It took a while, because she dragged herself about ten feet behind me, stopping to stare mournfully into several stores. We eventually made it to the car, where she escalated her grief to a series of bold statements about how unfair and mean I am. Can't I just GIVE her the rest of the money NOW and she'll owe me?

Ha. That's a good one.

After a brief, heated exchange with her, I managed to extract my emotions from the situation and return to parent mode. In parent mode, I counseled her that she did indeed seem to have a problem on her hands, and that she will have to figure out a way to solve it, but that making it my problem is not a viable solution. I then conveyed the parable of the Girl Who Waited for the Semi-Annual Sale to her, seeing as she missed the live performance. And again, we revisited the chore list.

It's the tiniest bit possible that some of this lesson actually sank in with her. Because Sunday afternoon she did about $16 worth of chores, all unprovoked. And she didn't cry once.

My point is, I do worry a little that I might end up with financial train wrecks for grown children someday. Simply because, like I said in the beginning, irony happens. But I try to do what I can to teach now, without being "preachy" or, god forbid, "uncool". And yet, I find myself worrying less and less about the "uncool" part. I still don't want to be preachy. But uncool is starting to look pretty good to me. On many parenting issues, I find myself much more drawn to uncool. Who knew? You spend your whole adolescence and young adulthood trying to be cool, and then, as a parent, uncool is the new cool.

That's what I'm going to tell myself, anyway.

Why Don't I Listen To Myself? Why?

Sixth Grader would be horrified if she knew that I was about to write this about her. But too bad. Because the thing is, Sixth Grader has been torturing me these last few weeks, and it is only right that I pay her back by making it public.

Oh, I don't really think that way. Not always. But this time? If for no other reason than to maybe invite a little empathy and support, I am going to tell you about how Sixth Grader has essentially been possessed by some kind of mean, moody, temper tantrum-prone aliens lately, and I'm a little fed up with it.

It started with the new school year. It didn't escape my attention that, over the course of the summer, Sixth Grader did not see a whole lot of her school friends. Such is the curse of the child-with-single-working-mom-and-child-is-still-too-young-to-stay-home-unsupervised. She was subjected to a lot of camp - much more than I wished for her, but that's how it goes. Not that she didn't have friends at camp, because she did. But not school friends. So school started again, and almost immediately, Sixth Grader became a girl obsessed. Obsessed with playdates. Obsessed with sleepovers. Obsessed with any and all kinds and forms of girl get-togethers, quality time with family be damned.

That's fine. Except that along with school starting, so did gymnastics team practice three times a night. And so did flute lessons, and subsequent practice demands from Band Instructor. Oh, and also: Sixth Grade - unlike Fifth Grade - involves homework. So. On top of all of those things, Sixth Grader wished to smush in as much of her social life as she felt she had been deprived of over the summer months. But really, what she wanted was to have her social life take prominence, and then MAYBE smush in some of those other things around IT.

To be honest, I am just so-so at the whole rule-enforcement thing. Call it an inherent desire to compensate for the insane strictness under which I was raised, but I'm just a tad reluctant to go all militant on my kids. But you know? It's just me. And I needed to rein the kid in. For her own good. And also, for my own good, as it was developing into this situation where every spare minute that I wasn't carting her and her sister around to some practice or lesson or fetching food for them, I was instead carting her around to this or that friend's house. ENOUGH. So what did I have to do?

I had to go just the slightest bit militant.

I created a playdate and sleepover "sabbatical." The "sabbatical" was to last one month, beginning several weeks ago. I then let the "sabbatical" slide for what I deemed a special occasion. (The special occasion being that I had made plans to go away with Boyfriend on a Saturday night and Grandma was in charge. Go ask Grandma.) Then, last weekend, I had to reinforce the "sabbatical".

To make a long and painful story slightly shorter, last weekend consisted of 48 hours of complete and total pain - both Sixth Grader's and mine. Fighting, arguing, begging, yelling, grounding, crying, apologizing, more begging, more grounding. For five days I have been carrying her cell phone around in my purse, ticking off the two week penalty until I can give it back to her. Who knew that grounding your child could cause a mother so much anguish? But the sabbatical - that was not intended as punishment. It was intended as a method of putting the brakes on something that was getting out of control. It was meant to return a sense of balance to her life.

And you know, for these past few days she has been much calmer. More polite. More herself. Did she learn something? Or has the hormonal cloud just passed? I don't know. But this afternoon I returned a call to a fellow mother who invited both of my girls to come over after school tomorrow, and I said "Sure." I'm no hard head. I can recognize progress.

This fellow mother just called me back to inform me that she will bring the girls home for me tomorrow. At nine o'clock. At night.

I sense a serious backslide coming....

No Nuts

I'm no genius. But once in a while, I know what I'm talking about.

Take "room parent training" for instance. The "training session" was last night in the school library. Here's what I learned: room parents bake.

That's the job I signed up for. Baking. Definitely less than ten words. Oh, but not just random baking. Room parents bake what they are told to bake. Cupcakes for Halloween. Sugar cookies for Christmas. Our baking assignment for Valentine's Day has yet to be determined, but they will let us know. That's it. Baking.

Oh, and no nuts. It's the policy. There's a "no nuts" policy. They showed it to us. It's a very strict policy, actually. When they say "no nuts" they don't just mean resist tossing that handful of toxic peanuts into your cupcakes. They mean read labels, do not use any ingredients that have been prepared in the vicinity of a nut. Forget you even know what a nut is. Nuts do not exist for you. Nuts are not welcome here. Ever.

Do not even get me started.

So, this baking thing? This is going to be like, actual baking. Not from a mix, people. From a bag of flour, with other stuff thrown in. I'm not sure I can handle the pressure of being a room parent. On a positive note, though, there appeared to be some highly probable candidates for blogging about in that library last night. I can only hope for follow-up meetings, and a solid room parent turnout at the Halloween party. Serious potential indeed.

Off to work.

Of Course, There's a Meeting

So congratulate me. I'm a room parent. Whatever that means.

The "room parent coordinator" left me a message the other day that I have been "selected" to be Room Parent for Fourth Grader's class. I was really hoping for Sixth Grader's class, if only so I could have permission to show up in her classroom and bug her on occasion. But this will be fun, too.

Except I really don't have any idea what a Room Parent does.

Not to fear. The "room parent coordinator" informed me that there is a "training meeting" next Monday night for all us newbies. Are you serious, lady? I bet this is the kind of job description that can be summed up in ten words or less. But no, don't worry, I will work this meeting into my schedule somehow. The Tornadoes don't really need to eat dinner after gymnastics.

In other news, I am looking for a cure for this disease I seem to have. I don't know what the diseases's official name is, but the primary symptom is the inability to stop reading a book halfway through, even if it is god-awful. I am right in the middle of an absolute stinker. I have been picking at it for a good month now, having completed two other books in the meantime in an attempt to soften the experience. No matter how long I leave it, when I come back...it still stinks. And yet I press on.

These are the glory days of my life.

Put That Out! (Isn't That What It Stands For??)

I am about to depart for my very first PTO meeting ever. Considering Sixth Grader is...in the sixth grade...well I just never had time before, okay? Gawd, get off my back...

Speaking of Sixth Grader, I am happy to report that she is no longer "going out" with anyone. Even more happily, she did the dumping. So, let's see, the relationship began on Saturday night. Sixth Grader and her friend, A, spent a good portion of Sunday texting the boy - with a bit too generous of a helping of "love you"s in the mix, I might add - and then Monday at school she dumped him. Why? Because, apparently, A revealed that she liked said boy as well, and was a bit miffed about the whole thing. And Sixth Grader just didn't think it was worth it to upset her friend. Everyone together now: awwww. So hopefully that is the end of the eleven-year-old dating scene for the time being.

Other than that, we have spent a whole lot of energy this week just trying to get a handle on the madness that is our routine. The Tornadoes are at gymnastics practice tonight, which is the only reason I am free to see what this whole PTO thing is all about. And then I have to scoop them up, and I suppose I have to feed them something. Holy crap, I forgot I had to feed them something! I better go inventory the kitchen before I leave. Good chance they're having kitten kibble sandwiches...