We flew into San Jose, California yesterday to a lovely spring afternoon and started by figuring out how to pick up the car that Ford’s loaned us for the trip, a C-MAX Hybrid. In an ironic twist, it’s the same color, “Candy Blue”, as a photo I posted a few days ago on Facebook showing the vehicle. It’s a really bright blue. In fact, when we saw it my 16yo A- immediately fell in love….Read More
After discussing it for months and months, tomorrow my 16yo daughter A- and I are flying out to San Jose, CA and driving down the famed Pacific Coast Highway (aka “Highway 1″) from Santa Cruz to San Diego, visiting colleges along the way. She’s just finished up 10th grade, so my goal with the trip is a) to have fun and b) to have her step foot on a variety of different college campuses so…Read More
I get letters… Here’s one that came in to my inbox last night that I read out to my 1oth grader and she agreed, “definitely creepy”. Here’s what this Mom asked: I have a question about e-mail between high school students and teachers. My daughter’s teacher gave out his work email and work contact information at the beginning of the year. I found that helpful. Yesterday, after finals, my daughter told me that he wrote…Read More
Like a lot of children, I was bullied as a kid. Fortunately, it was really only one kid and it was for a relatively short period of time during 7th grade, then he set his sights on some other hapless victim and I proceeded along with my own childhood. Still, I can vividly remember school finishing up and me dashing to my bicycle and pedaling furiously home to get back to the safety of my…Read More
At my kids school, they celebrate half-birthdays when the children would otherwise have a birthday during summer, and that makes sense to me: the in-class parties (at least for the earlier grades) are quite fun and often meaningful, with parents and siblings invited in for the short celebration. Being born in August, I should know this one pretty well, along with the problem of kids being on summer holiday during when I’d ostensibly have a…Read More
Let me set this up: my son’s in 7th grade and so far things are moving along smoothly, with us parents having created a reasonably respectful community where we can talk about things, socialize on occasion and generally help nurture each other’s children as we all go through the first steps of our children’s adolescence. But there’s more going on when our children hit the teen years, and the pressures and opportunities for mischief get…Read More
This has to be one of the very worst email messages to receive from your child’s school, hands down: Dear Gr. 3 Parents — I am writing to inform everyone that one case of head lice was reported in the class today. I have attached our Lice Procedure doc. Everyone should check their child’s head for lice tonite if you can. Please let me know immediately if anyone else has this issue. The #6 procedure…Read More
Had a fascinating conversation with my 8yo daughter K- while driving to her first ballet performance audition, about winning, losing and participation. You should know that my children all attend a school that doesn’t honor winning a competition, but instead honors participation in events. No letter grades until high school, and everyone’s feelings are carefully nurtured so that they all feel like they’re a success, even if they’re the runner who dropped out of the race…Read More
If you’ve read GoFatherhood for any length of time, you’ll know I think that it’s tougher to be a boy than a girl in modern culture, and doubly so in school settings. Schools have ended up being designed for more prototypical female behaviors and preferences and the destroy/break/run around energy of boys is increasingly viewed as a disease that needs to be cured, typically with diagnoses like ADHD and drugs like Ritalin. As a result,…Read More
I’ve written before about my concern that in our zeal to ensure no-one ever feels badly about their accomplishments that everyone gets a trophy and wins a medal we’re actually creating a generation of children who can’t actually handle the win/lose realities of adult life. All the warm fuzzy thoughts about valuing everyone, everyone’s a winner, etc, is great, but with the exception of a few odd pockets here and there in the world, my…Read More
