Setting down the landing gear on helicopter parenting

When my son was a baby, I was the mother who couldn't CIO. I stopped breastfeeding when I discovered sprinting from a board meeting to his daycare two blocks away four or five times a day wasn't going to work. And I was the Mama Bear who shot dagger looks at any kid in the sandbox who even pondered thoughts of aggression towards my cub.

It was inevitable that I would turn into a helicopter parent, constantly hovering to pave the way for my child. Hovering over a four year old is acceptable, but trailing an eight-year-old to see how he manages the neighborhood boys (who-just-might-be bullies) and upon seeing him exit the bathroom asking if he wiped, I'm thinking is just nuts. Yet I've done it.

The arguments are strong both for and against helicopter parenting.

The other night I attended a Love and Logic parenting seminar. The biggest take away was letting your child fail. What???? I thought my job was to raise him well enough that he didn't fail. The seminar leader was talking about small failures, missed homework assignments, forgotten lunches etc. But even those options are daunting. In this high-stakes era I'm supposed to be nonplused if my son opts not to do his homework? And no food in his stomach could mean a low-achieving school day. Yet, I get her point. Children are told there are consequences for their actions but we parents tend to protect them from any adverse ones.

But what if we didn't? The answer is life would be a lot more challenging for them. And - we hope but are often afraid to risk finding out - our children would find the resiliency that child experts say they have. It is like letting your child take off down the sidewalk on their bike sans training wheels and parental assist for the first time. Your heart is beating a drum meter of fear, but you know it has to be done.

Good teachers and the end of cursive writing

Just got in from curriculum night. Always interesting to look around the room and see the parents with Harvard and Princeton in their eyes, the parents with nothing but time and the parents who come in late and then peek under the desk to check their Blackberrys. I am at various times all of them.

My column on good teaching elicited a lot of response and broad consensus on the type of creativity and fearlessness that makes classrooms work. Read and then take a fresh look at your child's teacher. You'll either be reassured or deeply depressed.

Interesting article on a dwindling emphasis on cursive writing, thanks to widespread reliance on computer keyboards and, in a pinch, old fashioned print writing. And wade through this report and see if you're spurred to get your kid to spend more time outdoors in order to boost their academic achievement.

Wow, the look I just got when I told my son we'd have to leave soon for the classroom Open House at school. He knew school was starting soon (tomorrow) but didn't know the final days of summer freedom had dwindled into minutes.

Labor Day used to signal the end of summer and return of school but now most school districts, including my own, are starting early, some in mid-August. Something is lost in the shortening of summer's r&r.

Spent two days buying school supplies and I still didn't get everything on the list. Speaking of which, I support the move by teachers to pass on supply needs to families. Teachers shouldn't have to dig into their pockets particularly. But the lists are mind-boggling. This story adds a bit of perspective. A colleague said I would spend $200 on school supplies this year. She wasn't far off the mark.

Check up this a.m. yielded nothing exciting except I must come up with ingenius ways to inject protein in someone's diet. Meat is out. And so I just discovered at lunch, is peanut butter. Sigh. Thank goodness oatmeal raisin cookies have raisins in them.

After the Open House, it is off to get groceries to supply school lunches. Clothes are laundered and stacked, sheets are clean and all that is left is to get JP to remember where the bathtub is located. (Yes, we really slacked off this summer.)

Another Kennedy gone

A writer is nevr out of words but concerning the death of the Democratic stalwart, Sen. Edward Kennedy, I must say adieu and move on. Check out what I've said in The Seattle Times here and here.

One of my favorite columnists from the City of Brotherly Love dissects Kennedy's legacy from the prism of being black in America. Check it out here.

Another column that offers a close up lens on Kennedy's life and a second one that offers more distance but greater historical perspective.

On a different but related note, I was watching newsman Bryant Gumbel's HBO show, "Real Sports" last night and one of the segments centered on a homeless man who has succeeded in rallying kids in Compton around Little League baseball. In his own youth, this man played with athletes who went on to become legends in baseball. (If I were a sports afficianado I'd rattle off their names.) As Compton fell to drugs and crime in the 1970s and 80s, this man fell with it. Now older, wiser and singed by life's fires, he is building a legacy to live beyond him. Pro players have donated money and the national Little League organization is supportive. This man's work will survive him.

Kennedy. A homeless man in Compton. Both will be judged by their respective legacies. I'll ask you the question I posed to myself last night, what will you be judged by?

Los Angeles Schools going private?

The news that L.A. will carve out at least 250 of its schools for operation by charters and private companies is interesting on many fronts. In the long saga of trying to improve perennially struggling schools, Los Angeles Unified is clearly crying "uncle." So can smaller, less bureaucratic and non-union entities do it better? Unfortunately children will be the canaries. They'll either show improvement and educators can say the change worked or it will be another failed lab experiment.

This piece argues that charter schools are no better than the public ones. A must-see on the subject of education reform and charter schools is the PBS Newshour's multi-part look at the Washington, D.C. school system.

Ultimately, our children learn in myriad ways and its our job to find a way that works best. Could be private school, a strict religious one or a charter school with longer days and Saturday school. There should be room in the debate for all of these options. Instead, how you see it often depends on your political affiliation. If you're a Democrat you likely hate charters as a siphon on public dollars best spent on public schools. Labor unions, not just teachers unions, wield considerable clout and keep Democrats lock-step in opposition to charters. They don't like the fact that many of these charters are non-unions. So are private schools but when did we let facts get in the way.

If you're a Republican, you like charters as a step toward vouchers.
We would be appalled if our kids addressed issues in such black-and-white terms.

Does your child stutter?

Mine does but after several years of speech therapy his disfluency is under control.

Speech disorders are among the most frightening because they effect a person's ability to communicate but also how we respond to that person. Stuttering can have an impact on a child's ability to demand and receive a good education. Unfortunately, most budget-conscious school districts only offer speech therapy for severe stuttering. My son falls in the moderate range although I've been able to advocate for a 30-minute session once a week from our school.

I shudder to think of my son in a busy classroom pushed by a harried teacher to collect and articulate his thoughts quickly. I suspect he is judged, i.e. graded, in part on his communication skills, both good and bad.

Among the things I've discovered by having a child who stutters is that there is a strong genetic corrolation. I've found that there are outlets, including camps for kids with disfluency.

Everyone has a burden to bear, to help my son shoulder his I've taught him to refuse to let anyone hurry him when he is talking. I tell him to raise his voice or in other ways reject any attempt to talk over him.

I also remind him that some of the most captivating people in the world stutter, including actor James Earl Jones. Here's a list of some of them.

Good Hair: The Insanity Continues

If you haven't seen it already, watch this YouTube video and tell me if you think it is an example of self-hatred or a normal day in a black household.

Here's the take from several women on "Tell Me More" an NPR show hosted by Michel Martin. Responses to the exploration of black hair was painfully telling. In black America, hair is political and personal currency. We are obsessed by hair and what it says about us.

For some of us, our self-esteem is built on the shaky foundation of hair. Others have chosen friends and lovers based on physical characteristics that include, sometime partially, sometimes chiefly, hair. Whom among us will admit that when we envisioned having children with our loved one, among the many things we fantasized about was how our child's hair would look?

We've been bullied for things we can't change like the texture of our hair; we've done the bullying because we couldn't change the texture of our hair. One of my most salient memories growing up was spending summers with a cousin who pressed her short hair every DAY in an effort to always have it laid neatly against her scalp Twiggy-style. I eschewed the pressing comb in favor of brutal whacks of a brush and lots of hair product. We both paid a price: On even the steamiest Maryland days, neither of us went near a swimming pool.

How did we know back then what I know to be true now. Whole personalities have been assigned based on a black woman's hair. We read hairstyles like fortune tellers read tea leaves. We anticipate, predict and stereotype based on the trajectory of the strands atop the head in front of us.

Check this out from a columnist friend who penned this piece upon her return from a screening of Chris Rock's docu-flick, "Good Hair.

And here's evidence that it isn't just our hair that battles the standard of beauty. My friend, Mary Sanchez, a columnist at the Kansas City Star, received this from a public relations exec. Dear Mary: I'd love to offer you leading NY facial plastic surgeon, Dr. Sam Rizk, who has masterminded the technique behind Ethnic Cosmetic Surgery, to give a pure NATURAL looking result for African American faces."

I won't bore you with the whole thing. Dr. Rizk's flak mentions that not every nose is created or treated equal ... she includes a bit of anatomy and eugenics in explaining differences in skin and cartilage from race to race... and ends with a cheerful offer to set up an interview with Dr. Rizk and/or one of his patients.

If I attributed all of this to self hatred it would render a judgement not always deserved. Some people want a different nose, or wider eyelids or hair unnaturally straight or curly. I go through periods where I wear my hair natural and other times where I wear it chemically straightened. One of my best discoveries has been cute wigs for when I want to change my hair color or temporarily take on a funky new look. But in some cases, like the YouTube video, it is clear self-hatred is alive and well.