<p>They were test-marketing lunchables in our area when my kids were little and I’d like to think I was singlehandedly responsible for them making it to national markets! My idea of sending lunch with my kids (before lunchables) was a wide selection of packets of things. Into the bags went a packet of chips, an apple, a packet of those pre-washed little carrots, a cheese stick (in the wrapper), a package of peanut butter crackers, and a tiny packet of m&m’s. They liked it, and it was easy. Sometimes I sent a bagel and a tub of cream cheese–but that was only for those days when I felt like overachieving.</p>
<p>Docmom, even though I’m an at home mother I can’t stand all of the nonsense that you’ve just mentionned…silly parties that these kids don’t need, all of this teacher appreciation business (isn’t it their job? I don’t remember anyone giving me a party for the job I did when I worked outside of the home), and the sports snacks…ridiculous!..Couldn’t agree with you more!</p>
<p>I have a weakness for Nutella as I used to have them as a child in Germany so I usually keep a jar in the house. I did supply him with the basics until I found out what was going on. He called it a “school project”. I thought maybe he was providing them for the hungry or something. Now he pays for his own supplies other than the baggies he uses. He is an enterprising fellow–dogwalks and poopscoops, shovels decks for the neighbors, and “rents” out books for silent reading time to kids who forget to bring a book and don’t like the fare in the classroom. He is diagnosed as learning disabled, stutters and is a little bit behind–would be in support classes at the public school, but he is the most organized of all of my boys and is doing grade level work with no intervention at this point. It really shows that even kids who are not top level academically can have special niches. He has more money stashed than most of his siblings. </p>
<p>I don’t mind having a little fun with the kids if this is what you want to do, but when it becomes “de rigeour” or a one upmanship sort of thing, it is out of hand. I have done some extravagant things with my kids when the mood struck and the occaision seemed right, but, believe me, it was purely serendipity. I have seen mothers worriedly planning graduation bashes, bar/bat mizvahs, birthday parties, as though their entire social standing were contingent on it. It can get ridiculous, but that does not mean you can’t do something special once in a while. But, you know, I remember my kids’ early Halloweens so clearly, as we always spent time figuring out costumes, having a haunted house party in those days, whereas now, I’m scrounging for hobo material 10 minutes before trick or treating starts. I have no idea what they were last year. I think when you don’t have as much to occupy your mind about your kids, you can over focus on some things that just are not important. When you are at numbers 7,8,9 for little kids’ stuff, it gets put in perspective naturally. Heck I sent two out early trick or treating and took their candy to give out one year as I couldn’t find the candy bags I knew I bought, and H was stuck in traffic from work enroute to a store to pick up more candy. What a fall from those homemade caramel popcorn balls, dipped apples, gloves full of popcorn/w candycorn fingernails, and ghosty pops!
Recycling the neigbors’ candy to give to the neighbors’ kids!</p>
<p>"Heck I sent two out early trick or treating and took their candy to give out one year as I couldn’t find the candy bags I knew I bought, and H was stuck in traffic from work enroute to a store to pick up more candy. "</p>
<p>I’d say you were still overachieving…as you could have shut off the front light and hung a sign on the door - NO CANDY!</p>
<p>While I sent my hordes out for candy? You don’t think the neighbors don’t know us? LOL, I don’t think so. And my own kids would be the first to trick their own house for not having the treats. That’s where my 5th grader got all that extra candy to sell, by the way. After Halloween we had the bags that H bought (and he always over does it), found the missing bags, and the had the bags the kids brought home.</p>
<p>Jami, I’ve got a dining room full of yet-to-be-sold Girl Scout cookies. Tell your 5th grader that he can keep half the revenue on each box. I’ll take .50 on the dollar. </p>
<p>With his skills, he can probably sell them in a day :)</p>
<p>He’d get skewered on that one. Whole street full of girl scouts here. On the other hand, he does go to an all boys school. Hmmm. Business possibilities here.</p>
<p>I just want to say that just because a mom does something way out there in impressiveness, does not mean it is a contest and that you have to respond in kind. Nor should you assume that the mom did it for that reason even if she did. We’re all allowed our indulgences. But when birthday parties and other such events become dreaded, and it becomes a concern if what you are doing is “good enough”, you are going down the trail of madness in the land of anxiety.</p>
<p>I just heard a chilling story about local ‘sweet 16’ birthday parties (for girls only, it seems). Anyone care to tell what goes on in your area (on the topic of overdoing things)? (I think it would be cheaper to leave the country here. Also, it smacks of debutantes and announcing to the world that your daughter is marriageable.)</p>
<p>what I did for my oldest when she turned 16
I and her friends went in together to rent some horses for a day long advanced trail ride in the north cascades.
I wasn’t invited. The chaperone was one of the dads ( I think they also stayed overnight- I can’t remember my life… before my youngest was about 11 is a blur)</p>
<p>when she turned 18 we had a small joint immediate family and a few friends graduation/18th birthday for her, and a graduation from grade school, turning 10 birthday for her sister.
It was great cause her sister hates to be center of attention and this allowed us to celebrate her birthday without stressing her out too much.</p>
<p>No sweet 16s here. It’s hard enough to acknowledge the b-days. But my niece did go to a friend’s debut as a guest and S has escorted at some of these things.</p>
<p>Lunches are so much easier now that the boys are older. When the boys were little, we always had some sort of after-dinner activity–walk, playground, something. Then the bedtime routine, then fall into bed exhausted–oh yeah–AFTER that fantabulous sex. :p.</p>
<p>Once they no longer needed us to entertain them until bedtime, I managed to cook extra dinner to send as left overs for lunch. Everyone’s favorite lunch. Of course, one of the schools my S went to served sit-down family style meals. No home lunches allowed!</p>
<p>When they were little, I did buy a few lunchables and some crazy pizza making thingy. Can I put that under the category of “good enough”? Along with three months of breastfeeding and c-sections under partial anethesia? I hope so. </p>
<p>Like my campaign to protect them from media which didn’t protect them from computer games, my campaign to feed them fresh fruit and vegetables hasn’t protected them from a love of Ramen Noodles.</p>
<p>DKE: I can’t let the teacher appreciation thing slide by. Teacher appreciation days don’t have to be over the top, but in some areas (not all) they work for salaries below the average, with class sizes above the average. Surely, it’s not unreasonable to make them a lunch once a year! (Once a month the former principal at the school where I sub most of the time brought in bagels with flavored cream cheese, and fresh OJ. It was a nice thing to do, and everyone both appreciated it and knew it was unnecessary.) </p>
<p>As for whether anyone at your job “appreciated” you, I’m sorry the people you worked with didn’t celebrate jobs accomplished. Around here, most places have some sort of event at the end of big projects.</p>
<p>DMD77, I wish I’d worked for your company!..Never heard of anything like that…but these teacher appreciation lunches are elaborate monthly shindigs that the mothers do…over the top…</p>
<p>When my kids were in elementary school, we had teacher appreciation day. I enjoyed the opportunity to get together with teachers and parents. We also had parents breakfast several times a year to show off students’ work after they’d completed a unit and various other occasions when parents presence and contribution were called for. It was a lot of fun and out school was always known for its high degree of parental involvement and academic success.</p>
<p>daughters high school has teacher appreciation breakfasts about every other month, and teacher appreciation lunches about every three months.
They go over pretty well as you could imagine.
When I was cochair at a different school last year, we brought in snacks ( fruit plate, muffins etc) about once a week to leave in teacher lounge. This year because the teachers were complaining about parent group so much ( parent group was given a small room to do auction projects etc- teachers didn’t like that apparently even though no one else was really using the room)
To bribe teachers to stop complaining one parent with help from a few others was supplying catered lunches for teachers every week at the cost of several hundred dollars to herself. I told her she was crazy, but she said it was working, the teacher who had done the most complaining, came early to the lunches and stayed late ( no idea who was running his class), but quit complaining- about the room anyway!</p>
<p>Besides weekly snacks at my daughters prep school, we put together holiday baskets for them. This was really fun, someone contributed or the parent group purchased large baskets or other containers for all staff. Then parents brought in stuff for the baskets, teas, treats, nice smelling stuff, wine… once there was even a box from Tiffanys!
The parents put the baskets together one evening before break, it is a party!
The parent group also puts contributions from auction and annual fund towards raising teacher salaries.</p>
<p>( the public school hasn’t raised teacher salaries, but they do raise money to pay for extra teachers- like for math etc)</p>
<p>As far as worker appreciation goes, it ran the gamut in one of my first jobs at a hair salon- where I was the “apprentice” so I opened the shop and was in charge of getting coffee and donuts from winchells next door ( remember that hair salon in a blue house before they redid the park by Bellevue square dmd?) to the various office jobs where there was always some sort of birthday potluck lunch which then went on all day. ( we also had profit sharing) Even at Boeing where my H works ( on the factory floor not an engineer) he is always getting awards and various “prizes”… they could just raise his pay scale ;)</p>
<p>I dunno. I found that many of the SAHMs spent so much time running appreciation lunches, committees, and so on, that they saw their children less than many employed moms. Some of these things improve the district for all children. Others are strictly designed to get them and their kids visibility.</p>
<p>I have admited I was in the school everyday to get my kid visibility . As I have posted before and I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but she had an IEP ( individualized education plan) but it was not addressing her learning problems. ( Her disability was primarily math focused, her resource time was focused on grammar).
I quit my paying job to deal with the school and the district because I didn’t have the time and energy to work three jobs ( home/school/work)
If my being in the building made a difference I would hate to see what it would have been like without being there. With budget cuts at the school and district as well as state and federal level, I saw the support the parent group provided as invaluable.
We provided hands in the classroom, to offer book groups for reluctant readers, driving on field trips as the school didn’t have money to pay for buses, supervising in the halls and the playground daily, so that teachers didn’t have to. It made a huge difference to kids knowing that parents cared enough about their education to make it a priority by putting their time where their mouth was.
I also don’t see how a parent who is spending time in the actual building where their child attends school is seeing their child * less* than someone who is working elsewhere. I certainly am not advocating that everyone quit their jobs to work at their childs school, but I know that the time I spend makes a difference for children and the community they live in.</p>
<p>I don’t mind participating in teacher appreciation days at all. That it is a job for them in no way diminishes by appreciation for their help in raising our kids.</p>
<p>You know, I don’t think the point is to not have a teacher appreciation day, but the point is some moms just overschedule and overcommit for <em>everyone else</em>. Just because one or two moms prioritize nine appreciation days a year plus several other events doesn’t mean every other parent has that type of time (or would prioritize the same way). And who wants to be the parent who stands up at a parents association meeting to say, “I think we’re having too many teacher appreciation days”? Not me, thank you :)</p>
<p>I think it’s fine if someone wants to (or truly needs to) get highly involved in their kids’ school. Just don’t expect everyone else to participate in your grand plans. I used to get guilted into being roped into everything; now I just say no and pick and choose what I will help with, usually development work. There’s a butt for every saddle, right?</p>
<p>thanks, Docmom…</p>