Some people just need to turn kind of a fun thread into “your know that thread which is moving at 100 posts per minute.” (the one at College Admission) Maybe some posters should move on to that thread. Just saying.
@oldfort I call that other one “Thread-nado”. It swirls, roars and moves very quickly.
Unfortunately I am a culprit. But you are right. This thread was a nice respite for a few days.
Wonder why everyone is so divided. Not sure how it gets fixed. Or maybe it has always been this way.
No, I wouldn’t do sonething to prop my kid up because they didnt do something they were supposed to do.
Yes, I have been very strong when one of my kids had a serious health issue. Also when a standardized test was bungled and someone tried to push it under the rug, I raised a big stink.
My kid had an elementary school teacher who assigned a project that had my child in tears because he thought it required him to be artistic. (Make a popup card for Charlotte’s Web.) When I talked to the teacher she felt terrible, it was supposed to be a fun way to relate to the book not an onerous and pointless project. Luckily we had a sympathetic teacher who knew my kid read ten times as much as any other kid in class, but with a different teacher I can imagine doing that project for him.
My son’s school was entirely unbelieving and uncooperative regarding his dysgraphia. In addition, he lacked fine motor skills. Their attitude was that he should just try harder. It was a charter school so there was no higher authority. In my state there is no IEP if the child’s scores are over a certain level, so no help there. You bet I did his cutting, pasting, gluing coloring homework with him. As in, where do you want this picture to go on the page? Finally in fifth grade we got him a 504 but by then it was really too late.
Reading logs - I did not track or review them, just signed off. My kids were avid readers and I found that having to track their time and pages read was actually a disincentive to reading. It made it a chore rather than a pleasure.
I went to bat for my kids a couple of times, with their knowledge, when a teacher was being unreasonable but not because my kid missed something or was rightfully found to have done something wrong.
One was a time when a music teacher scheduled an off site singing event for a Sunday the day before an AP test when the AP class teacher scheduled a review session at the same time. The teacher flipped out when my kid chose not to attend and sent me an email about it, threatening to give him an F for the marking period. I responded that it really came down to choosing between two school events and kid chose the more important one in our opinion (kid was just part of the group, did not have a solo or small group part). It would have taken all day since they went on a bus over an hour away (and my kids was not clear on the time commitment when it was first announced). Some kids in the same position called in sick while ones that went very stressed over missing review time for the test.It never should have been scheduled for the middle of AP tests. In the end the teacher backed off (may have been related to school policy) and kid ended up with an A.
I think there is a place for parents to advocate for their kids that isn’t helicoptering or lawn mowing. It can be very challenging to figure out that line, however.
For some reason, as I sit here with my first cup of coffee of the morning, this just cracked me up! I can hear my daughter, ringing in my ears…“mom, that dress is too tight on you. Just saying’” "mom, your hair is getting really gray.Just saying’ LOL!
Yup, I borrowed it from my kids.
Reading someone’s response reminded me… when my kids took tae kwon do, they were supposed to get something signed from their teacher saying they’d done a good job in school before they could progress to the next belt. One of my kids said “Nope, I’m not doing it. School is school, and this isn’t school. I want to keep them separate.” I told the TKD master, and I told him I supported my kid’s decision. It was a dilemma. At the end of the day, he kept taking our money and my son didn’t have to complete the school form.