Archive for the 'Parents' Category

“Infantilizing Our Kids Into Incompetence”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2009 in Education News and Parents. 1 Comment

A new revolution is under way, according to the cover story of the latest Time Magazine.  It’s aimed at rolling back “the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads.”    Call it slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting, the magazine notes, but the message is the same: “Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they’ll fly higher. We’re often the ones who hold them down.”

A fair amount of the piece looks at the mixed blessing of hyperinvolved parents in schools.  Parental involvement in education is unambiguously good.  But how much is too much?  Like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, you know it when you see it. 

Teachers now face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students’ homework, airbrush their lab reports — then lobby like a K Street hired gun for their child to be assigned to certain classes. Principal Karen Faucher instituted a “no rescue” policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-office table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to complete her daughter’s coordinated outfit.

Time writer Nancy Gibbs quotes a guidance counselor at a Washington prep school who urges parents to make friends with parents who don’t think their kids are perfect, and willing to push back: “When schools debate whether to drop recess to free up more test-prep time, parents need to let a school know if they think that’s a trade-off worth making.”

Lenore Skenazy, whose account of letting her nine-year-old son ride the subway on his own  was the shot heard round the world of the helicopter parenting backlash, points out there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy. And the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million.

When parents confront you with “How can you let him go to the store alone?,” she suggests countering with “How can you let him visit your relatives?” (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) “I’m not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn’t be prepared,” she says. “But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources.”

The best quote in the piece belongs to Skenazy.  “10 is the new 2,” she quips.  “We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.”

Give Me Harvard or Give Me Death

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 10, 2009 in Assessment and Testing, Parents and accountability. 0 Comments

Parental anxiety is ruining playtime, notes the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss.  It’s not news that lots of preschool parents have become “super-anxious trying to give their kids a leg up on kindergarten,” Strauss writes at The Answer Sheet.  “But I didn’t realize just how nutty things had become until I talked to several dozen preschool program directors.”

Among the examples she cites: parents begging school directors to let their 1 1/2 -year-olds into programs for 2-year-olds “because Danny and Olivia are so incredibly advanced”; demanding to know why 2-year-olds aren’t being given the alphabet to copy over and over and memorize; and enrolling their kids in so many activities that three year olds fall asleep at their desks.

“People! This is the only time your child has to be a child!” she writes.  I was in complete agreement until I got to this line:  “The reason for all of this is No Child Left Behind, which has pushed curriculum down into the earliest grades and put the focus on high-stakes standardized tests that start as early as third grade.”

“I’m sorry, but blaming NCLB for elite parents pushing preschoolers too hard on academics and activities is BS,” says New America’s Sara Mead on Twitter.  Agreed.  A generation ago, New York Magazine wrote a cover story about the fierce competition among Manhattan parents to get Danny and Olivia into just the right preschool, just the right prep school, just the right college–and the relentless pressure on even the youngest kids.  The legendary cover line: “Give Me Harvard or Give Me Death.”

There’s plenty wrong with NCLB and blunt-force accountability.  But if it disappeared tomorrow, Danny and Olivia would not suddenly be kickin’ it on the playground.  Well, maybe for 1o minutes after piano lessons and before the gourmet cooking class…

If Bedtime is Book Time, Why Not “Morning Math?”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 7, 2009 in Parents. 2 Comments

The best idea I’ve heard in a long time comes courtesy of Lisa Guernsey of Early Ed Watch (where is Sara Mead, anyway?) who points out that every parent gets the idea that bedtime is book time, but what about math?  She’s encouraging parents “to build math moments into the morning routine, just as book reading is part of the bedtime drill.”

Rummage through the sock drawer with your 4 year old, encouraging her to find a matching pair. Voila. You’ve covered one math concept already. Go to the freezer and pull out the frozen waffles for your 6-year-old. “You want one-and-a-half? How about three halfs instead?” Wink, wink, another concept down the hatch. Ask your 8-year-old to pour the juice so that the glasses are 75 percent full. Aha. A good opening for a chat about fractions.

Guernsey points out that we’ve had plenty of research and public service campaigns encouraging parents to read to their children, yet math skills trump reading skills as one of the best predictors of school success.  “Imagine what might happen with a similar campaign that suggests ways for parents to do math in the morning with their children,” she urges. ”Look for numbers on cereal boxes. Talk about the score of last night’s ball game. Point out patterns on their hats and mittens as you dress them for school.”

What a simple, brilliant idea.  Pass it on.

Parental [Dis]engagement

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 31, 2009 in Parents and Teaching. 4 Comments

Middle school teacher Mrs. Bluebird loves PowerSchool, her district’s online grading system.  It lets her update students’ grades from home, run progress reports and all kinds of other tricks.   “Parents can check grades any time of the night or day, see that work is missing, and can even get grade updates emailed to them,” she writes at her blog, Bluebird’s Classroom.  “Students hate it because parents can keep a really close eye on what they are, or more precisely, what they are not doing,” she says.

In other words, for home-school communications, it’s the greatest thing since the parent-teacher conference.  Well, maybe not.

The District folks did a survey of PowerSchool usage and discovered that only 20% of the families in the District have ever logged on to PowerSchool.  Let me repeat that…20%. That’s it. 89% supposedly have access to a computer but only 20% have made the effort to check their child’s grades.  That silence you hear is the sound of parent involvement, or, more precisely, the lack thereof.

In response, Bluebird’s principal continues to send home report cards, despite the district’s move to go paperless.  “My team sent home 97 report cards. I had 47 students fail science for this nine weeks. To date, I have not heard a peep. No email, no call requesting a conference, nothing,” she laments.  ”It’s like they don’t even care.  And we wonder why the kids don’t care either.”

[H/T: Blogboard]

No Biking Allowed

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 5, 2009 in Parents. 10 Comments

An upstate New York mother is fighting a school policy that prohibits her 12-year-old son from riding his bike to and from school each day.  Seventh-grader Adam Marino and his mother, Janette Kaddo Marino, were met one day by a school administrator and a state trooper who told them that biking and walking to the school are “banned.”  Students must either take the school bus or be driven to school by someone else.

Mom says the school has no right to tell her how to get her son to school, and the school agrees–sort of.  “The existing policy is worded in such a way that it may lead one to believe that we’re prohibiting biking to school,” Saratoga Springs superintendent Janice White tells the Albany Times-Union. According to school board handbook:  “The riding of bicycles by elementary pupils to and from school is prohibited.”

Yeah, that is pretty ambiguous.

Kids, Don’t Try This At Home

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 5, 2009 in Parents. 2 Comments

Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass of Gossip Girl, and Nancy Botwin, played by Mary-Louise Parker on Weeds, top Common Sense Media’s list of the “10 Worst TV Role Models.”  The Gossip Girl duo represent the “ultimate mean girl” and a “drinking, drugging gigolo,” while Botwin “makes consistently terrible parenting decisions, getting her sons caught up in a world of drug dealing, crime, and violence” (that’s only good enough for #3?).

Other’s making the list: Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell on The Office (”so self-absorbed that he can’t see beyond his own ambitions”); Peter Griffin of Family Guy (”watches way too much TV, for starters”); and Naomi Clark  on 90210 (”conniving, manipulative, and out for herself”).  If kids and teens watch these shows, Common Sense Media suggests parents use the characters on-screen behaviors for discussion.  “Even negative role models can open the door to a discussion of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior,” they note.

Pinocchio Parents (and Teachers)

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 1, 2009 in Parents, Research and Reports and Teaching. 7 Comments

Most mothers and fathers practice “Pinocchio parenting” — teaching their kids that lying is bad while regularly fibbing to them, according to a pair of new studies in the Journal of Moral Education.

Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of California found that parents who stress the importance of truth-telling to their little ones quite often tell lies to influence the children’s behaviour or emotions, whether it’s an idle threat to make them eat their peas or boost their confidence by praising their ear-splitting saxophone solo.

“Because it’s easy, we just do it,” Dr. Kang Lee of the University of Toronto tells the Globe and Mail. “Some parents may have been doing it for years and they really have no idea they are actually telling lies.”  Lee’s study doesn’t look at the impact of Pinocchio Parenting on kids, but he confesses he’s guilty of it himself.

To quell his son’s habit of fidgeting in his car-seat, the savvy dad renamed the hazard button on his dashboard the “eject” button. If dad presses the button, six-year-old Nathan thinks he’ll be catapulted from the vehicle. “I just put my hand over it” and Nathan behaves, Dr. Lee says.

Teachers in particular are guilty of what the researchers describe as the “confidence boosting lie” — telling students they are excellent writers, for example, when in fact they are average or worse.   Teachers in my elementary school trained in the Teacher’s College Writer’s Workshop were expected to give a compliment to every student at the start of each “conference” and required to record it in our conference notes.   The intended effect obviously was to boost confidence and inspire additional effort.   The danger (equally obvious) was that students might overestimate their ability, slack off, and be set up for disappointment later on.

Ask Your Child About Content, Not Grades

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 10, 2009 in Curriculum and Parents. 2 Comments

Don’t ask your kids about grades, test scores or homework, advises Kerry Dickinson of the East Bay Homework Blog.  Instead, focus on the content of the subject he or she is studying.

Instead of “What did you get on the test?” say, “What are you learning in science?” If you are connected to some school communication tool (like Schoolloop) you can look at homework assignments and grades privately. Benefits: you are teaching them to take ownership of their own schedules. You are letting them manage their own time. You are taking the focus off scores and putting it on learning.

Dickinson’s ”10 Tips to Start the School Year Off Right” offers a list of ideas from common sense to counterintuitive: Don’t overschedule your children; don’t sign your child up for academic tutoring unless he or she is in jeopardy of failing a class; and don’t attend every sports game or extracurricular activity (”your child will be participating for the love of the game or of the activity, not to earn your approval”).

(H/T: Kathleen Manzo via Twitter)

Parents Read More, Praise More, But Keep Kids on a Short Leash

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 19, 2009 in Parents and Research and Reports. 3 Comments

Children today have fewer chores around the house and greater autonomy than previous generations, but they’re kept on a shorter leash outside the home.  That’s the takeaway from a novel study that analyzed 300 advice columns and editorials from randomly chosen issues of Parents magazine from 1929 to 2006.  Dr. Markella Rutherford of Wellesley College was studying changes in the portrayals of parental authority and children’s autonomy over time, Science Daily reports:  

The articles in Parents showed that children were increasingly autonomous when it came to their self-expression, particularly in relation to daily activity chores, personal appearance and defiance of parents. In contrast to this increased autonomy that child-centered parenting has given children, the 20th century has seen, in other ways, children’s autonomy curtailed, through increasingly restricted freedom of movement and substantially delayed acceptance of responsibilities. Children now have fewer opportunities to conduct themselves in public spaces free from adult supervision than they did in the early and mid-twentieth century.

“Today’s parents face demands that require near-constant surveillance of their children,” says Rutherford.  “Allowing children more autonomy to express themselves and their disagreements at home may well be a response to the loss of more substantial forms of children’s autonomy to move through and participate in their communities on their own.”

Meanwhile an Ohio State study tracked parenting patterns over two generations and found ”great increases” in the amount of reading and affection shown to children today–and reductions in the amount of spanking.

In general, the amount of affection parents show their children increased significantly over the generations. Sixty percent of fathers and 73 percent of mothers in the second generation reported showing their children physical affection and praising them within the last week. But only about 40 percent of their parents showed open affection on a weekly basis.  Reading to children also showed a generational shift. Nearly three times more mothers in the second generation reported reading to their children daily compared to their own parents.

No Excuses

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 17, 2009 in Opinion, Parents and Students. 3 Comments

One of the biggest applause line in President Obama’s speech to the NAACP Thursday wasn’t in his prepared remarks–it came when he exhorted parents and children to take full advantage of their educational opportunities and make “no excuses.”

We have to say to our children, Yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands – and don’t you forget that.  That’s what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!” 

The “Your destiny is in your hands…no excuses” bit was not in the President’s prepared remarks, but both Fox News and the Huffington Post put it in their respective headlines.

In education circles, of course, the “no excuses” meme has become shorthand for schools–and especially teachers–making no excuses for poor student achievement.  It reflects the deeply held conviction by some that a school can, should, must overcome all deficits in the children it serves, regardless of outside circumstances.  It remains an excellent rallying cry, if not a realistic standard by which to measure teacher performance. 

It’s refreshing to hear the standard applied to all actors in the process, not just teachers.  The response to Obama’s off-the-cuff remark clearly demonstrates the wisdom of crowds.