School Family

Since my oldest child started on solid food (a little more than 13 years ago), I’ve been feeling guilty about how rarely our family sits down together for meals. Those first few years I worried that we were missing an opportunity to teach our kids good table manners, putting them at risk of great public humiliation should they someday be invited to dine with the queen.

Then a few years ago I read about a study that found that teens who have dinner with their families five or more times a week are more likely to earn A’s and B’s in school than teens who have dinner with their families fewer than three times a week. Not only that, but the kids who don’t eat with their families are more likely to smoke, drink, and use drugs.

My husband’s schedule keeps him at work long past dinner hour Monday through Friday. Worse, my kids are involved in so many activities that many nights, we eat in the car or while racing for the door. Any wonder I have guilt? Between my husband’s job, gymnastics, piano lessons, Cub Scouts, Hebrew school, baby-sitting, and ski club, my kids are on their way to mediocre grades and afternoons spent chugging cheap wine behind the liquor store.

Lisa Belkin addressed the topic of family dinners in the New York Times recently and came away with a more measured assessment. Belkin’s family, like mine and so many others, can’t get it together at dinnertime. But unlike so much of the reporting about the family dinner study, Belkin offers the nuanced view that, yes, nightly dinners bring families together, but it isn’t the only place where that happens. Parents and children connect in the car, while watching television together, at bedtime, and in all of those in-between moments during the day.

The term “helicopter parent” came to mind when I read the Hawaii Reporter article that Tim mentioned in his June 6 post about parents lobbying for next year’s classroom placements. Helicopter parents are so named because they hover above their children at all times, ready to swoop down and perform heroic rescues should
their little dears stub a toe or get a grumpy teacher.

College administrators began using the phrase several years ago after noticing that parents were so used to managing every aspect of their children’s lives, they couldn’t let go once their kids entered college. (It’s time to land the helicopter and get a hobby when you find yourself pulling an all-nighter to write your college sophomore’s term paper, then calling the professor to dispute the grade).

OK. So trying to influence which teacher your child gets in elementary school isn’t the same as following the kid to college and moving into the dorm. But try to begin the process with the assumption that all of the teachers are equally qualified and the people making the placements have a pretty good idea where your child will best fit in. Then you can weigh in with your thoughts—talk with the decision makers about your child’s personality and how he learns best. Describe the sort of classroom environment where he’s likely to thrive. But that’s about as far as I’d go.

Now I must confess that this year I went one tiny step further. I asked that my son be placed with a certain friend. My son has been with the same group of 13 children since kindergarten. This fall when the kids go into 4th grade, they’ll be split up and mixed in with other students for the first time. When I think of my child in a large class half-filled with people he doesn’t know, I go into mild shock. Placing my son with his friend is—for me, anyway—a medical necessity.

When I asked his teacher to put the two together, she pulled out a class list in progress and pointed to two names. “I already did,” she said. I knew I could trust her judgment.

How far should a parent go in trying to get junior into the “right” class for next year?

Just ran across this interesting article from the Hawaii Reporter on getting involved in the classroom-placement process for your son or daughter. The article makes the case for getting real, real involved in the process, and I suppose—knowing that there can be such wide differences between teachers—I can understand the motivation. But isn’t there a line that goes too far? Do I want to be known as “that parent” with the three-ring binder of how my child learns and explicit instructions on how he or she should be treated? Do I want a formal appeals process for classroom placements? Not me.

Trouble is—where does it end? Way I figure it, down the road the kids are going to have to deal with some tough folks, some softies, some folks who just mail it in, some folks who are passionate and talented, and every other type under the rainbow. Learning to deal with all kinds of people is another part of the education process.

A gentle nudge toward one teacher or another? OK. Hoping your child gets that great 5th grade teacher that you had 30 years ago? Understandable. But let’s hold off on adding another layer of overofficiousness and nannydom to our schools.