Posts Tagged ‘second grade’
I swear
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
My child learned a new word on the playground the other day and he couldn’t wait to share it with me.
Mommy! Did you almost say f-u-c-k?
What? No! How do you know that word??
A kid at school. And then this kid in my class? He told someone to suck his d-i-c-k.
He is eight. My son is eight years old. When I was eight, I remember I learned my first swear word. It was p-i-s-s. Which is fairly benign, but I remember being shocked, SHOCKED, that such a word even existed. And then I giggled when I said it because it was so scandalous.
I’m the first to admit I have a potty mouth. The swearing was worse when I covered baseball. I was around bad language all the time and it became part of my everyday lexicon at work. Not to my bosses or anything. Unless it was warranted.
Then I got out of the business and had kids and my, er, colorful language only comes out in certain adult company.
But not around the kids. Although they’ve heard “crap” and an occasional “dammit.”
I’ve never dropped an F bomb. And I don’t like it that Sawyer knows it exists. It’s a little chip off his innocence. Like when he told me he knows there’s no Easter Bunny. Then followed that up by saying he didn’t think there was a Santa, either (which is a much bigger chip, more like a slab).
Now he knows certain words have power. That there are kids who use those words because they’re trying to be cool – or maybe they just don’t know any better.
Sawyer knows better.
For now.
Tags: second grade, swearing
Posted in Parenting | 7 Comments »
Do your @#(!*&% homework
Monday, March 12th, 2012
8:20 p.m. Sunday: “Mommy? I forgot I have homework due tomorrow.” Sawyer.
8:20 p.m.: “That’s too bad. It’s time for bed. You’ve had the whole weekend to do it and you’re just telling me now? Good night.” Mean Mommy.
8:25 p.m.: “Sawyer is going to do his homework now.” Fun Guy.
8:50 p.m.: “I CAN’T DRAW!!!” Sawyer.
8:51 p.m.: “Stop being ridiculous. Just concentrate.” Mean Mommy
8:57 p.m.: “Yes you can. You’re a good artist.” Fun Guy.
9:12 p.m.: “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE!” Sawyer.
9:13 p.m.: “Did you read the story? The answer is right here.” Mean Mommy
9:13 p.m.: “BUT I DON’T GET IT!” Sawyer
9:14 p.m.: “You just told me the answer a minute ago. And it’s RIGHT HERE in the book.” Mean Mommy
9:15 p.m.: “Daddy? Can you help me with my homework?” Sawyer
9:17 p.m.: “Sure. Tell me about the story.” Fun Guy
9:25 p.m.: “Mommy? Have you seen a tooth book? That was homework too.”
9:25 p.m. “GO THE @!#* TO SLEEP” Mean Mommy (Okay, I didn’t really say that. But I wanted to.)
9:25 p.m. “Goodnight!” Mean Mommy
The End
Tags: homework, second grade
Posted in Parenting | 40 Comments »
The Jews don’t like average
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
Parent-teacher conferences are one of the many minefields of having school-aged kids.
If your child gets a positive review, you wonder if the teacher is talking about your kid. If your child gets a bad one, you alternate between wanting to beat the teacher and beat the child.*
There is a nebulous middle ground called average. And that is where my second-grader has fallen this first marking period. He is an average student who could – and should – do better. If he wanted to. I respect his teacher and we had a lovely chat about how to motivate my son.
And then I fretted on the two-minute drive home. Because average? Is not acceptable.
If I brought home a C – which I don’t think ever happened, but back in the day, a B was a C – my father would throw the report card on the floor and stomp on it with his size 14 shoe. It was simply unacceptable. We were smart kids and we had better succeed in school, or else. There was never any question we’d all go to college right after high school. Academics were always the priority. It was expected.
It’s also a Jewish thing. I’m sure other cultures (Tiger Mom, anyone?) also stress academics, but it’s certainly true in Jewish families. Maybe because most of us aren’t going to be making millions in professional sports. I don’t know, but in talking to other friends who grew up in Jewish families, it was the same way. They all had their own version of the foot stomping.
My eldest son is a fairly laid-back kid. Nothing seems to faze him. He passes? He fails? Feh. This is the first year he gets actual grades, and when he balked at doing his homework last week, I pointed out that if he failed, he’d have to go do second grade again.
But hey, second grade is fun so far. There are worse things that could happen. Like taking away his bey blades.
So I talked to him about trying harder and not talking so much in class. He said, “Okay, Mommy.”
Okay? Not okay.
*no child was harmed in the writing of this blog
Tags: average student, education, homework, jewish culture, second grade
Posted in Parenting | 29 Comments »
Homework Hell
Monday, October 17th, 2011
The time of day I dread isn’t the witching hour.
It’s the bitching hour.
Not me. My son. About homework. Second grade homework.
All his homework is online this year. He is required to log in to a certain site, where his assignments are listed. Most of them involve learning games. Sometimes there are pages I need to print for him to do.
There are also spelling and math facts to practice.
If a child were to sit and do them, it would maybe take 45 minutes. Maybe.
However, if a child were to cry and complain and get up to go to the bathroom and get a snack and then a drink because the pretzels made him thirsty and then he has to pee again because he drank too much because of the salty pretzels and then he hears his friends playing outside so he gets up look out the door and asks if he can play only to burst into tears AGAIN because he can’t go outside – he hasn’t done his homework yet – then it will take, say, 70 hours.
There will be threats.
There will be bribes.
There will be pleading.
There will be yelling.
There will be tears (mine).
And then he will finally, finally do his work. It won’t nearly be as tough as he thought. He loves being on the computer, and suddenly discovers the learning games are actually fun. The spelling test is fast. The math flashcards take only five minutes. Worksheets are completed, gone over by me, and returned to him to fix any mistakes.
Homework is done. Two hours after we started.
That will be Monday.
Tuesday, the cycle starts all over again.
I believe the next book to go viral before it’s released will be, “Do your effing homework already!”
Am I the only one who goes through this with their kids? Any tips for making homework less…hysterical?
Tags: elementary school, homework, second grade, tips for helping kids with homework
Posted in Parenting | 21 Comments »
He’s a child, not an allergy
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
This is my eldest son, Sawyer, before we left for his first day of second grade Wednesday morning.
He’s a happy kid. He loves bey blades. And by love I mean he sleeps with his bey blades case next to him at night. He’s a great swimmer, a good soccer player and his favorite food is pasta (butter, but sometimes sauce). He gets popsicles for his baby brother and will give the last cookie to his sister.
Would you want this child to die? Because when you gripe about your kids having to go to a peanut-free school, when you roll your eyes as another parent questions what’s in the food her child is about to eat, when you think it’s all hysteria and helicopter mom-ing and that these children should be homeschooled, you’re talking about the life of MY CHILD. This little boy you see, with the brown fuzzy hair and the chocolate eyes that tilt at the corners.
Last night, while you were all sleeping, Sawyer lay next to me. He’d come in about 11 p.m. because he was coughing, and I immediately realized that cough came along with a big wheeze. The stomach ache he’d complained of before bedtime, when he asked how you knew when you were going to throw up, made sense. Especially when within an hour of him coming into my bed, three large patches of hives erupted on his belly. A breathing treatment and two doses of benadryl finally sent him back to his own bed – and to sleep – at 2 a.m. He would start school eight hours later.
He’d eaten a cookie at a bakery we’d visited many times without incident. It was not a peanut butter cookie. It was molasses, but cross-contamination happens and that cookie he’d happily eaten with his cousins, a fun outing before they headed home to Florida the next day, became poison.
I looked at his dark eyelashes that curl almost in half, as he breathed in the healing medicine of the nebulizer. I studied his arms, tan against the cream blanket, and thought my hand could easily encircle his biceps. It hit me so hard, then. How truly little he is. How incredibly vulnerable. And how even when he grows taller than me and stubble colors his now baby-smooth face, even when he is a parent himself, this will always be with him.
This awful, deadly allergy.
Where a great dinner with his cousins turned into a long, long night as his body saw an enemy and reacted.
So when your kids eat whatever they want without you having to worry or question, feel lucky. Not entitled.
If you haven’t lived it, you can’t get it, but you can look at this picture, you can meet my boy who will immediately befriend you, and you can think.
HE is not an allergy. He’s a child with an allergy.
A child.
Tags: children, cross-contamination, peanut allergy, school, second grade
Posted in Parenting | 61 Comments »
