Thursday, January 22, 2009

Please no more snow

Since before Christmas it seems like every other day it either snows and the kids have off of school or a delayed opening or one of them is sick. With the holidays and my three year-old's fourth birthday occurring in this time frame there is always some pressing chore or duty to clean something I don't normally clean because company is coming over or toy to get stuck in traffic for (though I live in the suburbs my town is pretty self contained and has no highways, so I really only have to deal with highways, malls and strip malls during the holidays, so I have an extremely low tolerance for them).
So since I can't really clean much or toy shop for the kids while they are with me I depend on the three days a week where they are both in school do accomplish these things, so if the kids are home on snow days it means that my time frame for doing these things shrinks and I wind up having to do them last minute which stresses me out.
It does not help that no matter what company my wife works for there is always some kind of deadline, deliverable or crisis before Christmas so I get very little help gift shopping and setting up the Christmas magic.
Also the constant snow shovelling is getting 0ld fast, as is the whole bundling up the kids routine as they try to run around house and wrestle with each other every time before we leave the house.
My stay at home dad duties are starting to wear down my resolve, I wonder how much longer I can do this.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

A letter to my 6 year-old's teacher:

Dear Mrs. "Kaft",
"My 1st Grader" was very distraught today after school, so much so that I had a hard time deciphering exactly what the causes were. What I was able to glean from his comments is that he kind of “freaked out” during his math quiz, he said he was having a hard time counting by seven’s, and then thought he had to do some hard math problems which he did not understand, but later learned that he was not required to do them.
I am not sure if that makes sense or not, anyway he said he had to struggle to keep from crying in class during the quiz. I vaguely remember a flier being sent home that talked about 90 second quizzes and I am assuming that this is what he was talking about. The fact that they are timed is apparently very stressful to him.
He is also nervous about an assignment that he apparently did not finish in which he has to draw and label body parts. He is afraid that if he does this assignment that he will not be complete some other assignment on time.
In reference to the not knowing which questions on the quiz he needed to do, I asked him if he was paying close attention when the teacher explained what needed to be done, and in reference to the quizzes I told him to do his best and to not get upset by the idea of not doing well, everyone understands he is six years old and does not already know everything and that he is in school to learn and tests just let the teachers know what he does and does not understand.
He then was upset by the idea that I was going to write you because he thought you might yell at him for “not knowing the answers,” and he also did not want to be pulled aside to be talked to. I told him that teachers want their students to learn so they would not yell at them for having questions, and that talking to a teacher one on one would just help him to solve his problems/answer his questions and was nothing to be afraid of.
Please take a moment and try to learn what exactly is confusing him, be it that some of today’s work built upon what was taught on Tuesday when he was out so he did not understand it, or if he’s not paying close enough attention when assignments are being explained, or if needs to ask more questions when he does not understand what is expected of him, or his time management needs development, whatever the problems are it is hard for me put my finger on them since I do not know exactly what is going in his classes and when I ask him about them he gets upset.

Thank you for your help in this matter,

Dissonant Dad

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Abstinence, Shmabstinance

Looks like lots of unprotected premarital sex is going on in the bible belt, it just doesn't make any sense, you would think teaching kids about abstinence would work as opposed to teaching that evil sex-ed with all of it's condom talk, it's basically condoning premarital sex, one would think one of those evil Satan worshiping, homo marrying liberal states like New Jersey, Massachusetts or California would have higher rates of teen pregnancies.

Okay tongue out of my cheek: Abstinence-only sex education has totally failed the nation's teens
Programs mandated to teach only "the social, psychological and health gains (of) abstaining from sexual activity" have been awarded failing grades for truth and effectiveness. The programs that work best combine honest information about sexuality, including contraception.
By
Ellen Goodman

Sunday, January 04, 2009

VIDEO GAMES AND DEVELOPING BRAINS

3 year-old: Let's play video games.
Mommy: Not now, video games aren't good for you brain.
3 year-old: Video games aren't good for other people's brains but they ARE good for my brain