Saturday, May 24, 2008

Mamacita (The Real One) Rants About Wiggly Kids and Recess and Stuff

Most of this was first posted on June 30, 2007, but my opinion hasn't changed since then, and I've added a few more opinionated Mamacita-isms. Are you surprised? I didn't think you would be.

"No two people are alike, and both of them are damn glad of it."

That's a quotation; that's not me saying "damn," although I frequently occasionally do. I am, to my shame, greatly afflicted with "potty mouth," and although I managed to control it somewhat while my children were tiny, thanks to what I think of as my "Shit Epiphany," it's back, in full force. Honestly? I need help.

But I digress. No two people are alike, but both of them are expected to progress at the same rate by our public schools.

Our children are expected to learn to read and write by a certain age lest they be labeled "special education" and given an IEP and pulled from the classroom to be tutored in the Reading Room. Most of them are little boys.

Old hippies like me sometimes have a hard time admitting that there really are gender differences that no amount of "environment" is going to change. One of those differences is this: a lot of little boys need a few more years than a lot of little girls need, to mature enough so that their bodies and brains can sit still, together, long enough to learn how to read and write. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that while a lot of little girls are reading "Gone with the Wind," the little boys sitting next to them are still struggling to recognize letter combinations. It is also a fact that some of these little boys who still can't do it in the third grade, or the fourth, somehow have their own "epiphany" in the middle grades; something in their brain becomes aware of symbols and their meanings and how to translate them to Harry Potter. It wasn't that these little boys didn't TRY down in the lower grades; it was that their bodies and brains weren't THERE yet.

I saw this miracle happen over and over again. With my own eyes I saw it. Sometimes, when I tried to tell other teachers, especially elementary teachers, about this awakening, they did not believe me. "I had that boy in third grade and I'm telling you, Jane, that he just doesn't have what it takes to be a reader, a good student. He just can't do it."

And I'm telling you, Madeline, that I don't give a rat's ass* what the child did in your class. I am trying to tell you that in my class, the boy can read. One week he couldn't, and the next week, he could. And he's ecstatic.

Heidi learned to read overnight. It does happen. At age eight, Heidi learned to read overnight. And then she went home and taught her friend Peter how to read, and he was in his teens. The "learning how to read when convinced one would never be able to learn because it was just too hard" theme is a big one in this book.

My point? Do I have to have one? I guess I could drag one in by the hind legs if you must have a point. How about this one:

Hold off on the IEP's and the labeling until the kid is in middle school. Tutor, yes. Give special help, yes. Hang a label on his forehead and put it in his permanent record? Not so fast there, Teach. Don't do it Not yet. Not just for reading. Save the labeling for the children who genuinely need the help; don't fill up the room with little boys who just need a few more years to mature.

Same-sex classrooms in the lower grades? Why not? It might work. It would certainly be better for the little girls who, most of them, just naturally catch on to the reading faster; they could move on! It would be better for the little boys, too; they wouldn't feel pressured and might get comfortable enough to relax and blossom, too.

Many of our most highly esteemed scientists, inventors, etc, were late bloomers. Edison wasn't even allowed to continue at his school; he was so slow, he held the others back!

Let's give our little boys a break, what say, people?

And by the way, taking away a child's recess because he couldn't finish his vocabulary words quickly is cruel and unusual punishment. I suppose the boy would then be punished because he was extra wiggly since his 'outlet' was taken from him? Energetic little children NEED to be let loose on the playground several times a day!!! Taking away recesses for punishment or to make more room for standardized test review is the action of a halfwit who knows nothing about either education OR children and probably hasn't been in a classroom since 1972 politician, superintendent, or some other administrator who falls into the 'nimrod' category of typical la la land unawareness of real people and how we live. Probably people who do that don't know how to access their email, either, or use a computer. But then, that's what secretaries are for.

I put up with this for 26 years. No wonder I had a potty mouth.

Back in the olden days, there were plenty of outlets for restless boys to work off their excess energy. We sent our boys out to chop wood, plow, herd cows, walk miles to a neighbor or a store, etc. Our boys fell into bed exhausted from genuine labor every night. Now, few boys have any safe or easily obtainable or legitimate outlets, other than sports, for their physical energy and it gets kind of balled up (sorry) in them and then they explode, sometimes for no conceivable reason other than that the kid simply needs an outlet. I'm a huge proponent of self control, but self control can only do so much. Any teacher can tell you that a middle-of-the-day segment devoted to intense physical activity is of vital importance for our students. Girls need it, too, but I'm focusing on the boys in this post. Afternoon classes full of boys who have had absolutely no physical outlet are a nightmare.

Organized games are not enough. Not every kid will get to play. Let the kids run wild for a half hour or so and let the teachers stand there and try to keep them from getting hurt. Hub's elementary school had a hill to slide down and a piney grove to play in. I taught in that same school for years and by then, the piney grove, the hill, and most of the coolest playground equipment had been removed because a kid fell down. Go figure. Our kids don't even know HOW to fall down these days. When they are on ice or trip and really DO fall down, they get hurt because they've had no falling-down experience. Kids fall down. Live with it. Sheesh.

And by the way, this guv'ment standard of requiring our tiny first and second graders to sit still for NINETY MINUTES and read without interruption is ignorance in action on the part of whoever thought that one up. Tell me, Mr. Standards: Can YOU sit absolutely still for ninety minutes and read without interruption? I thought not.

*Dammit **, there I go again.

** Crap.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Say What?

I'm having more than a little bit of trouble understanding how and why Ted Kennedy is suddenly a kindly, revered, heroic, honorable, heaven-blessed, benevolent white-haired gentleman.

I wish him well and I sincerely hope he recovers, as I wish no one ill and hope everyone recovers from whatever has gone wrong, but to single him out as just a little bit below the angels is beyond my comprehension.

Isn't this the same horny drunk who persuaded a young woman - who was not his wife - to get in the back seat of his car, drove off a bridge, abandoned her in the water, saved his own ass, and went home? And never once apologized for it? And called it an "accident" and still does?

Drunks behind the wheel are no different than drunks with guns in malls. That's no accident, either.

Perhaps I am mistaken, and there is another Ted Kennedy.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

The Summertime Boredom Blues, in E Flat Minor

Summertime sure has changed since dinosaurs ruled the earth I was a kid.

In the summer, I would leave the house right after breakfast and I wouldn't return until Mom called us to lunch. (Each neighborhood mom had a distinctive lunchtime call. Nobody ever got confused until the people with the parrot moved in across the street. Stupid parrot quickly learned to mimic every mom on the block, and we kids were constantly running into the house asking "What do you want?" and the answer would be "Why are you here? I didn't call you!") No normal kid stayed in the house in the summertime. We stayed outside as long as we could see.

All the moms knew that if any of us chose to behave poorly, anywhere in the neighborhood, the MomPolice would instantly put a stop to it and notify the wrong-doer's mother. Every mom was everybody's mom. The village kept us civilized.

After lunch, at which every kid on the block was served the same thing - "take it or leave it" - we were all off again, riding our bikes all over the neighborhood, climbing trees, playing kickball in Becky's back yard - the biggest back yard on the block. We played there even when Becky wasn't home; all back yards were open source back then.

We came back home again only when it started to get dark; we ate a late supper, took a much-needed bath, watched The Beverly Hillbillies, and went to bed. All the summer tomorrows promised to be just as exciting as the first day! The only difference was the half-hour sitcom. Or an hour, on Bonanza night.

Some summer days we spent every waking hour at the public pool, coming home for lunch only because the pool closed for an hour. On those days, we were ravenous at lunchtime. We were hungry before lunchtime, too, but back then, people ate at designated times, not constantly.

Were we fat? Nope, although there was always one fat kid, usually nicknamed Porky or Chubs or Heifer or some such politically scandalous thing nowadays. Did the kid care? Nope; he/she knew he/she was fat. Were we afraid of strangers? Nope. We were warned about taking rides or candy from strangers, but a stranger would have to be insane to try and kidnap one of us; the screaming and tattling would have begun before his foot hit the accelerator. Remember when Colin grabbed the kid in Kindergarten Cop? Remember what happened to the child molester in the novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?" Yeah, I'm all for it. Get him, ladies! Yell, kids! Painful death is far too good for people who are mean to children.

Nowadays, kids are rarely allowed to leave the confines of the house, let alone their own yard. Kids on bikes are watched all the way up the block and all the way back. Go AROUND the block? Heaven forbid. These rules make sense for tiny children, but for 5th graders? Oh please.

Kids in summer, nowadays, watch a lot of television and play a lot of video games and do a lot of computer surfing. The trees are too small to climb even if each one didn't have a little fence around it. Other people's back yards are private property.

Your kid wants to play ball? He's put in a structured program run by adults. Your kid wants to play outside? He'll get DIRTY, and wouldn't you rather watch a DVD, and here, have some cake. Kid wants to go someplace? You drive him. And he watches tv in the minivan instead of looking out the window.

Nowadays, if kids are playing in a barn and one of them yells, "Hey, kids, let's do a SHOW!" the other kids will leave the barn to watch TV. They know of nothing else.

I know there are real dangers out there, dangers that were always there but which seem magnified these days. Our kids need to be taught to protect themselves and each other. But parents, let your kids fly free and occasionally out of sight on their bikes, and let them navigate their own neighborhoods, and let them get filthy and hungry and turn off the damn television set.

Give your kids an empty bottle and tell them to fill it with lightning bugs. Send the kids out in the yard to find four-leaf-clovers. Have them hang clean wet towels on the clothesline. Let them rollerskate and the devil take the bruises. A kid without playtime bruises and cuts and scabs and dirt ingrained in the fingernails is a kid who doesn't know how to play.

I know! Give them some CHORES to do! Oh, the humanity!

Send them to Steve Spangler's website to sign up for the experiment of the week.

Help them do that experiment. Make it a family affair. There's even a link for special summer activities for kids over there right now.

Whatever your kids do this summer, try to have them do it outdoors whenever possible. Item: rain will not harm your children. If you have white carpeting and children, you deserve to take the inevitable fall.

Just a few thoughts from an empty nest mommy who misses her bicycling days almost as much as she misses her kids. I did not have white carpeting, but muddy footprints show up on green pretty darn clearly. Who cares?

Cross-posted, in part, on MommyBloggers. The REAL MommyBloggers.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

I found this transcript in my files tonight. It's one of my favorite encounters.

Kid, upon watching video of himself sneaking into the teacher's lounge, kicking the machine, and stealing candy about thirty minutes prior: That ain't me!

Principal: The person in the video looks exactly like you and is wearing the same clothes you're wearing right now.

Kid: He must have stole them from my locker!

Principal: But you're wearing them now.

Kid: He must have put them back, and I found them again, and put them on.

Teacher *: What were you wearing before you found your clothes again and put them on?

Kid: I forget.

Kid's mother: That's not him!

Kid's mother's this week's boyfriend: It is too, the stupid lying little shit.

Kid's mother: He wouldn't do that! He's not that kind!

Boyfriend: Looks to me like he is.

Kid: It ain't me! I swear it ain't!

Kid's mother: He swears it ain't him. That tells me it positively ain't him. My boy don't lie.

Principal: Let's play the video again, in slow motion.

Kid: No! I think that's a kid disguised as me, with my shirt, and my face, and my hat.

Kid's mother: I think so, too. That ain't my son. That's some dirty little thief with my son's shirt and hat on. You should find that kid and torment him! He's got my son's shirt and hat!

Principal: And his fingerprints and face.

Boyfriend: Haw haw, this is hilarious.

Kid's mother: Whose side are you on, you short-dicked parasite?

Boyfriend: After last year, darlin', I'm on the side of the law.

Principal: Does anybody have anything else to say before we turn the video over to the police?

Kid: Can I eat the candy now?

Kid's mother: Shut up, you little idiot!

This kid was in the 8th grade, by the way.

* Guess who?


Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Bikini Talk: Itsy, Bitsy, Teeny, Weeny, and Polka-Dotted.

See these? They're trash bags.

Remember me? I'm the crazy lady who gets all excited about trash bags.

But if you had to drive around all week with your trash in the back of your pickup truck, you'd want cute trash bags, too. I live out in the country. We have no trash pickup. We drive to the dump every Saturday, and eat at Snow's Drive-in afterwards. It's an enviable life.

And if you hated roaches and ants and bees and wasps and gnats and creepy crawly icky things that like to get in your house and crawl out onto the carpet when guests are looking and possums who eat your cats' food, you'd get excited about these trash bags, too.

They're Repell-em bags, of course, and they honestly, truly work.

And now, for pictures and information about the bikinis. . . oops, LOOK at the time. Sorry, come back later.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

Monday, May 19, 2008

We Will All Go Together When We Go

I am quickly swept off my feet by a man who can turn a phrase well. Quirky rhymes of rhythmic perfection? I'm his. Tom Lehrer, be mine?

Of course, he's eighty years old now so he probably wouldn't be interested, but Tom? Are you there, Tom? You were a frickin' genius THEN and you're a frickin' genius NOW and I LOVE YOU.

But now I should calm down lest I say something inappropriate in the primal heat of my love for Tom Lehrer.

Masochism Tango, anyone? Elements? Werner Von Braun? Vatican Rag? Pollution? National Brotherhood Week? So Long, Mom? Who's Next? I Got It From Agnes?

What'll it be?

What's that you say? Why of COURSE! Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, it is.



Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

For The World In General and For The Person In That Middle Seat, Especially

Oh my gosh, I LOVE flying! I even like the bumps; they remind me of carnival rides, which I also love.

But I wouldn't be ME without a litany of complaints, now would I?

Don't you think it would be nice if everybody was required to shower thoroughly before being allowed on a crowded airplane? I do. I really do.

Some parenting classes before being permitted to reproduce oneself and take said offspring on a plane (or any public place whatsoever) would also be much appreciated by the universe at large. Children who are required to behave properly wherever they go will behave properly on a plane if they know you mean business. Put the kid in his seat, buckle him in, and say, "Now behave yourself, look out the window, sit still, and enjoy the ride. Any talking must be done in your indoor voice." Hopefully, he has a full understanding of what WILL happen to him should he choose to disobey you. Give the kid some gum, too; his ears are popping. And did you really think your Mini-Cooper-sized stroller would fit in the overhead compartment? Oh, and why wouldn't they give that behemoth stroller a thorough going-over at security? Your superior, entitled attitude might have had something to do with it, and besides, a swanky stroller would be an ideal place to hide stuff. Honestly, it was like putting up with Meg and Hamilton Swan, except their dog would have been more pleasant to sit near on a plane.

Did you happen to notice the lovely little boy who spent the three hours and twenty minutes talking quietly to his mother, coloring, dozing, being grateful and appreciative for the peanuts and juice, smiling at people, dozing some more, and looking out the window with pure joy? You probably didn't, but everyone else on the plane did. That child and his parents made us all smile, and your child and you made us cringe.

Helpful hint for all who plan to fly any time soon or in the future: Pee before you get on the plane. This having to unbuckle and run to the can while the plane is taking off is absolutely ridiculous. Your whining to the attendant about not being allowed, is even more so.

I love flying; I haven't done much of it but hope to change that stat soon. If you are going to sit by me, please take a bath before you come to the airport. And if you're too fat to fit in the one seat you paid for, splurge for a first-class seat next time. I've had my share and more of having to share my seat with someone else's ass. So not fair. Oh, and turn your music down. I can't hear mine.

Tra la la, don't you wish I were YOUR seatmate? I'm so easy to get along with as long as everybody behaves.

I'm not so far gone that I'll yell at your kids to get out of my yard - I love it when your kids play in my yard, in fact - but if your kids don't behave themselves in my yard, you'll know about it.

I wanted to know; I just assume all parents want to know. I also assume all parents will do something about it, on the ground and in the air.

Children who refuse to behave are brats; adults who refuse to behave are. . . why, my goodness, they're brats, too!

And NOBODY likes a brat.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Click, Click, Click, HOME

I'll be home again on Saturday night - TS, may we stay with you that night? - so be thinking of me, please, as I catapault through the air from West to Middle on that day.

So far from home, and yet, on the internet, we are all home. Our computers are Dorothy's red shoes; a few clicks and we are home.

And Dorothy was right: There's no place like home. It's just that you don't have to BE home to be at home.

Ah, internet, my big comfy couch.

Why NO, I've never been normal, but thanks for asking.

Monday, May 12, 2008

In A Previous Life

In a previous life, I think I must have been Alice from The Brady Bunch. I love to cook for lots of people!

I also dress funny, have "decided" opinions, and, until last week, I had weird, dowdy hair.

Honestly, though? I am having the best time in my SIL's beautiful kitchen!

I'm tellin' you: Upstairs, Downstairs? No contest. I was born for the scullery. As long as I can get out for the opera and a lot of live theatre (preferably musical) I could do this all the time.

I'd have access to the Mahsta's big library, right?