Check those grades….not again!

Its back to school time.  Backpacks, markers, colored pencils, you name it.  The prep works starts earlier and earlier it seems every year.  There always seems to be something new that is MANDATORY and REQUIRED each school year.  One of my favorites is the Graphing Calculator.  Who would have thought that at 10 year old needs a calculator that costs more than an entry level tablet?  Seriously? Because we all know that somehow between one school year and the next, the school supply elf sneaks into our homes and steals it.  Mandating that we buy a new one every year.  Does anyone else think conspiracy? Could Texas Instruments be owned by, oh I don’t know, the government? Of Texas?

As school starts most parents breathe that sign of relief – we did it.  We sent them off with every color coded post it and bottle of hand sanitizer they could possibly use.  We have paid the credit card bill and sit down for the first time in a week.  Then Armageddon happens.

I don’t know how your school works, but ours has something called Schoolspeak.  Its basically a method of insuring that every helicopter parent feels validated and every non-helicopter parent feels totally annoyed.  The evil of the system manifests like this. Every time your 1^st  grader  gets a plus sign in scissors and coloring – lucky you- you get an email announcing the achievement.  And woe to those with multiple kids – you can see as many as 25 emails a day – all usually coming through just as the kids are getting out of school. You may say to your self – send these to spam. But you CAN’T!  You have to open and sign them, acknowledging that little Johnny can cut out a circle.  Life skill alert! 

So what if you still say screw it and don’t sign them?  Ill tell you what– that puts you in the crosshairs of teacher scorn.  That look you get at parent teacher conferences when Ms. Smith (who is herself 15 years old) wants to point out to you that you haven’t been paying much attention to little Johnny’s crafting accomplishments.  As evidenced by the lack of signatures on the virtual report card.

What I would really like to say to Ms. Smith is “listen, get married, have 3 kids – in 5 years, preferably boys and at least two of them with ADHD.  Then you can look at me with condescension for not signing off on the latest assignment.  As long as little Johnny knows to put the paste on the paper and not in his mouth it’s a win-win in my book.”

I wish I could take this opportunity to garner some words of encouragement for all you parents but I got nothing.  Until we collectively as parents realize that our kids can get through the day without a handler we are doomed and so is little Johnny.  So helicopter parents, I encourage you, ignore the emails. Let your kids cut and paste themselves silly and who cares what it looks like.  Otherwise you may end up with a little Johnny that can’t decide what to have for dinner, lives at home in the basement, can’t do his own laundry and needs a parent chaperone for his job interview at age 25.

And to the anti-helicopter parents, take a breath, hit delete and when confronted by Ms. Smith simply say that you are uncomfortable with her insinuations and you need to adjourn to the nearest safe space to collect yourself.  She will understand that, (it is after all the vernacular of her generation), and then march yourself right out the front door of that school.  After all, the sale on calculators ends today and you may need to get  one to have in reserve.