Wanted: Nice Kids & Cool Parents for Good Times

Every now and then my husband will quote a Clint Eastwood movie and say “Please…let there be sheeeeews (shoes).” I’m not clear on the significance of this quote but as I look out the window at the “For Sale” sign in my neighbor’s yard, I am reminded of it.

Please…let there be kids

Please, please, please let a family with kids move into that house. I’m so tired of investor owners and the singleton renters.

We have been here for almost four years and only one other child has ever lived around here. And she was sweet little girl but her parents, though nice enough, were very weird & secretive. I found out later that mom had a ‘lil problem with the crack. Apparently, she was selling off everything they owned to support her habit and I had no clue whatsoever. Maybe it’s good that they moved…

Before them, when we first moved here, a registered sex offender rented that house, which we learned AFTER we closed on our home and moved in. I found out he had been convicted of having sex with a minor under 13 who, it turns out, was his stepdaughter. Now he lives with his mother on the next block. Yeesh.

Then there was the house on the corner… The elderly man who owned it died and it remained vacant for almost a year. For a couple months after the house was vacated, a dog was chained up there. A big, loud one. Someone was coming and feeding him but not regularly. I started going over there and giving the poor thing food and water. Animal control wouldn’t do anything because they said he had food. Because I was feeding him. DUH! I finally got in contact with an underground group that rescues animals from abusive situations and they just took him.

I just want my kids to grow up like I did. There were scads of children in our neighborhood. You could go outside and find someone to play with at any given moment up until it got dark. The parents were all friendly with each other and there was a sense of community that doesn’t seem to exist anymore, or at least not in the places I have lived. God knows I have tried to be a good and friendly neighbor, even to the renters and the people without kids. It just doesn’t ever feel reciprocal. People act like it’s a bother to wave at you or cross the street to say hi.

I guess I just have this idea that if there were kids for my children to play with, there might be a parent friend in it for me, too. I imagine doing all those stereotypical things that people on TV do, like having weekend barbecues or sitting out front at dusk gabbing while the kids play, having someone to trade babysitting with or any number of inconsequential things that make neighbors be friends.

I know…if you want to have a friend, you need to BE a friend. I get that. And I AM a good friend. There’s just nobody to be a friend to. The guy that’s moving is gay/single and while he’s nice, he was definitely not interested in being my neighborhood BFF. And my other neighbor is a single guy that is hardly ever home. Same for the girl across the street. Single. Never home.

We continue to live here because it’s a very short drive for my husband to get to work. We moved back to the city because the commuting was ridiculous but with housing prices being what they are, we’re now kind of stuck in this very small house in this non-family friendly neighborhood of ours.

I keep hoping my nagging the huz will one day result in his willingness to move someplace with a more reasonable cost of living. Theoretically, this would allow us to still be a one income family but live in a larger home in a better neighborhood that has some families.

But the clock is ticking…my kids will only be kids for a brief period of time. Once they’re teenagers big yards, sidewalks and families with little ones won’t matter to them and the chance to give them a childhood like mine will be gone.

Please…let there be kids!

‘Hoods Gone Wild

Anyone who thinks you can’t experience nature in the city that hasn’t been to my neighborhood lately. In addition to the albino palmetto bug we found in our backyard, the possum that sneaks through our backyard every night and the raccoon that uses our dog door to come on the porch and eat cat food, we also have a pair of hawks that have been around here for about a year.

My first close encounter with the hawks was when I was on the back porch. I heard a loud scuffle and turned around just in time to see one flying off with a poor little bluejay in it’s talons. More recently, I was driving down my street when one of the hawks swooped down alongside me and snatched up another poor bird from the ground. Acccckkkkkk! I know they need to eat, too, but that’s way harsh.

So check it out. This is really weird. I was on the phone about a week ago and I was talking about the hawks. I said that I was afraid that the stray kittens that come from the house on the next block (another long story) would get eaten by the hawks. Now I know this is technically possible but I was just musing that it could happen. I didn’t consider that it actually would.

But the very next day, my neighbor came to my door holding the most adorable blonde kitten and asked if it belonged to me. The poor thing had blood all over it’s head and I was all “What the hell????” According to neighbor guy, he walked outside and saw one of the hawks in the middle of the street, perched atop the kitten and pecking at his little head. He scared the hawk away and scooped up the kitten so it wouldn’t get attacked again. I offered to take the kitty to a vet but fortunately, the cuts were superficial and neighbor guy ended up finding it a home with the lady on the corner. Phew! Crisis averted.

Or so I thought.

We take care of a little cat. He was a feral stray when he first came around but now he is fairly tame. He’s about 7 months old and his name is Kitters. We have gotten him his shots, gotten him neutered etc. The only thing Kitters doesn’t do is come in our house. He’s afraid to come inside so he lives outdoors. A few months ago, I started noticing these bald, scabby patches on his head and neck that would come and go. I’d told my husband we needed to take him to a vet for his skin condition. Well, the other day, after the kitten incident, Kitters came around with 2 bald patches on the back of his neck, one with a red, bloody little hole in the middle and it hit me! He’s been getting pecked by the damn hawks! His only saving grace is that he’s probably just a little too big for them and has managed to get away. Fricken nasty birds!

Even more recently, I looked in the backyard and saw my cat, Bootsy, laying on the bricks and intently watching a small black racer snake. Now, I LOATHE snakes. I absolutely cannot stand them but I don’t want to see one get hurt so grabbed my camera and went outside to run Bootsy off. The snake started to move slowly and Bootsy pounced on it. I picked him up and moved him, holding him back with my foot while I snapped some photos. Then the snake zipped away and was out of sight in about 3 seconds so I guess he wasn’t hurt…

Did you click the pictures and see them full size? The bug picture is pretty freaky. Go look at them. They’re cool.

Hungry Hearts Pt II

This is part 2 of this post.

Recently, my daughter has been coming home from school and telling me terrible things; things I don’t want to hear, like that someone kicked her in the back on the slide. Twice. Hard.

Things like a boy in her class stamped on her foot as hard as he could for no reason.

Things like a little girl (that I happen to really dislike because she lies like a rug) who is supposed to be my daughter’s friend punched her in the stomach several times over the course of a day.

Things like she doesn’t want to go to school because some of the kids are so mean.

You can’t imagine how much it infuriates me to hear these things day after day. TQ is usually bubbly and social and fun-loving and carefree and though she’s very resilient, it still breaks my heart to see her so dispirited. It isn’t in her nature.

Anyway, those are just a mere sampler of what my six year old has been dealing with in kindergarten. KINDERGARTEN. And yes, I know kids will be kids. I’ve already heard that lame, pathetic excuse for completely inappropriate and totally anti-social behavior and I’m not buying it so please…DON’T leave me a comment to that effect.

So. I called the teacher, whom I like and respect very much, the afternoon before our scheduled parent-teacher conference (just a general meeting to discuss academics, test scores etc) to let her know that at the conference I want to discuss the excessive physical aggression that my daughter has been subjected to at school. She was very agreeable and understood why I was upset, seeing as this would be my second time contacting her on the matter. I also called some other mothers that I know well to see if their children have had similar experiences and guess what? They have. No big surprise.

At the meeting, after discussing academics, which my daughter is excelling at, I explained that TQ has been hit or hurt more in the past six weeks at this school than she has ever been in the past six years of her life. This kind of behavior is not something we are used to. Of course, when kids are two and three, they do hit and bite but they are very young and still learning the ropes of socialization. At ages five and six, kids know, or SHOULD know, that it’s unacceptable to hit someone.

And though I had an inkling of what the reasons were behind the behavior of some of these kids, I had never fully thought it through until this conference.

The teacher told me she had been at a very rough school before this one and that in her experience, it is a process to teach kids to behave at school and undo everything they have learned elsewhere, that it can take a while but eventually some headway gets made.

Apparently TQ’s school, despite the fact that it is in a fairly affluent zip code, is a big “special assignment” school which means kids come here from all over. Many of them come from areas where their own neighborhood schools are really bad and while this doesn’t mean that every kid that is on special assignment is a troublemaker, every child that has hit my daughter is, in fact, on special assignment.

Additionally, the majority of these kids have been in daycare of some kind since they were six weeks old and now spend their post-school hours in daycare/aftercare with children of all ages. Anyone with half a brain knows it’s not a good idea to let the little kids and the bigger kids mix unsupervised. They need to be separated but they often aren’t. Because of this dog-eat-dog environment, kids become aggressive from having to fight for everything. And, for the record, I have witnessed this with my own eyes.

It has also been my observation that there are never enough staff to watch all the children and many get lost in the shuffle, having to fend for themselves on a daily basis. They aren’t taught the proper way to behave at daycare and apparently aren’t learning it at home, either. And I know not all daycares are bad but the three after-care programs that I have observed in the past three years have left much to be desired in the way of supervision.

As noted in part I of this post, it seems like these kids also don’t get nearly enough adult attention. They seem starved for someone to notice them and take an interest in them. When kids are that hungry for attention, they don’t seem to care if it’s positive attention or negative, as long as they get some and that, IMO, also accounts for a lot of negative behavior in the classroom.

As you can see, there are a plethora of reasons why kids might come to kindergarten completely unprepared to function in an environment where proper socialization is required. Add to this the fact, according to TQ’s teacher, that some parents are completely uninvolved in their child’s school experience and it’s no wonder kids are acting the way they do.

She told me some parents never showed up for conferences, some never even returned the form confirming the time and date. She said some kid’s folders, which are supposed to be emptied and sent back to school each day, have NEVER been emptied. They have six weeks of work in them and they don’t return her phone calls, assuming she has a working number for them.

And my first instinct is to scream “What the hell is wrong with you people??? Why did you even have kids?”

I really, really wanted to blame the parents. My attitude was “I gave up my career and put my entire life on hold for the past six years. I’ve done everything I possibly could for my daughter to give her the best possible start in life. WHY do we have to suffer because other people didn’t? Why does my daughter have to be the sacrificial lamb while these other kids learn to be semi-normal human beings? It’s not fair!”

And I don’t think anyone would fault me for feeling like that. But somehere in my heart, I know it’s wrong to simply blame the parents and leave it at that. I know this is just a symptom of something much, much larger.

I mean sure, some of them, a few, are probably just rotten people but I have to believe that most people do love their children. If they went through all the trouble and mountains of paperwork to get their children into a school on special assignment, they must care about them, right?

We may scrape by and live month to month but many would say I’m lucky. One might even go so far as to say I am privileged because I am able to stay at home with my kids. For some people, however, working outside the home is not optional. They HAVE to work to put food on the table and pay the bills and have health insurance and thus, they have to utilize daycare.

But it’s here that my empathy starts to waver a bit because yeah, so you work… Does that mean you can’t take 60 seconds to look at your child’s schoolwork everyday? Does that mean you can’t find a moment in your day to return a phone call to your child’s teacher? Or sign your name to a form and stick it in their backpack? Can you spend some quality time with your child instead of sticking them in front of the TV or Playstation? (I’ve heard these kids talk about going home and playing videogames for hours) Can you make sure they have lunch money or take a moment to sign them up for free lunch? At what point does being a working parent (or an “economically-challenged” or a single parent) cease to be an excuse?

Conversely, I have observed that while many will give working parents a pass, our society really doesn’t like “economically-challenged” people very much. The prevailing attitude is that their hardships are justly deserved because if you’re poor, you MUST have done something really wrong to be in that position, right? But when people are trapped in a cycle of poverty, is it really their fault? Doesn’t society owe them a leg up, if only to save their children and their children’s children? Wouldn’t that help everyone including teachers and innocent bystanders like my daughter?

The whole thing just makes my head spin. I could sit here for hours rolling all this around in my mind and trying to find the guilty party and still not know how to save the kids that are in these situations or how to fix a system that does very little to help working, single and/or economically-challenged parents. And what’s going to happen to these children? ? Doesn’t anyone even consider that these kids will one day be adults?

As for my own child, how do I save HER? And yes, she does need to be saved. I know because I was her. I was a six year old in a class where the teacher didn’t give a damn that the boy behind me hit me in the head about 30 times a day, EVERY day. My father told me that if the teacher wouldn’t do anything, that I would have to defend myself and that’s just what I did. The next time the boy hit me in the head, I turned around and hit him over HIS head with my math book. And guess who got in trouble? Me.

I’m not going to let my daughter’s first school experience turn out like that and thus, I have some decisions to make. Do we wait it out and see if it gets better? Do we start looking at private schools that we can’t really afford? Do I look for someone with an address I can use in the district of a school that doesn’t have a large “special assignment” population? A school where parents are involved and present in their children’s lives? I know the perfect school doesn’t exist but I also know people from other schools who, in the first six weeks of kindergarten, have had NO incidents of physical aggression towards their children.

These are hard questions because everything else aside, I do like this school. And the teacher did have a talk with the class, explaining that hitting is not acceptable etc. It’s only been a couple days but TQ says everything has been going well and that nobody has hit her.

I hope it lasts but I’m afraid it won’t.

EDITED TO ADD:

In response to some comments…

Yes, I realize that kids of any class or background can be bullying jerks. It just so happens that in THIS case, the kids range from somewhat to very underprivileged and have, according to the survey taken at registration, spent their entire lives in daycare, which, in my opinion is the root of many of the problems we are dealing with. Additionally, I have to say that during the time my daughter spent in a private school where the kids (except mine and a couple others) came from very affluent families, there was not one single incident of physical aggression towards my daughter or her friends BUT there was some social bullying that occurred. You can draw your own conclusions…

As for dealing with the problem, we have taught TQ to let the teacher know when somebody hurts her. This has been a challenge for her because she’s never been one to “tattletale” but she now tells the teacher without hesitation and the teacher does what little she’s able to do with kindergarteners, which is usually a time-out or missing recess.

My husband has also taken it upon himself to teach her how to throw a punch, which I’m not too thrilled about. BUT…given my own history, I do support the idea that someday she might have to handle a situation herself so I’d rather she be prepared. Good thing she’s pretty tough. I’d have a hard time imagining a more delicate girl decking someone.

BUT, again, I also agree with the teacher that teaching a child to hit in response to a problem only exacerbates it. So, I’m not 100% sure where I am on the whole “hit ‘em back” school of thought. I just know that it makes me really sad to have to teach my daughter to do something that we’ve previously taught her is wrong. We teach our kids NOT to hit and then this crap happens. So frustrating.

The “kids will be kids” remarks did not come from the school or the teacher. That came from people I know socially and from people whose children have been grown for oh…about 40 years. It’s a stupid, ignorant thing to say.

Hungry Hearts

The other day at the community center I encountered a little boy, about seven years old who would have talked my ear off all afternoon if he could have. To say he was starved for attention would have been an understatement.

He told me he stayed at the center until 7pm every night. When I asked when he ate dinner, he said around 9pm but that it was okay because he ate lots of snacks at after-care.

What struck me most, however, was that in the course of our conversation, he announced the monetary value of everything he had (Playstation games, sneakers etc) or hoped to acquire.

It was sad because clearly he had been taught to value material things but it was equally clear that he really, really needed something intangible like some attention from his parent(s) or some other loving adult.

Unfortunately, this is not unusual with the kids who go to afterschool care at the community centers around here. If you seem the least bit interested, they will stick to you like glue and talk to you until you have to leave. They seem so…hungry…for someone to listen to them, to notice them.

I won’t even delve into the fact that they are grossly undersupervised and might as well be babysitting themselves…although I had no idea how much this observation would tie into the conference we had last night with my daughter’s kindergarten teacher.

That story, however, is worthy of it’s own post, which I don’t have time to compose right now. Suffice it to say that while I love the average Joe and Jane-ness of the parents I’ve seen around the school, as noted in a previous post, there’s much, much more to be said about the parents you never see at school and their children.

Stay tuned.

From a Whisper to a Scream

Today my friend Catherine has a new post up in which she showcases a buttload of blogs calling us all to action for a variety of causes. When I see how many people responded to Catherine’s challenge, I couldn’t be happier because I am, at heart, an activist, too.

As a mother to two children and a slave to school and nap schedules, I have very little free time for marching, sign-waving and letter-writing. That said, it’s a damn good thing I live in the age of the internet. You see, even if you’re time-challenged like me, you can STILL make your voice heard, thanks to the marvels of modern technology.

How? Well, if you visit the website of your favorite charities, chances are there is a section called “Take Action” or “Action Alerts.” These typically allow you to sign a petition, send a letter to a representative or a corporation, make a donation or let others know about an issue with a few keystrokes and mouseclicks. It honestly couldn’t be easier!

So now that you know about this awesome way to be an internet activist, go! Be heard! Make a difference!

If you look in my sidebar, under “Get Involved” you will see just a few of my favorite causes. And while I’ve got you here, I’d also like to let you know about something coming up that is very, very important to women & parents everywhere…

I was recently informed by Cooper Munroe of Been There Clearing House that in Pennsylvania (among several other states) it is legal to ask someone, during a job interview, if they are married or have children. As you can guess, this hurts mostly moms and single moms. Legislation to make it illegal has been stalled for SIX years but will hopefully be on the table again soon.

Momsrising has created a web page for this issue with links to PA legislators phone/email info and a petition. You don’t have to be from PA to send a message that this is important. What if you were one of the women who couldn’t find a job because you had children? Please take a moment to help.

FREE MONEY! FREE MONEY!

And finally, the folks over at Hamburger Helper are conducting a grant contest for local non-profit groups raising funds to positively impact their community in some way.

Here’s how it works:

Every month through May 2007, Hamburger Helper will choose one 501(c)(4) organization for a monetary grant of up to $15,000. All the group has to do is to register online with www.myhometownhelper.com and complete an essay of two hundred and fifty words or less describing how they the need help.

All of the application information can be found here.

If any of you is affiliated with a 501(c)(4) organization, you should share this info with them. This is a great opportunity to try and make a difference in your hometown!