Who's the adult?

It's been an exhausting day, punctuated at the end by 5 kids deciding to chomp down on a raw jalapeno and a parent cornering me to ask me how he can help his daughter break through her "writer's block". The kids with burnt chile lips are, I'm certain, still working through their "natural consequence" of deciding to follow others rather than think for themselves. The parent, on the other hand, needs to realize his daughter's writer's block is yet another strategy she is using to say, "Help me!" In this case, "help me" means get the girl some therapy...as was recommended in December when the girl told me that somedays she feels like killing herself.

On the days when I'm not so exhausted from wrangling students (who behave a lot like cats) into thinking and not just doing, I want to start my own show called the "Child Whisperer"...kind of a combination of "Super Nanny" and the "Dog Whisperer". "Boundaries, rules, and limitations" is what Cesar Milan (DW fame) says over and over to dog owners who have let their dogs rule the pack. "That's unacceptable" is what the Super Nanny always says to the little brats who, like the dogs, control the household, holding the family hostage to their tantrums, rudeness, and often physical outbursts.

Child Whisperer would be more about "training" parents and "rehabilitating" children (Cesar Milan says in his opening credits "I train people, I rehabilitate dogs").

The first lesson I'd give parents -- BE THE ADULT!

Case study #1: Parent to 3rd grader..."Well, honey, next year to you want to be in 4th grade or 5th grade?"

Case study #2: Parent of child with so called writer's block ..."Well, dear, are you interested in going to therapy?"

I could go on and on, but the point is when did parenting become consensus based versus leadership based?

Don't get me wrong...I'm all for communicating with kids, helping them learn to be more empowered to make decisions, but if a kid has said she thinks about suicide, is it really a choice for her to see a therapist? And can an 8 year old truly decide if she is socially, emotionally, and academically ready to skip a grade?

Lesson #2: The only constant is change. Adapt or perish.

Every year about this time, we hear from parents who are up in arms because the don't understand their kid's math homework. "Well, WE never learned it this way? What's wrong with the way we learned it?"

Such a big question.
My first response (because I'm trying to be nice): No one is saying your way is wrong. This is just a different way. The more ways the better, don't you think?

My second response (because I'm trying to remind parents that our way isn't always the best way in the 21st century): And was your middle school education pleasurable? Did you just follow the mathematical rules as you were instructed to do? (My generation was more like dogs than cats as students..."What do you want me to do next, what, what, what? I'll do anything...wag, wag, wag, drool, drool, drool) Or did you understand what "division" really meant, what it actually was doing when you divided 36 into 422? Again the question, did you just DO or were you encouraged to really THINK about what you were doing and understand it beyond the test on Friday?

My third response (again, calling up the idea that maybe how we were taught (trained?) wasn't necessarily the only way to be taught...still trying to be nice, though I can feel my blood pressure rise): Is there only one way to solve a mathmatical problem? Or would it be better if your child learned a number of different strategies that s/he could use in problem-solving?

My fourth response (that I learned from my dear friend David and is a sign that I'm really about to lay into the parent): Do you think thousands of years ago when they made the shift from hammer and chisel to pencil and paper parents were saying to teachers, "What?! They're aren't learning the way we learned? I don't understand this!!"

I guess these are the reasons I'm not a parent...and don't tell me that I should be either. I had the baby cravings back when I was in my early 30s, but I knew then and I'm certain of it now that I was too selfish with my time to share it with children 24 hours a day...you get me for 8 hours a day, when I can still remain civil and really help kids! I applaud parents who do it well. I bow down at their feet every chance I get (and I'm lucky to have some absolutely wonderful parents of some wonderful kids).

But sometimes, just sometimes, I think parents have forgotten their role. Boundaries, rules, and limitations folks...not EVERYTHING is ACCEPTABLE!

And I think they've forgotten how much our world has changed and is changing and how rapidly it will continue to change. If I gave their children the tools of the 1970's, would they find success in 2020? And don't even get me started on measuring success!

Here's one for them: So, when you take your fully computerized Lexus into the dealer (private school so we have a lot of expensive cars) do you want the mechanic to be schooled in the "old" ways of car repair or do you want her/him to know how to fix a fancy computerized Lexus? Sure, some of the skills are the same, but I know my Dad's mechanic didn't have to operate a computer diagnostic machine to fix our old Ambassador stationwagon. Hell, they don't even call them stationwagons anymore!

And furthermore, would you let your child drive said Lexus because s/he showed an "aptitude" for driving at age 4? Or because s/he expressed an interest in taking the $60,000 car out for a spin?

Deep breath...deep, deep breath!

I find myself taking many a deep breath during my time with parents.

My teaching partner and I always joke that we should hand out math homework for the kids and an additional math packet for the parents, which they can work on after they watch the video we've produced instructing them on how to do the math we've been studying in school.

Hey, that's it! We'll give them the instructional video and then insert subliminal messages from the Child Whisperer throughout. Boundaries, rules and limitations...we'll whisper under the lesson on subtracting negative integers...your child's behavior is unacceptable we'll flash up on the screen for a nano-second...be the adult, be the adult is what they'll hear if they play the music from the tape backwards!

If that doesn't work, I may just have to handout jalapenos!