Nagging or nurturing?
Sociologists say they're one and the same.

by Terri Mauro

Keep it clean
If only it were as easy as it is in the commercials.

by Terri Mauro

My house is a mess. This is nothing new. I've been housekeeeping-challenged for years. You figure there's a job around the house that's hard, disgusting, and endless, and I'd be right on it, but you'd be wrong. I hate cleaning. I'm bad at it. And so, I ignore it.

I guess I'm lucky my husband isn't a neat freak, though if he was, my whining for a cleaning lady might have been more successful. But he doesn't notice dirt much, and if he does, it doesn't seem to bother him. The food caked on the stove, the mildew darkening the shower, the dust caking every surface--well, we don't need help with that, we'll do it eventually. Never mind that if eventually takes too long it's virtually impossible to get this stuff clean. Worse comes to worse, we'll move.

What bothers him more is clutter, and that's something I've long ago learned to live with. It doesn't help, to be sure, that our son is developing into a packrat, too. It used to be just little cars that he kept scattered around, but now he's into a heavy cycle of recycling play, in which he goes around the house filling bags with junk and then moving those bags back and forth between his play schoolbus and his room and the middle of the living room floor. None of the recycling actually leaves the house, because this is pretend play, which is every so healthy but not a real boon to home decor.

The papers that he doesn't get around to stuffing in his bags gather on the dining room table, their own personal dumping ground. It's gotten to the point where we give parties every now and then just so we're forced to clear the table off, because otherwise the stuff would have hit the ceiling by now. Summertime's not too bad, because it's just junk mail and old newspapers and church bulletins and lost bills piling up. But with school starting now, we'll have the daily backpacks-full of school papers, and those get out of control fast. My husband would just scoop them right from the packs into the trash. I can't do that--my babies worked hard on this stuff. I prefer to wait and weed things out bit by reluctant bit, until by the end of the year I have it down to a crate or two for storage.

At least with the clutter, when you do pick it up, it's picked up, and the place looks better. Often you've only moved it someplace else, but the decluttered spot is much improved. If only actual cleaning were that satisfying. Most of the time, whatever magical new cleaning fluid I try, I can't really make much headway with dirt. Maybe I'm low on muscle. Maybe I give up too quickly. But rather than feel a glow of satisfaction after a hard session of scrubbing, I mostly feel the shame of incompetence. I can't do this. I'd rather take on extra work in a field I'm good at to pay someone who likes to clean to come and clean for me. Isn't that how the world should work? But somehow, we're all expected to be able to keep it neat.

There is one area in which I do shine, and that's cleaning the inside of sinks. A little Comet, a little scrubbing, and man, those things sparkle. Now, the faucet may always have mysterious uncleanable parts, and the metal trim around the outside of the sink always has some unscrubbable yellow gunk around it that might be dirt or might be the cement that's holding it on--but the inside of the sink, the inside is a slam dunk. Scrub that sink to brilliance, spray a little Murphy's Wood Soap in the air, and you might almost have the illusion that my kitchen is clean...as long as you don't notice the coffee grounds on the counter, the spaghetti-sauce stains on the cabinets, the sticky spots on the table. Hey, maybe I should move some of the clutter in here off the dining room table to cover this stuff up. Isn't that what all those school drawings are for?

Oh, behave
Students get with the program.

by Terri Mauro

My kids started a new school on Wednesday, and already it’s turning out to be a no-nonsense place. Day one, a sheet came home in backpacks with a Classroom Discipline Plan. Each of the kids’ teachers had filled it out with her own personal classroom rules and the consequence for breaches thereof. We were to read the rules over with the kids, then sign to indicate we all understood.

For my daughter’s mainstream third-grade class, the rules are:

1. Follow directions the first time they are given.
2. Keep hands, feet and objects to yourself.
3. Walk quietly in the building.
4. Return homework, test envelope and notices.
5. Only one person in the class or in a working group may talk at a time.

I think there are plenty of adults who could benefit from that last rule. Consequences in the classroom “if a student chooses to break a rule” are:

1st time: Name recorded in book = warning.
2nd time: Name x = student completes a problem-solving worksheet.
3rd time: Name xx = note to parents.
4th time: Name xxx = after-school detention.
5th time: Name xxxx = student sent to another class for 30 minutes.

Now, these all seem reasonable, but that last one--is it a punishment for the kid, or for the other teacher. “Hey, I can’t to anything with this child, he’s already got detention, YOU deal with him for half an hour.” Seems odd for an ultimate consequence, unless the other teacher is Cruella DeVil. But no matter; my girl is good, and she’ll never make an appearance in that book.

My son, on the other hand... Well, he’s in a self-contained special-ed class, and his expectations are appropriately somewhat lower. Here are the rules for his group:

1. Stay in your seat.
2. Your eyes are watching the teacher.
3. Your ears are listening to the teacher.
4. Take turns and share.
5. Keep your hands to yourself.

And now, the consequences, though with my impulsive guy, it’s hard to say he’s always choosing to break a rule:

1st time: Verbal correction.
2nd time: Teacher-student talk.
3rd time: Thinking chair.
4th time: Loss of free time.
5th time: Note to parent.

Now, my first reaction was: Wow, he can screw up five times before I have to hear about it! But then--now, is that five times for each thing? Because he’s guaranteed to break each of those rules at least once a day. If it’s cumulative for each one, then maybe... But does it accumulate all day? If he does it four times in the first hour, and then is good all day, then does it one time before he leaves, is that really so bad? And if he’s not able to stay in his seat, will he be able to stay in the thinking chair? And if he’s not listening to the teacher, will he listen for a teacher-student talk? And... And...

Well, it’s good to have a plan, anyway. Good to have rules spelled out. Good to let the parental units know up front. Good to have positive consequences for good behavior planned out, too. For my son’s class, there’s verbal praise, stickers, and notes home (love those notes). For my daughter’s, it’s special activities, extra computer time, and stickers. Wonder what sort of rewards they offer for parents who reinforce the rules and don’t whiningly defend their out-of-control children? Hey, we need incentives, too.

Leave her alone
My daughter's doing fine without an aide.

by Terri Mauro

Every day, on the e-mail lists I belong to for parents of kids with challenges of one sort or another, I read about struggles to get children more services. Battles with child-study teams, hotly contested IEPs, near fistfights with teachers or principals, tireless efforts to make sure what’s promised is what’s delivered.

Which makes me kind of embarrassed to be fighting to get my daughter fewer services.

Well, it’s not really fighting, yet. It’s sort of specifically not fighting. Our old child study team appears to have bungled my kids’ transition to their new school by not delivering their IEPs on a timely basis, so nobody knows what support my daughter is supposed to be getting in her mainstream class. Nobody knows how strongly the old child study team felt about her having an instructional aide to hold her hand. Nobody knows how they thought she would be destroyed to be left in a cold cruel class all by her little sweet self. And I’m not going to be the one to tell them.

Probably I should be screaming bloody murder because she’s not getting something that’s spelled out in her IEP. But frankly, I’m delighted. I’ve always wanted her to go it alone. She’s never been given the chance. So I’m taking this small document-less gap to let everyone know that we’d rather work with her furiuosly at home to help her keep up than have her shadowed by an ever-helpful grownup in the classroom. She’s been so proud these first few days to have done well without an aide. Why not let her keep doing so, even if it means we have to paddle like crazy below the surface?

So far, the teacher thinks she’s doing fine, the child study team is clueless, and the one resource-room person who did call me seemed amenable to doing less. Goodness knows, the school does less when it suits their purposes; why can’t they do it when it suits a parent’s? This week, the dreaded document should finally arrive, and then we’ll see whether the new child study team listens to me or sticks with the opinions of their colleagues. If so, I’ll have to fight for our right to get nothing.

I'm in sales
It's fund-raising time again.

by Terri Mauro

Wanna buy some wrapping paper?

How ‘bout some candles? Pistachios? Thin mints? Thirty feet of curly ribbon?

Yes, it’s school fund-raising time again. And though we’ve switched schools, the goods are the same. Gotta get that gift wrap. When did that start being the gold standard of school fund-raising? Did I sell gift wrap as a kid? I can’t remember. I remember selling Girl Scout cookies, and I most certainly remember selling tickets to concerts by my high-school choir, and I dimly recall something involving giant notebooks full of Christmas cards--but if in elementary school I toted home a big fat pouch full of brochures to use in selling my friends and neighbors tissue paper and gift bags, I’ve forgotten.

Of course, in those days, I would have been selling it door to door. That’s a no-no now. Maybe not everywhere, but in New Jersey, where memories of an 11-year-old boy who was killed while peddling candy door-to-door are still fresh, it’s gone from being no longer encouraged to specifically discouraged. DO NOT GO DOOR TO DOOR reads the instruction sheet, and we all know that means one thing: Make your mom sell this stuff. Kids can’t sell to strangers, but mom can tote the brochures to work and sell them to co-workers . . . who are trying to sell exactly the same merchandise for their kids.

Personally, I think the schools are missing the boat. Sure, we all need gift wrap, but if they sold school supplies, right now at the beginning of the year, they’d make enough to keep themselves in cupcakes straight through to June. Get a bunch of folders and notebooks and pens and pencils and rulers and glue sticks and scissors and pencil boxes and whatever all else the teachers are asking for in their start-of-year lists, print ‘em up with the school name, pile them on a table in the gym, and charge parents for the privelege of not having to run around town to five different stores to find book covers. I’m telling you, I’d pay top dollar.

But then, come Christmas, I wouldn’t have any wrapping paper, and that would be sad. You always need wrapping paper. You always need wrapping paper. I bet you need some right now? Wanna buy some?

Drill sergeant
My daughter needs to hear things over and over
and over and over and over.

by Terri Mauro

Yesterday, we received a big bag of textbooks from my daughter’s teacher. I’d asked to be informed about upcoming assignments so I could pre-review them with my girl, who needs all the review she can get. And the teacher, accommodatingly, possibly with images in her head of her student lugging home the entire contents of her desk every day, gave us a spare set. So now we can study anytime, anywhere. Oh, boy.

Homework hasn’t taken long to take over our lives this year. Gone are the days when my daughter could flake out in front of endless hours of Nickelodeon or set her watch by “Supermarket Sweep.” About her only down time is dinnertime. Between the actual assigned homework, and my attempt to keep everything else fresh in her mind, she’s working from school’s out to lights out. Fortunately, she enjoys working. Me, on the other hand...

The homework I pretty much make her do on her own--hey, I graduated 3rd grade, I don’t need to do it again. But this elaborate plan of enrichment I’ve devised, the constant review, the repetition of math facts and vocabulary words, the reading of textbook passages again and again until the words stick in her slippery brain--those all require an adult drill sergeant to enforce and enable the practice, practice, practice. And that drill sergeant would be me.

The good news is that she can memorize things. The bad news is, it’s not quick. We’ve been going over the same set of reading vocabulary words since Monday. She sits down with the book, she studies, I quiz. She consistently gets half right. It is not always the same half. She will often dutifully repeat a definition word for word, but for the wrong word. That thumping noise you hear is me banging my head against the wall. Last night, she seemed to have them all. This morning...well, it’s anybody’s guess. But we’ll drill them again, right up to the point when she hops out of the car at the schoolyard. Then the test will tell the tale.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to drill reading comprehension, and the test may tell that tale, too. In the future we’ll read the story every night, starting on the weekend. These are long stories. Goodbye, “Rugrats.” Then there are the math flashcards that are mandated by her Sylvan Learning Center handlers. Just six minutes! they say. Anybody can find just six minutes to do flashcards! We do them after dinner, post vegetables, pre ice cream. And it does help. But those six minute increments represent another thing to fit in amongst all the other increments of time for all the other essential facts. It’s exhausting--and I’m not even the one who has to learn this stuff.

All in all, it makes me feel like I’m running a learning boot camp. But there are compensations. Just now, she came in and ran through her words, and she knew every one. I couldn’t be more proud. Of course, then I had to push it and drill her on the continents, and she named Asia, Europe, Africa, Antarctica, and New Jersey. Back to work, private.

copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro