How’s Your School District?

How’s your school district? Our district sucks. We live in the southland of a major metro area. While our district isn’t quite as substandard as the urban core district, we barely achieved accreditation in the past several years. The district was reconfigured last year: a high school was closed and converted to a middle school. One of the two middle schools was closed and converted to a  “catch-all”: gifted education, alternative students and administrative offices.

My daughter attends the gifted program and the students were informed 2 weeks ago that the year would be cut short by 4 weeks because the middle school is closing again. The gifted program will return to housing in a small inadequate space they inhabited for years.

I’ve homeschooled my daughter for 4 years (expect for the gifted program; we’re still taxpayers after all). I read an article recently that stated that there were two main reasons parents *choose* to home school their children: 1) parents want their children taught from a Biblical perspective and 2) parents want to keep their children from mingling with minority kids.

What a load of bullshit! I’ve homeschooled my daughter because the level of education she can receive from our district is piss poor. The two or three secular private schools in our area want college tuition to attend and I don’t believe in religious education. (I sent my daughter for one year to a Catholic private school. The teacher in third grade was fantastic but overall the school was deficient). Plus I discovered I’m suspicious of religious education or maybe just Catholic instruction since I disagree with so much of their tenets.

My daughter will be entering the ninth grade next year. She and I are both weary of  home school. I’d like her to attend the 4 years of high school at the same school. Don’t know at this point what we will do. Move you say? You must not be one of those Americans crushed by the Great Recession.

Are You A Social Media Spy?

Does your kid have a Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler account? Do you know the passwords and when he/she isn’t looking do you spy?

I have spied on my teenage daughter relentlessly and my almost pathological *need* to know everything going on in her life has backfired. I made the mistake of confronting her concerning some of the things I read and now she feels totally violated. With good reason: I’ve spied and confronted on a weekly basis for months.

I don’t believe children, including younger teens are entitled to complete online privacy especially if there are potential problems in their lives. That being said, parents can go overboard and become almost addicted to spying. We don’t need to know every detail of a teen’s life: teenagers need space to develop their own opinions.

Social media, texting and email are part of our children’s  lives from an increasingly early age. And from an early age parents need to decide the level of exposure their child has to technology. With each level, parents need to speak with their kids about potential online dangers and state up front how they will be monitored.

Whadda ya think?

Teenage Angst?

Planted flowers, read a lot. Going to Applebee’s tomorrow because I love their club sandwich.  Last week gifted daughter caught shoplifting lip gloss at K-Mart. Grounded for 3 weeks but hasn’t had much of an effect: still doing whatever the hell she wants to do. Only child, 14 years old. Involved with a 17-year old guy from her gifted class that is a liar and a manipulator.    

  What to do? She thinks he is “effing amazing” according to Facebook. In reality he is a user and most likely a  sociopath. According to his mother he went to court three days ago because he was “caught up” in a FBI surveillance for child porn and they even confiscated his computer. According to what the asshole told my daughter he went to court for sexting. This freaking predator is Nick Yamamoto of Kansas City, MO. Problem: the asshole is a predator yet my daughter defends him.