Half Changed World

While I wrote about the preschool application process yesterday, these days I spend more time trying to figure out what we’re going to do about elementary school in a year and a half.

As I’ve written before, we’re probably going to start out by sending D to the local public elementary school, which is exactly 2 blocks from our front door.  I’m a big believer in public schools, and it would make our life immeasurably easier to send the boys to a school that’s so close, but this is still not an easy decision.  Even though we live in a pretty affluent area, this elementary school serves an overwhelmingly low-income population — about 85 percent of the kids qualify for free lunches*. Free, not free or reduced price.  As is the case with most schools serving low-income kids, the test scores have been atrocious.  So I worry about teaching to the test, I worry about whether D (who is already starting to read) is going to be bored, and I worry about whether there’s going to be peer culture that says its uncool to be good in school.  I also don’t like to think about the arguments we’re going to have when many of his classmates’ parents allow them to roam around the neighborhood without adult supervision at what I think is absurdly young ages. 

But I like the new principal and I’m impressed by the teachers I’ve met.  We went to the open house a couple of weeks ago, and we practically had to carry D home because he didn’t want to stop exploring the classrooms.  The kindergarden classes only had 13 kids per class this year (with a teacher and an aide), which is a big plus.  And they’re talking about trying out multi-grade classrooms for the K-2 students to allow for more individualization of the curriculum.  So I think we’re going to give it a try.  But I second-guess myself on this all the time.

Bitch PhD wrote an interesting post yesterday about the life lessons she learned from attending academically mediocre inner-city schools:

"I learned how to be comfortable with people from the wrong side of the tracks, to think critically about race and class and how they play out in subtle ways, and that there is a really major difference between intelligence and privilege, though the two are usually confused."

Those are lessons that I’d like my kids to learn, but not at the cost of academic skills.  Dr. B argues that she got those at home regardless.  I think that’s probably true of most of what kids learn in elementary school, but I’m not convinced it’s the case in the upper grades.

Toronto Mama has also been worrying about schools, and she points out that the safety issue can be the trump card when looking at urban schools:  "I do not want my babies to be afraid to go to school."  Fortunately, I don’t think that’s an issue here.

* The houses here are small, and the upper-income residents typically don’t have kids, or move further into the suburbs before their kids hit school age.  And many of those who do have school-age kids send them to either private school or the "traditional" magnet school.   

I’ve read some interesting posts recently about the process of applying and choosing preschools.  Moxie wrote about the preschool interview process in New York City — and she swears that this is the low-key version.  Yikes.  Toronto Mama wrote about the preschool they didn’t get into — and the one they did.  Julia is having second thoughts about her choice of preschools.

We actually had a pretty sane preschool application experience by contrast.  We didn’t apply to any of the schools that have people lining up at 4 am to turn in their applications, in part because we weren’t clued in enough to know that we had to line up to have a shot at getting in.  The preschool that was our first choice — because we liked it, and because it was walking distance from our house — turned out to have exactly ONE slot open that year for kids who weren’t siblings of current students or children of alumni.  Of course, no one mentioned this to us until after we had already given them our $75 application fee. 

As it turns out, the preschool D attends didn’t even have a waiting list.  I think that’s because it’s a Jewish preschool and many non-Jews don’t even consider it an option.  We’re very happy with it.  D looks forward to going to school, has lots of friends, and is learning to sit quietly when it’s appropriate and take turns and things like that.  That’s all we were really looking for.  At the parent "orientation night" they gave us a big speech about why they have a "play-based curriculum" and recommended Einstein Didn’t Use Flash Cards.  I didn’t need to be convinced.

That said, someone posted to the DC Urban Moms email list a few weeks back on the verge of hysterics because she had been waitlisted at every single preschool she had applied to.  A lot depends on geography around here — traffic is so miserable around here that you really need to stick to places right near your home or work if you don’t want to spend an extra 2 hours a day sitting in traffic.

I have a theory that these preschools that are so hard to get into are the major incubators for "mommy madness."  It seems likely that if you make parents jump through hoops to get their kids enrolled, you’re selecting for high intensity parenting; the same people who were willing to line up at 3 am to get into the school are also going to make lots of calls for the fundraising auction and push for all organic snacks.  Even at our laid-back preschool, I sometimes feel guilty for not being more involved; I hate to think what I’d feel like in one of those pressure cookers.

After another trip to the doctor, D is now on six different medications.  Two of them taste awful, and he howls and runs away when we take the bottle out, but then uses every ounce of bravery in his body to swallow them.  I keep wondering whether we’re doing the right thing, if we’re putting him through this unnecessarily.

This afternoon, I remembered one of my favorite Anne Lamott articles, about God’s in box.  I love Lamott, because she’s just as neurotic as I am.  She both makes me feel normal just the way I am, and gives me hope that it’s possible to get off the hamster wheel.

Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article on the front page of the business section about advertising aimed at children, and the not terribly effective group that monitors it.  It’s an interesting article, and made me once again grateful that we have TiVo and can fast-forward through all the commercials.

Unfortunately, the article was illustrated with big color pictures of several products that have children’s tv and movie characters prominently featured on them. 

So D took one look at the paper, pointed at the box of poptarts with Mr. Incredible on them, and said "I’d like those."

"Do you know what they are?"

"No.  What are they?"

"Why do you think you’d like them?"

"I just do."

"If I put a sticker of Mr. Incredible on these" — point at the bottle of children’s vitamins that I’ve been trying to convince him to eat — " would you eat them?"

"No."

"So why do you think you’d like those?  Just because they have Mr. Incredible on them doesn’t mean they’re good."

"I would like them."

I go into the kitchen and pull out a box of macaroni and cheese with Blue on it from the cupboard.  "Do you remember this?  You really wanted us to get this, because it had Blue on it?  When we made it, did you like it?"

"No."

He returns to the table and the newspaper.  "But I’d like this.  We can go to the store and buy some."

I sigh.  My husband says to me: "This is going right into your blog, isn’t it?"

D’s a very bright 4-year old.  But he’s simply not able to make the logical leaps that I was leading him towards.

Via Ms. Musings, I read about WHEN (Women Helping Empower Neighborhoods), a Pittsfield, MA group that helps women get involved in politics.  I was particularly intrigued to learn that part of the support it provides is things like driving kids to classes and providing cooked meals to free up time for the candidates.  This makes a lot of sense to me; family responsibilities are clearly one of the reasons that there aren’t a lot of women in their 30s running for office.

The article reminded me of Mark Schmitt’s comments about Zephyr Teachout’s argument that people are hungering for connection — not just on line, but in person, possibly over drinks, and that groups like the DNC and the ACLU should provide such opportunities as a way to get people involved.  Schmitt’s response is that while such meetings might be appealing to some people (young singles he thinks), the last thing he needs in his busy life is more meetings.

I thought that was an interesting exchange, because I agree with both of them.  I’m aching for community, and the opportunity to feel like I’m part of a movement, not just wandering around in the wilderness on my own.  But I also don’t have time for lots of meetings.  (I think I’m about to drop out of my local Democratic committee, because the meetings are neither pleasurable nor make me feel like I’m making a difference.) 

One way to reconcile these competing needs would be to make the meetings more family-friendly. A newspaper article on WHEN describes its meetings:

Monthly meetings also do not resemble traditional political gatherings.  Meetings last for precisely one hour to make the time manageable for mothers, and children are always welcome. Mattson-Brown laughed when she recalled making one presentation with her 2-year-old son holding onto her leg the entire time.

Another approach is that taken by the Mainstreet Moms Operation Blue (MMOB; formerly Mainstreet Moms Opposing Bush).  They encourage you to get together with the people you already know, and to activate those networks for political ends.  During the election season, they provided all the information you needed to organize house parties to write letters encouraging other moms to register and vote — including addresses. 

Thanks to Ann Douglas for the very nice mention of this blog.  She’s the author of several books on pregnancy and parenting, and her blog focuses on these issues.  And welcome to anyone stopping by as a result of her mention.  I’m afraid the place isn’t quite as up-to-date and "neat" as I’d have liked with company coming over, but I’ve been somewhat distracted from writing about parenting by… actual parenting.  So, don’t pay any attention to those dustbunnies, put the stack of books on the floor so you can sit down, and make yourself comfortable.

That’s usually the way I respond to in-person unexpected guests as well.  We’re not total slobs, and we generally stay on top of the dirty dishes and the laundry, but vacuuming is generally pretty low on our list of priorities.  I think the problem is that it doesn’t really get any harder if you postpone it a day or a week.  If you don’t do the laundry for two weeks, you have a huge mountain of dirty clothes to face when you run out of underwear.  But if you don’t vacuum for two weeks, it’s not really any more work than if you had been doing it all along.  And there’s always kids to be read to, and blogs to be written, and little things like sleep. So the vacuuming tends to slide…

That said, my husband and I have actually spent much of today taking turns vacuuming and dusting.  We don’t know what triggered the asthma attack, but the level of dust and cat hair in the house is something that’s within our control.  They’re probably not the major cause — if D. were really allergic to them, he wouldn’t have made it to age 4 without showing symptoms, not the way we keep house — but my understanding is that triggers are additive, and so it’s worth doing what we can. 

Jen commented in a thread on excema over at finslippy that her doctor "seemed floored that I was not willing to run home and scour our house from top to bottom every 3-4 days in order to keep a few bumpy spots from coming up on my kid’s arms and legs."  I’m totally on her side — but not being able to breathe is another story.  If vacuuming the heck out of the house keeps us out of the pediatric ward, somehow we’ll manage to do it.

D. had a full blown asthma attack (his first) yesterday afternoon and spent the night in the hospital.  He’s doing well now, and we hope he’ll be home later today, but I’m obviously not going to have a chance for a while to respond to the very thoughtful posts on Warner’s articles.  I will second the recommendation to check out the dicussion at Chez Miscarriage.

One thought before I shower and head back to the hospital.  I have a job where I can take leave on short notice, with pay and without risk of losing my job.  I have an extremely involved spouse.  And I have good health insurance.  And this is still really hard.  Lots of people are missing at least one of these, and there’s a significant number of parents who don’t have any of them.  And poor kids are disproportionately likely to have asthma, probably due to environmental factors.

Update: We’re all home, and D is breathing easily (although with regular nebulizer treatments).  We need to meet with his regular pediatrician next week to figure out where we go from here with identifying the trigger and deciding whether he needs ongoing maintenance treatment.  But the immediate crisis is over.  Thanks for the good wishes.

Since I haven’t had time to read this week, I’m going to cheat a bit and talk about a book I read years ago, Your Money or Your Life, by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, as well as to riff off Laura and Mel‘s   recent posts about money.

Robin and Dominguez’s argument is that by the time you add in all the real costs of working — taxes, commuting costs, business wardrobes, the meals we buy out because we don’t have time to cook, the toys we buy ourselves as rewards for getting through frustrating times — your true wages are quite low.  They advocate for cutting expenses and saving until you can live off the interest from your savings — which they call Financial Independence.

I have issues with many of their specific recommendations, but the basic point that money is a medium for exchanging "life energy" for goods and services, and that you should know where that life energy is going, has stuck with me for years.  Interestingly, the first time I did their exercise of tracking every cent you spend, I decided I wasn’t spending ENOUGH money on books.  (This was before the advent of the online library catalog, and the ability to put holds on books from home.  I’d say that 90% of my reading is from the library these days.)

I haven’t tracked every cent in a while, but the recent exercise of tracking our groceries made me confident that there’s not a whole lot of slack in our budget.  Travel is really my one expensive hobby, and we haven’t been doing much of that lately.

I make more money than I ever thought I would.  But I also didn’t expect to be the sole wage earner in my family.  A major factor that made it possible is that we were extremely lucky in our timing in buying a house; we couldn’t afford our house on one income if we were first-time homeowners today.  If my primary goal was not to have to work, we could move somewhere outside of a major urban center and live off our equity for a while. 

I’ve been job hunting, and most of the jobs that appeal to me pay significantly less than I currently make.  I’ve done a rough budget and figured out how low I think I can go without having an ongoing negative cash flow, but that doesn’t help with the emotional issues.  If I get a job that I love, I don’t think I’ll regret the money, but I’m afraid that if a job turns out not to be what I hoped, I’ll think "well, I could have been unhappy at work but making 30% more."

Two weeks out from the deadline, I’ve suddenly convinced myself to apply for a fellowship to work in New Zealand for six months.  So I need to pull that application together.  And just when D. is finally getting better, N. is getting sick.

So nothing new tonight.  You can read my latest DotMoms post if you want.

****

2/15 update:  Ok, sanity hit.  I can’t pull together a decent proposal in this amount of time.  If I’m going to apply for the fellowship, I need to apply because I’m excited about my project idea, not just because the idea of escaping from my job and living in NZ for 6 months sounds great.  So I’m not going to do it — at least not this year.

David at Scrivenings is calling for more cute kid stories, so I thought I’d oblige.

1)  Sunday morning at the Zoo, the first warm weekend in about a month.  N was happy in the stroller until I took him out to go into the Big Ape House, but now he doesn’t want to get back in.  He’s walking down the main path, falling about every 10 steps, but picking himself up each time without a peep of protest and continuing.  D is happy to take his place in the stroller, and is shouting "Go N. go!"   About as good as parenting gets.

2)  D hates the nebulizer, but is starting to understand that it makes him feel better.  In the car, he has a coughing fit.  He announces his plan: "We go home, and I take my jet medicine [his name for the nebulizer, as the face mask looks like a pilot’s], and I cry, and then doggie helps me calm down."