Are You Happy with the Quality of Your or Your Child's Education?

It's back to school time. How is your children's school district performing? Every year the local newspaper ranks the county's school districts based on standardized test scores from the previous two school years. Some schools in the area consistently rank in the excellent range while others consistently rank poorly.


It should be no surprise to anyone that the affluent school districts are the ones that rank excellent and the inner city school districts are the ones that rank poorly. In our area, living in a city almost always means you're a person of limited financial means.

I grew up in one of those poor inner city school districts. At that time, there were kids graduating from high school that could barely read. There was more emphasis placed on football than winning scholarships. So my parents sacrificed and saved and sent me to 12 years of private school, all in the name of a quality education
Still, it wasn't ideal. I ended up attending my high school school's poorest feeder school. We were teased and harassed by the richer kids for being poor. They were kids who grew up in large houses with parents who could afford to give them a new car for their 16th birthdays. We had gone to a school that barely had any heat in the winter and had no air conditioning in the summer.

After I graduated and went to college, I realized that even though my parents had sacrificed and sent me to what they considered a better school that the education I had gotten was not as good of an education as I would have gotten had I gone to one of the affluent public schools. We didn't have many electives to chose from, we didn't have updated science labs or technology. There were still manual typewriters in our computer lab and we didn't even have an auditorium.

I have felt for many years now that my education has failed me. Maybe that's why today I enjoy watching educational programming on television. I'm curious about the world. I enjoy learning new things. I just hope some day my daughter doesn't look back and say her education has failed her.

Poster Children for Vaccination ... Or Not

The Duggars apparently do not vaccinate. On the Aug. 24 episode, 12 of their 19 children were ill with chicken pox. It was sad to see, however, that no explanation was given as to why they were not vaccinated. Is it all vaccines they object to or just this one? Is it a religious objection? Prior to this the Duggars have shown a trust in modern medical science.


I've seen a number of anti-vaccine posts online recently. Not a single one was written by a doctor, scientist or medical professional and none of them cited religious objections as a reason not to vaccinate. The primary reason I see is a fear of autism caused, they say, by chemicals in the vaccine. The problem with that argument is the chemicals they object to are no longer in the vaccines. But they were there when we were kids and our parents were kids. So we're the ones who should have a higher autism rate, not little kids. Personally, I think the rise in autism rates has to do with better detection as opposed to more people in the population being afflicted.

Another mom objected because she had an allergic reaction to a vaccine she received as an adult. This experience, she said, proved that vaccines are dangerous and unnecessary. Her two toddlers are unvaccinated.

There are strong opinions on both sides of this issue. I would have liked to have heard the Duggars opinions and rationale. After all, with 19 children, disease can spread through their family like wildfire. They seem to be poster children for why vaccination is important and necessary.

So Much For the Women's Movement

What do you think of the statement "A woman was only put on this earth to have children"? That's what a woman on A Baby Story admitted, during the first five minutes of the show, that she had been told by her second-grade teacher and that, because she had been told this, her only ambition in life has been to have children. She was 9 months pregnant and about to give birth to her third child in four years. She says she wants a total of five.


The woman looked to be in her thirties or so.  It wasn't as if she was going to school in the pre-woman's-movement days. She was going to school today.  What kind of teacher tells her students that? Worse yet, what sort of woman believes her and bases her entire life on one statement?



When I was growing up, I was told I could be anything I set my mind to. All I needed was the right education and training. My parents wanted grandchildren, but it wasn't something they ever mentioned to me until I passed the age of 25 or so. Why? Because they also wanted me to have a career and make something of myself. They wanted me to use the brain I was born with.



Now, I'm not degrading anyone who wishes to become a parent. But I find it appalling anyone would believe the statement, "A woman was only put on this earth to have children". Women were put on this earth to have children, but that's not the only reason they were born. We have brains in our heads. We are capable of being artists, writers, scientists, of making this world a better place for all of humanity. We must let go of out dated ideas and realize our true potential.

Getting My Money's Worth

"It's ridiculous how much it costs." That's a statement my mother and I were uttering a lot during a recent shopping trip. What were we buying? Was it groceries? Electronics? Jewelry? Guess again. We were shopping for toddler girls' clothes.


Specifically, we were searching for dresses. Sure there was a sale going on, but it was only about 25% off. Some of these dresses - size 2T-4T - were $45 regularly priced. These are dresses which would only be able to be worn for four to six months before they are outgrown. I simply can't justify the price, especially when I could buy a dress for myself for that price.

The mark-up on children's clothing must be incredible, more so than on adult's clothing. I am very much a comparison shopper. I know how much it costs to buy a t-shirt for a toddler verse a t-shirt for an adult and virtually everywhere the price is the same. I'd like to know why the price is the same when the amount of fabric used is so much less? Sounds to me like this is a case of the rich getting richer. After all, for example, an adult may buy one new t-shirt a year whereas a growing child will go through several new t-shirts every few months. A clothing company will, therefore, make more money on children's clothing.

I'm sure some of you will say that that's why you buy your kids' clothes at garage sales or resale shops or on eBay. Fair enough. However, we know enough people buy their kids' clothing in department stores simply by looking at the size of the baby and kids departments in those stores.

I simply will not buy my daughter new clothes unless I know it's worth the price and I will get my money's worth.

When Moms Murder

South Carolina mom Shaquan Duley was charged Aug. 17 of murdering her two sons. She says she is remorseful, but originally she did not admit any part in their deaths.


The boys died Monday in the wee hours of the morning. According to police, Duley suffocated her two sons, both under the age of three, strapped them into their car seats and roll her car into a lake. She later flagged down a motorist for help. The first story she told police was that she was in an accident but escaped. She later confessed to killing the boys.

Duley lived in a state of constant stress. She was out of work, estranged from her children's father and living with her two sons and daughter in her mother's house. She relied on her mother for support and was belittled constantly by her mother about her failings. It was after an argument with her mother that she left the house with her sons and ultimately killed them.

Sadly, this isn't the first time there's been a story in the news about mothers killing their children and covering it up. It's said that everyone has their breaking point, and for moms-who-murder their breaking point is when they feel they can no longer handle the stress in their lives. But what I fail to understand is why they believe murdering their children will solve their problems. Are they so desperate to escape that they feel the only way they can escape is to get rid of their children? Do they become temporarily insane?

All this raises in my mind the need for easy access to counseling and financial services for mothers. Stay-at-home mothers in particular can feel extremely isolated. What happens when moms have undiagnosed post partum depression or when they don't know how to control their rage when a child misbehaves? There needs to be a way that a woman like Duley can talk to someone about everyday stresses and perhaps receive career counseling so she can have the tools to financial provide for her family. Unfortunately, until there are social services aimed specifically at moms, tragedies like Duley's will continue to occur.

Uneducated About Adoption

My husband's niece is a birth mother. When she was 20, she gave birth to a baby girl she gave up for adoption and it's my understanding that she did so because her parents wanted her to. This a foreign concept to me. On my side of the family, the only experience we have is as adoptive parents. No one has ever given away a child.


So last week when an old 20/20 episode about adoption aired. I watched it in the hopes of learning something about adoption process. The episode followed two teenage girls who became pregnant and were enrolled in adoption programs. According to 20/20, two out of every five birth mothers change their mind and decide to keep their babies. At no point during their participation in the adoption program did the girls receive intensive counseling. No one spoke to them about how difficult a decision it was or how they should decide if it is the right decision for them.

My niece receive no counseling while she was pregnant. During her pregnancy she adopted a dog. The dog has since become her child. She refers to herself as its mother. I can't help but think that the dog has become a substitute for the baby she was forced to give up, a baby (now a preschooler) whom she speaks of often.

One of the teens in the 20/20 episode mentioned that people think giving your baby away is the easy thing to do, but for her it wasn't easy. Maybe so, but I think the prevalent view is that women give their babies away because it is convenient. When I was in high school, only one of the girls who got pregnant was permitted to return to school It was a private Catholic school, so if you got pregnant, you weren't welcome. Anyway, she was allowed to return because her boyfriend committed suicide. I remember her talking about going out and partying, drinking and the like just a few months after her baby was given away. So, for her, adoption certain was the convenient thing to do. She could go back to being a teenager with no responsibilities.

The teens in the 20/20 episode, despite having open adoptions and being able to arrange visits with their children, had not seen their babies in three years, the amount of time that had past from the original episode and the follow-up story. One of the teens even had another child. They were able to move on after the birth of their babies as if nothing had ever happened.

I also get the feeling that, in my niece's case, it was the more convenient thing to do. I certainly hope that I am wrong in all these cases, but I can only go by what I have observed.

On a whole, our society is uneducated about adoption. We really don't know how it exactly it works without having preconceived notions or prejudices as to what it's like or what birth mothers are like. I think adoption is something kids should be taught about whenever they have sex ed classes. I don't see any other way to educate the general public.

Baby Fever?

What is this "baby fever" that I hear about from time to time? Biologically, we all (male or female) have an unconscious urge to procreate. That's what our sex drive is. Many people (again, male or female) also have the conscious desire to have children. But a fever? That sounds like a diagnosis you'd find in a Victorian medical book, a diagnosis from those archaic times when men felt a woman's only desire in life was to become a mother. Those times are gone or at least I thought so.


In the past week, I have seen two posts on CafeMom from women who claimed to have baby fever. Both of them already had children. (One of them had four.) And both of them were told by their doctors not to have any more children because either the pregnancy or the birth could kill them. Yet here they were saying they had baby fever and wanted to get pregnant again. They said the urge was so strong they needed advice as to whether they should go through with it or not.

I don't understand this. How could the urge to get pregnant be so strong you would risk death just do it? Both of them, as I said, already had children, so it wasn't as if they were facing a future without ever experiencing motherhood. Moreover, why would you want to risk leaving the children you already have without a mother? How could the urge be so strong that common sense and self preservation would be thrown out the window?

This is what I think is going on. These women have a low self esteem and feel that their only worth comes from bearing children. If they are no longer able to do so, they feel lost and don't know what to do. The do not think about their other roles in their life -- wife, mother to the other children, friend, daughter, niece, ect -- only about the role that was lost. I hope these women discover that they have more value in this world than being a baby-making machine. I hope they grow to enjoy life and the children they have, instead of mourning the children that never existed.

Stuff the Bus

It's almost time for the kids to go back to school. Here where I live, there is about two weeks left of summer vacation.


Every year one of our area's TV stations has a program called Stuff the Bus. Stuff the Bus is a fundraiser for disadvantaged school children in the viewing area. School buses are parked in front of the station and donations of school supplies are accepted. As the donations come in, they are placed in the bus. The goal is to stuff the bus (or as is always the case, buses) with as many school supplies as possible. Donations are then accepted for the rest of the month at a local business. This year it's Great Clips.

A secondary goal is to help disadvantaged children ease the embarrassment of not having enough money to buy the school supplies they need. This same TV station also does a toy fundraiser every Christmas.

It's always heartwarming to see how many people are willing to make donations. We live in an area that has been hit hard by the recession. Factories and businesses have closed. People have moved away to find jobs elsewhere. The unemployment rate is high. Cities are taking in less revenue in taxes. I could go on. Yet when it comes time to help others, the community always raises to the occasion. They do this every school year and every Christmas, and when the earthquake hit Haiti, they did it then, too.

Does anything like this occur where you live?

If You Really Knew Me

Far be it for me to expect Music Television to actually play music. For this reason, I rarely watch the network. Last week, however, I accidently came across a show on MTV called If You Really Knew Me that peaked my interest.


For those of you who have never seen the show, If You Really Knew Me is a program that visits high schools, teaching the students about tolerance and understanding. The program begins with some games and then turns serious. Students are told people are like icebergs, that they only show 10 percent of themselves to the outside world. They are then broken down into groups and told to share something personal about themselves that no one else knows. Tears are shed. After the group session is over, the students are lined up on one side of the room and the facilitator asks them questions.

Here are an example: "If you have ever been teased or harassed in person, text message or e-mail, cross the line." Then after the students cross the line, she asks, "Has anyone crossed this line because of you?" Students were also asked to cross the line if they had been teased about their weight, lost a loved one to disease, knew someone who was suffering from a fatal disease and other things.

At the end of the day, the students have a better appreciation for the other teens and feel like they themselves are seen in a different light.

As I watched If You Really Knew Me, I wished they had a program like this when I was in high school. It would have helped to make life a lot easier, not only for myself but for many others. It would also be an excellent program for college campuses and for the corporate world.

In this selfish me-centric society, we need compassion, tolerance and understanding more than ever. Hopefully, the experience will stay with the teens and they'll carry it on into adulthood and go on to make a difference.

The Breast Feeding Law

Have you heard about the new law that model Giselle Bundchen is proposing? She told Harper's Bazaar UK that she believes there should be a worldwide law making it mandatory for moms to breastfeed for the first six months of their baby's life.


Later, on her blog, she recanted her statement. Well, in a way. She said, "It’s unfortunate that in an interview sometimes things can seem so black and white. I am sure if I would just be sitting talking about my experiences with other mothers, we would just be sharing opinions. I understand that everyone has their own experience and opinions and I am not here to judge.”

So let's imagine for a moment that there actually was going to be a law making formula feeding illegal. What would happen? First, more government intervention in our lives is never a good thing. Secondly, what about mothers who can't breastfeed because of some physical problem or can't produce enough breast milk? Would that mean they would have to use donor milk? Would there be a black-market on formula? Third, how would this law be regulated? I could see that creating all sorts of headaches. The police have their hands full fighting gangs and murders, but they're going to arrest a poor mother for feeding her child formula. Someone would literally have to be checking in on every household that has a newborn. I can't see that happening.

While I understand Bundchen had good intentions when she said what she said, it wasn't realistic. I'm sure she doesn't need to work outside the home right now because she has money to live off and a rich husband, New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady. She doesn't have to worry about pumping breast milk. She's also, obvious, someone who was able to produce enough milk to keep her child well feed. Three generations of women in my family have had to supplement. It wasn't my intention when my daughter was born, but reality set in when I couldn't give her enough calories and when I went back to work.

Lastly, no one should tell you how to raise your child. That's a decision left to the parents and no one else.

Source: http://www.signature9.com/living/giselle-bundchens-breastfeeding-controversy

Pageants Over Practicality

A while ago, I wrote a blog on child beauty pageants and the TV shows which feature them like TLC's Toddlers and Tiaras. This is always a topical subject.


Pageants are the hobby of the rich. Consider most of the pageant kids take lessons -- dance, medaling, singing, ect -- in addition to performing in pageants. The entrance fees range from $250-$500. (According to the moms on the show. Maybe there are less expensive pageants, but they aren't featured on TV.) Dresses range from $1,500-$2,400 (again, according to the show) and often are worn just once. And then there's the flippers ($350) and hair pieces, other accessories and travel expenses. All this money being thrown around means these pageants are for the elite, making them out of reach for most American families.

Several pageants moms have said on camera that they would rather spend money on pageants than save for retirement. No wonder this country is in financial trouble. Too many people spend on entertainment and trivial things and not enough save for practical, although not so fun, things.

Many more moms have said they believe beautiful people get further ahead in the world. There are moms on the show who yell at their children for not performing the way they think they should. And there are still others who say they were pleased to have daughters so they could dress them up. What kind of message is this sending children? That education and persistence and hard work mean less than beauty? That it's not the fact you participated that matter but that only winning matters? I pity these poor children and I pity the poor mothers for believing the way they do.