Posted by: Lauren Young on January 15
Is it a smart idea to send your child to school with a lot of other bright kids? Or, does it make more sense for kids to be educated in an environment with students who have mixed academic achievements?
BusinessWeek just anointed America’s Best High School’s in conjunction with Great Schools. Plenty of the finalists for the “Best Overall Academic Performance” award are magnet schools that draw the brightest kids in the area. According to the website for Julia R. Masterman in Philadelphia—which has the No. 1 ranking in Pennsylvania on BusinessWeek’s list, “most of the students who are admitted have nearly all A’s” as well as high scores on the state’s reading and math exams.
I’m not trying to pick on Masterman. In fact, my husband is a proud alum of that school. He attended an Ivy League college and a top-tier law school. But I’m also a firm believer in the notion that a rising tide lifts all boats. When schools pluck the most brilliant kids out of the educational system and lump them together, I think it creates a leadership void for the students who are left behind.
Here in New York City, where we currently we live, children can take the Gifted and Talented exam to test into the most elite public schools. I am currently grappling with the merits of that system.
We moved to a neighborhood in Brooklyn a few years ago because it had the locally zoned elementary school with an excellent academic reputation. Since school began last fall, I feel much more connected to our community. It’s virtually impossible to walk down main drag in our neighborhood or go to the playground and not see folks we know from school.
That’s why I ultimately opted not to sign up our son for the gifted and talented test a few weeks ago. Even if my kid is “G&T,” I don’t want him attending a school miles away from our home. (It’s hard to believe, but not all parents think their children are geniuses, by the way.)
What’s your educational philosophy? Should smart kids be sifted out of the academic system, or is it better to mainstream bright kids with everyone else?
Posted by: Diane Brady on January 14
I've noticed a growing number of books crossing my desk on the value of free time and play (Next up is Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown). While many of these are for adults, one was a series on backyard games for children from a group called Project Play. When I got in contact with founder Marlene Byrne, she sent back a short essay on why she's obsessed with bringing back games like Follow the Leader and Kick the Can. Here it is:
Do you remember when you couldn’t walk by a neighborhood park without seeing kids running the bases or taking turns at bat? Or when kids played in their backyards for hours at a time with oodles of neighborhood kids? It was only after the street lamps turned on that children would grudgingly leave their games behind and return home for the evening. Today, saying the same thing would no longer be true. Unless there’s a school-affiliated or organized sports game in progress, parks and neighborhoods are often quiet. Where have all the children gone? When was the last time you saw children playing classic backyard games?
Unstructured playtime is becoming endangered. The carefree days of our youth have been replaced by a childhood that ends in the blink of an eye. Instead of gathering with the neighborhood children for a game of “kick the can” or “follow the leader,” children are pressured to keep busy with organized sports, activities, and school programs. And while it’s okay to value achievement and competition, do we really believe that the more extra-curricular activities our children have, the better off they are? Ask any parent how their child is doing and they won’t say, “He’s great—he plays at home five times a week.”
But by over-scheduling our children, we’re not only eliminating unstructured playtime, we’re setting them up for stress, anxiety, and even depression. If you asked any adult to schedule in soccer, football, golf, an art class, Girl Scouts, and a science program after their work day, they would call you crazy. But because we are so driven to give our kids the best and ensure that they keep up with their peers, we don’t hesitate to start filling up our child’s time after school—we want them to have an edge in their science skills and swim the length of the pool by age 7. But keep in mind, Michael Jordan didn’t play on the high school basketball team until his junior year, so why rush?
It is important for us as parents to place a priority on play and unscheduled time for our kids. It can be an unstructured play date where the kids take all the blankets to the basement to make forts. Or an evening in the backyard where their friends come with flashlights to play. Or maybe a group that gets together for an afternoon treasure hunt. The ideas are endless but what it all comes down to is that kids just need time to be kids. They deserve the same joy and freedom of playing that we enjoyed growing up.
This doesn’t mean we should eliminate organized sports and activities from our children’s lives. But we do need to caution ourselves against over scheduling. We need to be confident in allowing our children to use their imaginations, play their own games, and negotiate their own rules.
A pediatrician once told me, “It’s not the kids with skinned knees that I worry about, it’s the ones without a scratch.” Unstructured playtime is valuable. Our kids need time to round up their peers, play “kick the can,” even scrape their knees. Our job as parents is to make backyard playtime a priority—and be there to supply the band aid afterwards.
Posted by: Anne Newman on January 14
Our friend Helene Cody died on her 16th birthday from a ruptured aneurysm in her brain. It was Oct. 26—also the 22nd anniversary of the day her parents met. Those facts alone are enough for any stranger to mourn and rant at life’s cruelty. But to the Codys and those of us who know them, to Helene’s vast network of friends in her hometown of Cranbury, N.J., and nearby Princeton High School, where she was a student, the epilogue to her untimely death has been a remarkable story of a community grieving.
Whether the death of a celebrity child like Jett Travolta or a beloved local teen like Helene Cody,the unexpected loss of a child defies all comprehension. For teens in particular, the death of a peer can trigger utter bewilderment, fury, and deep sadness as they grasp at ways to grieve. But in New Jersey, Win and Linda Cody, their 14-year-old daughter, Jenna, and their community have found some powerful ways to vent their grief. One example: More than 3,000 delicate origami cranes made as symbols of hope by Helene’s friends now hang in the Cody’s sun room. Linda, a Princeton High science teacher, describes how the family coped with what should have been their daughter’s birthday party:
We hosted a party for Helene's friends to help them cope with the loss of their friend. We had over 20 girls, friends that Helene was planning to invite to her 16th birthday. The first girls to come to the door were unsure at first. As more arrived, the atmosphere lightened. They began to decorate the Christmas tree with the thousands of paper origami cranes that teens had made in the week following her death. They then decorated Christmas cookies. When the green frosting began to be used as a facial, it was time to transition. The girls then were told to go to the back yard to smash pumpkins. They delighted in the idea of taking out anger in pumpkins.
Finally, they came back in the house to watch a slide show of pictures of Helene. There were stories, tears and laughter. We felt joy in hosting her friends and loved how the teens supported each other and our other daughter.
That was in early December—before Christmas, before a new year. During those emotionally tough holidays the high school choir and orchestra dedicated “Amazing Grace” to Helene at their annual holiday concert in the Princeton University Chapel; the Cranbury mayor issued a special proclamation honoring her achievements in Girl Scouts, school, church, mentoring, and an international exchange program to promote youth understanding; Win and Linda ran the five-mile Hamilton Hangover Race on New Year’s Day, where one of Helene's Princeton cross-country teammates sported a T-shirt saying "Godspeed H. Cody Nobody Tougher;" and friends from far and wide—from second graders who raised $850 selling sparkled cardboard stars at a store in Cranbury, to teens running a blood drive, to friends from overseas—have raised a total $15,000 so far through the Presbyterian church to set up a foundation in Helene's name to support other teens in volunteer and community building activities.
The outpouring of teen grief for a kid who reveled in doing good for others has continued to be creative and instructive for some of us older friends who knew Helene as a preschooler before her family moved to Cranbury. After recovering from the shock of her death—my 15-year-old daughter, an old playmate, followed the news of her illness and death on Facebook—we were at a loss as parents. Cards? Food? Memorial donations? Thoughts scrawled in a book at the packed funeral home viewing, where room after room was filled with posters of memories written by her friends? Tears at the funeral service where hundreds packed Helene's beloved First Presbyterian Church in Cranbury? Choked up strains of "Seasons of Love," her favorite song, at the graveside services where a sea of gray and black-clothed mourners gathered, reluctant to leave? Hugging Linda on a visit to their home with friends before Christmas, listening as we stood in Helene’s unchanged room while Linda pointed to each day on her daughter’s calendar that horrible week she died—it was school spirit week at the high school, marked in Helene's handwriting –and described the details of those awful days when she was in intensive care surrounded by the best doctors in New York, when no one dreamed she would die, when no parent had fathomed donating her organs, or making funeral arrangements?
Linda, on a brief leave from her teaching job, has worked diligently to ensure that Helene’s friends and their parents have healthy ways to mourn. When you visit her home, you leave with pamphlets on teen grief and a CD of pictures of Helene. So just who was this kid? In her mother's words:
Our daughter Helene was an inspired teen who convinced others to come together to work toward the common good. She had friends from many different cliques and was able to get people to volunteer for car washes, bake sales, and road races.
She recruited girls for the cross-country and track teams. She would especially seek out girls who needed affiliation, and was so proud as the team size increased in part due to her enthusiasm.
At Church Youth Group she was the go-to girl. Her answer was "yes! we can do it- this is good." In fact she signed up for every Youth Group opportunity throughout the year.
She was an active Girl Scout since kindergarten and had helped coordinate a camp-out for over 200 girls for her Silver Award. She had been pursuing her Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouts. That is until her sixteenth birthday, when she died of a ruptured aneurysm in her brain.
Hours after she was pronounced dead, hundreds of teens gathered at her church to sing, pray, and mourn. The long journey toward healing had begun. It is not as if one can recover from a loss like this, but instead it is adjusting to a new normal. We hope that her legacy continues to inspire teens to make the most of their time on earth.
Linda, ever the mother and teacher, provides links to the following sources for teens who need help dealing with loss: family counseling service Huckleberry House, Hospice, the book Helping Teens Work Through Grief by Mary Kelly Perschy, Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, and insurer Cigna. Readers, do you have your own stories about helping teens cope with grief or sources to share?
Posted by: Mauro Vaisman on January 13
Unemployment numbers are abysmal. More layoffs are being announced every day. Be honest: do you feel like saying, “Immigrants Go Home?”
During economic hardship and job scarcity, we hear this sentiment echoing in restaurants, schools and public policy across America, saying immigrants go home—we don’t need you here.
ABC’s 20/20 had a very good story on a show called 'What Would You Do?' confronting racism against two Latinos dressed like day laborers
After watching the show, I don’t believe I witnessed only racism. What I witnessed was something that gets worse during crisis in America: xenophobia--the fear that foreigners are here to take American jobs away from hard working Americans when we don’t have enough jobs.
The attack on Latinos is nothing new. But one thing I noticed lately in the streets of New York is the silent celebration of the troubles of Satyam Computer, the Indian IT outsourcing company. Because Satyam is a major name in jobs that were outsourced overseas, many Americans are reveling in this major corporate scandal.
I work with many Satyam contractors in my office and in India. If I could generalize the whole group, I would define them as hard-working, capable workers. Many of the ones I know are parents who left families behind so they can provide a better life for their families.
I would like to hear from you. Do you feel that legal and illegal immigration is affecting the American job market in a negative way?
If you could not provide for your family, how would you feel about moving elsewhere to get a job?
Posted by: Lauren Young on January 12
Those crazy kids!
BusinessWeek's home page is touting an Associated Press story that 1 in 200 kids is a vegetarian. Some credit for this culinary abstinence may be attributed to the Internet, thanks to a bountiful harvest of YouTube animal slaughter videos "that shock the developing sensibilities of many U.S. children," according to the AP article.
To be sure, a diet heavy on grains, fruits and veggies has plenty of benefits. But nutritionists also caution parents to make sure children consume sufficient amounts of protein, vitamins B12 and D, iron, calcium and other important nutrients that most people get from meat, eggs and dairy.
Let me be clear: I personally like veggies a lot. (As I write this, I'm craving broccoli.) But I'm also a butcher's daughter who sees no harm in feeding my son poultry, fish, and even a lamb chop every now and then.
Just today, I spoke to a friend I'll call "Martha" (for her Martha Stewart ways in the kitchen) who recently moved to London from New York. When I asked what she was making for dinner, she admitted that she is moving her family to a plant-based diet. Martha's American-born kids seem to be really into the menu shift. "They just don't want to eat animals anymore," Martha says.
I also did a quick poll of my Working Parents colleagues to see what they think about vegetarian kids and here is what they said:
I just put our Indian exchange student on a plane last week to return home to Punjab. She’s a Sikh, no-eggs veggie. She claimed she had no trouble with our barbarian habits, but when I found out after the fact that many Hindus consider eating eggs taking embryonic life, I felt a little worse about popping all those boiled eggs on our 14-hour minivan trip home from Asheville after the holidays.
I gotta say, I think this is a very bad development. I have a vegetarian staying with me right now and, man, is she a pain to feed. If my kid turns vegan I’m sending her to boarding school.
What do you think are the merits of letting your children become vegetarians? Can picky eaters get a balanced diet? I'm especially curious to hear how carnivore parents cope when feeding non-carnivore kids.
Also, be sure to check out BusinessWeek's story on a proposed soda and sugary drink tax written by fellow blogger Cathy Arnst.
