Posts Tagged ‘age’

This is a bit of a rant, a bit of praise and a bit of frustration.  You see I have four children.  One, is living with his mother, he’s my step-child and I do only what a step-mother does – I love him and offer assistance when requested.  The other three are my responsibility.  One of which is 19 and in college and working.  Her father is taking care of that end – paying for college.  She doesn’t live with me.  So that narrows it to 2 I’m directly responsible for education wise.

My children – up until this year – have been enrolled in the normal public school system.  James is a senior (leaving to serve our great country as a Marine in June 2009), and the other is Stephen a junior in high school.  That’s 11th and 12th grade students in a public NORMAL California high school.  That is the number one issue – public school.

Now I hear many say the school systems are great.  Normally those are the parents of kids that are in elementary school.  By the time they hit junior high, I don’t seem to hear that much more.  Because, they (our California public schools) are not great.  Not in my opinion – and not the schools I’ve personally had any connection to.  They are overcrowded, understaffed, under budgeted… just plain under everything.

Let me make one thing clear – teachers as a whole are NOT in my category of issues.  These folks work for our children with what seems like all odds against them.  I would not begin to put them down.

James, my 12th grader – has exited out of normal high school this year and is in what is called an “Independent High School” program.  This means he meets with a teacher once a week and gets work handed to him and he has one week to complete it.  Or not.  This is an independent program.  If you don’t do the work, you are out.  Period.  So James, who didn’t do a BIT of work in the past two years, now is fully in charge of himself to learn what is needed and turn in his work.  Here starts one issue.  If he didn’t do the work before, how would he now?

I didn’t get involved in the kids schooling much.  I know, say what you must – but I didn’t.  Single mom, three kids – I was lucky to be home on time to pick them up from daycare let alone oversee hours of homework.  I would pick them up, get home and continue to work from home.  So not much guidance if any from me.

Now, James has to makeup a years worth of work – plus his senior work.  Again, this is a child that didn’t do anything in school to begin with!  Now, he’s having to double his work.  Hmmmm.

As of two weeks ago I was starting to get calls from his teacher – “James is doing poorly, he’s behind… etc. etc. etc.”.  Funny, his report card just came in with a B+ average.  So what happened?  He went back to how he normally does stuff.  He just doesn’t do it.

Well, I finally took charge.  Why now you ask?  After years of not doing a thing?  Because it’s all he’s got.  If he doesn’t graduate his military entry will be postponed.  Then, as usual – he’d fall down on himself and feel poorly and get himself even further behind.  I know my son.

Today, he met with his teacher for the normal one hour and turned in his work.  He’s got a TON left to do before next Friday’s meeting as I’m getting him caught back up and back on track.

Basically, he’s home schooled.  Not entirely, but that’s what it boils down to.  The plus side is… he’s home schooled.  No more gangs, no more girls, no more teachers screaming (yes, it’s happened).  But he’s got a long way to go this week to get back on track.

Now, enter my other child – Stephen.  He is bi-polar, rages at times, and is generally a to-himself kinda kid.  According to his doctors the last two hospitalizations were due to stress at school (bullies, deadlines etc.) and they have recommended he get out of the normal public schools as there is really no adults there to manage bullies – which is his biggest issue.  Great.  So Stephen is going to the same Independent program now as Jim.

That’s two at home doing schooling.

I work.

We can do this.

Who do I blame?  No one.  To have the kids out of the public regular high school is a huge plus to me.  The amount of drama, fights and lack of guidance only lays way to issues.  Many issues as our family has had to go through since junior high school.

The issue I see with my younger one is – if it was up to him, he’d stay away from any social type situations forever.  He’s not a people person.  Well, he’s not a mean people person and at their ages there are a lot of those.

I don’t know folks… James will be okay now that I have a handle on things, but Stephen?  How do I assist a depressed bi-polar child by keeping him at home?  I think I’m going to go onto the home schooling sites and see what kind of things we can do to get him out of the house.  I can’t believe his doctors think this will be beneficial to him in the long run.  Honestly.

High school is different now.  Much different.

I praise anyone who home schools – at least I know and understand why they don’t want them in the public school system.  It’s a genuine failure in so many ways.  I feel like somewhere with all of the “universal healthcare” and “my company is flopping bail us out” crud – we seem to have completely forgotten the children.  Our future is the kids and they are going to colleges in spite of what they’ve learned in high school – not because of it in many cases.

If you know of any good sites for home schooling, please leave them in the comments.  Stephen could certainly use it!

Thanks for listening/reading to my vent.

Love and Light,

A Momma

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I’m 40, and I don’t feel old.  Old would be 90 perhaps.  Not 40.

I smoke, have for a long time.  Disgusting, I know.  But I smoke.

On Friday, a first happened for me.  I was called “The Mean Ugly Old White Lady” by 3 children and their father.

Here’s how that went.

I was standing in a handicap parking lot space outside of the hotel (the Friday night fun night!) instructing my hubby on where the night of mystery was gonna be and what to do when he got there.  (It was a blow your socks off night!  Well planned out, I might add).

I was standing in the parking space because I was outside of the hotel having a cigarrette chatting on the phone.  If I smoke, I do it more than 20 feet from the door, in California there are laws on where to smoke.  I understand and abide by them happily.

After my phone call I looked up and noticed a Mercedes Benz with it’s blinkers on clearly waiting for me to move out of the space their were trying to pull into!

Ooops!

I hurry out of the way and made sure I was quite a bit away from the car.

Out popped three little kids with their hands over their faces.  I didn’t notice as I was yelling at the dad “Goodness, I’m sorry.  I completely zoned!”.  Smiling my usual smile and waving at him in apology.

Things happened a bit quick from there.

He said:  Yeah, well we are more concerned about your smoking.

Me: My what? (not sure if I heard him right, I’m quite a bit aways from them)

He said:  Hurry kids, get away from her and run to the door!  (not kidding here, he sounded like I had a gun)

Me:  Um…. (remember, I’m pretty far from them and they are entering a hotel with smoking rooms ~ so they aren’t getting to safety runnin’ inside of there!)

He said:  Cover your face kids!

Me:  Okaaaaay (I backed up even further, although the smoke was going the opposite direction of them – all I could do is watch while the kids covered their faces, but stuck their tongues out at me yelling “gross” “she’s gross” “daddy hurry up!”)

He said:  Yeah well (turning to me) they teach them this in school (almost, although not quite, apologetically)

He brought the kids inside after they gave me dirty looks and he just laughed and encouraged them to look at the gross smoking lady.

I was dumbfounded.

Not at the fear of smoke, although – that’s a bit over the top.  But I get that, if they don’t like it now maybe they won’t pick up the filthy habit.

But at the fact a parent did not reprimand their child for treating a human, a perfect stranger, like dirt.  I’ve seen it happen around me and it disgusts me.  But to really pay attention to the little ones that night, it hurt my heart that beautiful souls are being taught at such a young age that being mean to someone is okay and simply part of your day.  That left me in disbelief at the door. It’s only the beginning for these little ones I’m afraid.

As I walked upstairs thanking myself for raising children that don’t see race, physical limitations, or anything out of their norm as something they use against people – I heard the family through the door and stopped for a moment just outside.

The kids were telling their mum I suppose of the event.  But what I heard was this:

The dad was agreeing “yup!” after everything each of the kids were saying.  The mum was saying “I should go down there and kick her butt (different word used).”

The children were telling a tale of a “Mean.  Ugly Old White Lady downstairs smoking at the door and not letting them in.  She was blowing smoke at these poor little kids.  This Mean Ugly Old White Lady was giving them dirty looks and threatening them.”

Oh.  My.  Gosh.

She promptly said she was calling the manager and complaining about the Mean Ugly Old White Lady and the kids were happy and yelling “yeah!”.

The father never corrected their story.  He laughed and described how ugly I was.  I’m not joking.

I’m left with being the Mean Ugly Old White Lady at the Holiday Inn Express.