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Yesterday, Remy brought her books to me at bedtime -- an hour notable for its propensity to incite rage and trauma -- and chirped, "We need to read for 20 minutes!" and a little part of my soul died.
"When I talk to you during the day, that's like reading. You have to listen to the words I am saying and then make sense of them. It's really hard work for you. It's called auditory reading. We've been practicing all day. I'll write the minutes down in your log."
UNTIL WE DIE. Children should not be allowed to learn to read until they are already good at it. And why do we have to do this at bedtime when I'm one click away from becoming that scary under-the-bed-mother in "Mama" (GO TO BED OR I AM ACTUALLY GOING TO DIE AND THEN HAUNT YOU FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE AS A TERRIFYING CLOWN.) I know having an emerging reader is exciting. Because of the reading! And the literacy! But at the end of the school year, when I've logged approximately 688 million hours with such gripping plots like The mother and the brother went to the store, which takes 12 minutes to decode, then I have to look at the ceiling and sing hymns in my brain to get through it.
I suppose the very short 20 minute stint helping her child to read would have broken into her boozing or crap TV time...she's really got her priorities sorted!!
Originally posted by tinhattribunal
uhh.. you guys sound kinda hateful!
you don't think the kids would pick up on that now, would you?
Originally posted by MysterX
reply to post by ColoradoJens
i cannot fathom why people have a family when it's patently obvious a fair percentage of them couldn't care less about their kids and go to great lengths to avoid having anything meaningful to do with them.
Originally posted by sqorpius
Originally posted by MysterX
reply to post by ColoradoJens
i cannot fathom why people have a family when it's patently obvious a fair percentage of them couldn't care less about their kids and go to great lengths to avoid having anything meaningful to do with them.
Why do they have kids? Here in the good ole USA, they get paid to have kids. It's a way to get free money. It's called the welfare womb. Guy knocks up a woman, she gets pregnant, he moves on to the next score. Kid is born and raised by the aunt or grandmother cause the mother is out running the streets again. Rinse and repeat. And the taxpayer foot's the bill.
Originally posted by ExquisitExamplE
I'm willing to cut her some slack and realize that most of what she's written is a bit exaggerated; she's playing it up like she doesn't care and is too exasperated to help her kids intellectual development, but I get the feeling that she's probably a pretty good mom, and actually more involved with her kids than you might think from reading the article. So you've got two kids? Maybe you'll sympathize a bit more when you've got five like she does.
Like I said, I get the feeling she's a pretty good mom, call it a hunch. After all, it takes a pretty strong and awesome person to adopt two children from a race not your own (Her and her husband have adopted two Ethiopian children). I think that's a wonderful and humble service not many would endeavor to undertake, and I applaud her for it. Again, I'd cut her a bit of slack on the judgement side until you actually really know what she's like as a person and, more importantly in this context, as a parent.
see the way I see it, the kids of these "LAZY" parents will have kids that will probably survive better than the kids who suffer from "HELICOPTER PARENTS". Does hard work pay off? Not always!
Originally posted by ColoradoJens
reply to post by scoobdude
Sure. Lie to the teachers about them doing the required homework. Instill in your children the philosophy that hard work does not always pay off. Tell them that reading is the same as verbal communication. Write a blog on Huffpo so your kids can grow up and one day have someone else read it to them detailing how much you as a parent detested reading to them.
How is helping your child learn being a "HELICOPTER PARENT"? Never mind. Someone who equates doing homework with a child as being a helicopter parent doesn't get it.
CJ