Not really very funny homework manifesto

Here are excerpts from the homework manifesto that I sent to V's teacher who was worried that he is not doing his homework or class work:

Thank you so much for the note, Mrs. G. Please forgive the length of this email. The topic is one that I am passionate about.

I really appreciate you taking the time to contact us when you have so many kids in your classroom . With regard to your concerns, I would like to provide some context to help you understand our family's approach to school. I also would like to work with you on how you can better engage V in the classroom.

Our family is just a little bit different and I want you to know that.

Vic comes from a line of stubborn contrarians. Never in our lives has a family member done what anyone has asked us to do (okay, we suffer a bit from hyperbole too). Homework is a classic example of how other people's good intentions absolutely do not work on the Bowen-Biggs clan. The only things that works for us is for us to find our passion and vigorously pursue it. Its amazing how this translates in school, once the connection has been made.

V is the third of my children who has never been forced to do homework. Let me tell you about his brother and sister and perhaps you will understand a bit better how we roll.

V's sister sailed through elementary and middle school without doing a lick of work. Social promotion and her ability to ace any test helped her end up in high school on time. She did not do homework, she did not complete classroom assignments, she did not turn in projects -- unless they interested her. Her eighth grade teacher despaired of P ever completing her freshman year, much less high school. She finished with mediocre or poor grades in all subjects, save for math. I tried to get P to do homework later on in her middle-school career but it made us both so miserable that I signed her up for Karate instead.

With that in mind, I'll admit that I was worried how she would do in high school. I'm happy to report [blah blah blah boring braggy mom stuff . . . ]

P discovered that she had a passion for science and math and that completing her homework actually made her more interested in the subjects. She discovered that the more work she did the more she engaged. P's internal motivation is to learn absolutely as much as possible and tapping into that has made it easier for her to complete any assignments that come her way. She has not had any trouble doing homework in her first year and then-some in high school. The karate class helped too, since it helped her with concentration and taught her discipline and self control.

V's brother is an 8th grader at Beaumont. He has never been a "good student" either, nor did he do any homework in elementary school, 6th or 7th grade. In third grade he didn't hand in a single homework assignment although he did complete every extra credit project that was offered. In 7th grade, K discovered that he had a passion for sports. He also learned that if he wants to play sports in high school he needs to maintain a certain grade average. As an 8th grader, his internal motivation is to learn how to do homework--just like he learns how to do a lay-up or how to kick a corner-kick--so that he can participate in sports. He diligently completes his assignments every night without my prompting and with out complaining. His grades are not perfect but they are acceptable. In addition to sports, he also does art and sculpture in his spare time. He is happy and thats all that I need.

I have stuck to my guns throughout both of my older chidren's education and I'm happy and relieved that it panned out (I have spent plenty of time worrying that it wouldn't). The general pattern is that we try and discover each child's passion and help them tap into their internal motivation to pursue it.

Unfortunately, at this point, V's passion appears to be sitting on the couch and watching tv. He does have other interests, including soccer, drawing, old-school role-playing games and inventing. He also has a certain skill that is a double-edged sword: he can get anybody to do anything for him. (I keep telling him he will be a great project-manager when he grows up.)

We have not yet identified what his passion is or where he derives internal motivation. I'm stumped with him. If I get on his back to do homework (which I have been trying to do, just to see if it works) we both end up miserable and mad at each other. He doesn't learn anything and it takes us an hour and a half to do work that really only takes him 15 minutes to complete. At the end of that hour we are both cranky and our evening is ruined. I am not willing to give our family time over to this battle. We do have a great time coming up with fake entries for his reading log and writing silly stories with his vocabulary words.

What I want for V at this point is for him to advance with his class through middle school. I also want him to work hard at the things he is good at, like math. I want him to find his passion and to find the internal motivation that will convince him that it pays off to work hard. No amount of repeating that refrain will make him believe it until he stumbles upon it on his own.

I don't know what to do about the research that he is not doing. Choosing a subject to report on is an excruciating exercise that usually ends up with him hating his topic. So many of the traditional assignments are like torture for him--science fair projects, history reports, book reports, worksheets . . . all of these require following specific directions, filling in templates, and leave little room for creativity. He comes by it honestly--my personal passion when I was in school was to do everything exactly opposite of what was required (I know, you're shocked--ha!ha!). When teachers show me the forms that kids are supposed to fill out in the process of completing their portfolio writing assignments it makes me so crazy I can barely stay in my seat. And V is a lot like me.

I have a very hard time lying to him and telling him that I believe homework is important. What is important is cultivating a love of learning. What is important is finding out how you best express yourself. What is important is wanting to do more, not because someone tells you you have to, but because you feel compelled to follow your passion.

That having been said, I also know that teachers need something to measure performance by, that you need to know if a child is progressing. I also know that you need to reward the kids who do their work diligently and on time. It does not bother me that V will get poor grades for not completing homework assignments. This is something I feel that I have to state explicitly to his teachers.

I welcome your thoughts on how we move forward in our shared goal of keeping V engaged in the classroom. [blah blah more boring stuff about what I will make him do and what I hope she can make him do. . . ]

Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex (Education)

Kids in Portland Schools participate in a program called S.T.A.R.S.

When P was in middle school S.T.A.R.S. stood for "Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex". Cool hipster volunteers came to the school to talk about, well. . . you know. . . to go over all those things that us lazy parents count on other people, namely teachers or FOX TV, to explain.

At the end of the lessons, the sixth graders were given pencils that had the full program name printed on them: Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex. The first thing the students did, of course, was to sharpen them all the way down so they just said "Sex". Proving the point pretty well, I'd say.

In high school, S.T.A.R.S. now stands for "Students Talking About Responsible Sexuality". In my dreams, the "talking" part would stay at school but MY kids have to bring it all home.

Yesterday P came home and said: "We talked about the male and female reporductive systems in Health. I was the only girl in the class today, so they focused mostly on the boys. We talked for like 15 minutes about how guys are supposed to give themselves self-exams."

Then, because he's big on fairness, K says "Did they talk about your vagina too?" (Trust me, those are words no mother needs to hear coming from her 13 year old son. About her daughter's va-hee-na.)

"No, we didn't get there. The bell rang."

Figures. Here is another story told by P.:

"So today in S.T.A.R.S. we did a role playing game. . ."

Let me interject here to tell you that to P, a "role playing game" is Dungeons and Dragons, so that's what she was thinking when. . .

"The teacher told us to pick a character so we could practice making responsible sexual decisions. . ."

Now, since P is usally the Dungeon Master in D&D, she didn't have her own "player character" in mind. So she borrowed K's favorite player: a 300 pound, 100 year old 3ft tall dwarf named Bud.



"We rolled dice to see what kinds of decisions our characters had to make. Well, unfortunately Bud made some bad sexual choices. He got a 17-year-old girl pregnant having unprotected sex. And he got Chlamydia."

K was pretty upset that she let that happen to Bud. P was pretty upset that the game didn't allow players to roll hit points or cast spells.

I know people have good stories about embarssing questions, ackward moments and responsible or irresponsible sexual choices. Dungeons and Dragon stories are okay too. Lets hear what you've got.

WTF? (contains adult language. . .)

My friend DK posted a status update on Facebook about her son going to the Principal's office for saying the F-word. People shared lots of great stories about kids in trouble for swearing. I told the one about the time P said "shit" (twice) into a microphone to a room full of 300 people including my future boss and the Mayor of Portland.


Here is P with Mayor Potter on another occasion when she managed NOT to shout out obscenities.

And here is one (more) of my stories about swearing.

When V was in preschool he had a little problem with the potty mouth--that is, he swore like a sailor.

I was stumped as to what to do about it when we saw the Simpsons episode where Homer builds a dog house and Ned Flanders catches him swearing. I believe I've mentioned before that the only parenting techniques my kids buy into are ones they've seen on the Simpsons. Homer bets his neighbor that if he can stop swearing, Ned will shave his mustache. So Marge makes Homer a "Swear Jar" and charges him a quarter a curse. Highlights here: http://tinyurl.com/ow4aqg

P thought this seemed like a good idea but we were stumped by the question "what constitutes a swear word?" We happened to be listening to lots of Spearhead at the time and one of our favorite songs was "Love is Da Shit That Makes Life Bloom". Hello Mother of Mixed Messages!

We had a good discussion about artistic license and decided that we needed to establish some kind of a guide for what was a swear word. While we were at it the kids thought it would be helpful to add some alternatives and also point out any exceptions.

Then began one of my favorite listening sessions. The kids were about 4,6 and 8. V was the expert so the other two kept asking him, "Okay, whats another swear word" and he'd rattle off another word he knew he wasn't supposed to say. I helped them set up a chart on the computer but left it up to them to fill it out. I answered questions like "Mom how do you spell Bastard?", "Is a Bitch a boy or a girl dog?" "Is it okay to say Shit when you are pooping?"

I've done a pretty poor job of recreating it here (the original was much longer and had wonderful misspellings):



But you get the idea. And by the way, after they went through the exercise, they pretty much stopped swearing. I got the most quarters from Charlie who sometimes would swear just so they would catch him at it. I think we collected enough to buy a carton of Ben and Jerry's before it became just a favorite relic.

Lets hear your great swear stories--I'm hereby exercising my artistic license to encourage you all to swear in these posts!

This might be boring -- but that's okay!

My mom has a saying, a bored person is a boring person and when I was growing up, boy did I take that seriously. I spent a lot of time afraid that I might be bored -- which would lead to something even worse: I might be boring. I was pretty desperate to keep myself entertained or entertaining at all times. It turned out to be a good thing in the end because I was easily entertained, always a cheap date and didn't require much upkeep, but the attitude did leave me a little twitchy in the duller moments of my childhood.

I passed this same attitude along to my children for a number of years. It seemed like a pretty good plan. Then, when I was a preschool teacher, I had the good fortune of taking a seminar from a wonderful woman named Bev Bos. I won't go into too much detail here about Bev, but trust me, she's one of the most inspirational speakers you will ever have the pleasure to hear. She is the teacher and director of Roseville Community School in Roseville CA and lucky for us, she also lectures all over the country talking about early childhood education.

One of the things she talked about that has really stuck with me is that boredom is a developmental phase all kids must experience. Kids need to learn how to be bored. Boredom is not bad, its an opportunity to find something else to do! She gave us a wonderful phrase to take back to our preschools (and homes) to use the next time a child came up to say "I'm bored".

"You're bored? That's GREAT! Now you get to decide what to do next!"

The first time I said that to my kids (instead of a bored person is a boring person) they looked at me like I was crazy. Then they waited for my customary list of ideas. I didn't give them any.

"What should I do?"
"I don't know."

It took a while for the kids to realize they were going to be largely on their own to work through this "developmental phase". Well, not so much on their own. They did have each other.

The following is a short list of things the kids have come up with on their own while they were "deciding what to do next". Lucky for me, they often took pictures while I sat back and ate bon bons.

Send me examples of what your kids get up to when they are bored (or you get up to, for that matter)

Superheroes:



Home Office:

United States of Pillows (only made it through the west coast)

Starburst wrapper hat:

Jump over stuff on your bike:

And of course, jump over brother on your bike:

Angry Letter #1

"Penelope I'm very upset with your muchereti [maturity] level, I exspect more. . .so get your own darn chair.
This picture of you is showing how upset with you [sic]"

What's for Dinner?

I was a Classics major in college. I think about it at the funniest times, like this morning as I rummaged through the cupboards to find ANYTHING for breakfast. While I tried to persuade V to choose between popcorn or canned manderin oranges for the most important meal of the day, I remembered the topic that consumed me for a whole year in graduate school.



The lofty title of my master's thesis was "What's for Dinner? Issues of Food and Control in the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius's Satyricon". My argument was that the imagery of this particular portion of the Satyricon deliberately equated food--access to, preparation and presentation of--with control. Throughout this famous section of the bawdy Roman tale, the host, Trimalchio, served outrageously constructed dishes at a lavish banquet. The more elaborate the presentation, the more subserviant were the consumers and the more control the master exerted. Other vignettes revealed less powerful players serving or providing less complicated meals.

Whatever.

I really enjoyed writing that paper and I even tried to expore the theme throughout the entire longer work, but every time I set out to complete my thesis, I got pregnant with another child. Three kids later I finally changed my major.


It occured to me this morning (as I looked behind the cans of coconut milk and green chilis) that if I tested this thesis in my own life-- measured my own power by the presentation and preparation of food-- that I'd test out with about as much control as a plastic bag in a windstorm.



So I threw together a jelly sandwich(no peanut butter) on the last hamburger bun (the only bread in the house) and fed the kids ramen for breakfast. I never was very comfortable being in a position of power anyway.

What do you cook when there is nothing in the cupboards?

Do you have a power meal that makes you feel in control?

Quote for the day April 29

"Mom, when I get mad at someone, instead of hitting them, I'm going to write them an angry letter." (V, age 10)

What did you overhear today?

Top family TV shows at our house

Our family is pretty addicted to TV. Watching the tube is a participatory event at our house and very little vegging-out actually occurs. This can be a good thing and a bad thing.

The good part is that the kids are engaged with what they see. A single sit-com episode might inspire several trips to Google, dragging out the atlas, measuring and note-taking along with constant talking over the dialogue-- so much so that we have to go back and watch the episode again.

The bad thing is that some nights I'm so tired from my day that the last thing I want to do is moderate an argument about whether it was Aerosmith or ZZ Top who appeared on the "Flaming Moe's" episode of the Simpsons (it was Aerosmith).

We seem to be pretty caught up in the 70's and 80's around here (for movies too). Between Netflix and sites like Hulu and Fancast, we rarely watch broadcast TV. Which is a good thing since we're living on borrowed time with our old analog set.

Here are some of the Bowen-Biggs' Favorite Family TV Shows. I hope you will add your favorites to the list. These are for school aged kids. When they were younger we pretty much only watched PBS Kids (Zoom was our favorite!)

1. MacGyver -- Probably the most influential TV show for our family. Handsome, rugged scientist with a mullet and a heart of gold. Loved the environment before it was cool. Totally turned my kids onto science. Memorable Quote: "Well, when it comes down to me against a situation, I don't like the situation to win." And V just reminded me that Henry Winkler (yes, the Fonz) was a producer of the show. Whats not to like?
Best ages 7-12. Don't bother watching the last season, its terrible. You can get away with giving your kids nothing but Duct tape for birthdays and Christmas for several years if they are fans of this show.

2. Gilligan's Island -- Who needs the modern show "Lost" when you can watch the original? Gilligan and the Skipper are adorably buffoonish, the Howells are howlingly funny and Ginger and Mary Anne are still some of the sexiest women ever to be on TV. And the professor. . .who do you think MacGyver got it from? Best ages 6-11. Older kids can be too "cool" for the cheezy sets.

3. Brady Bunch -- Okay, it sounds corny, but when my kids were about 8-12 they loved this show. The Brady kids are always doing something interesting: putting on plays, writing jingles that they hope will make them famous, attempting to break Guinness records. Just the kinds of things that my kids like to do in their spare time. And while Greg pulled pranks on his younger siblings and often dressed like a game show host, he was a good brother. Plus, if your kids ever complain about sharing a room you can remind them that all six Brady kids had to share only two rooms.

4. The Simpsons -- this is my most controversial pick, but say what you will about it, Marge Simpsons is the inspiration for my most successful parenting tricks. My kids have never bought into any of my attempts to discipline them unless they saw it first on the Simpsons. I'll admit that my kids have been watching this since they were very young. In fact, when I found out I was pregnant with V, in my panic/confusion/joy I immediately wrote out a list of families that I knew with three kids. The Simpsons were at the top of the list.

Other shows worth mentioning: Mork and Mindy, Charmed, Freaks and Geeks, Dr. Who (our latest obsession)

What are your go-to shows for family viewing? Outside of the box please! And let us know what ages you think are best.