Sucking up is an important skill.....

For Allison's teachers tomorrow.  LOL.

Quit with your Thankful Posts

There is some weird trend this year with people posting something that they are Thankful for every day on Facebook.  I am sooo not a fan of this.

I don't have anything against being thankful for things.  Actually, I think it's generally a good thing to focus on positives.  But I cringe every time a read one of these status updates.  And they come every day.... from several people.... and sometimes I feel like I've thrown up a little in my mouth.

First off, I'm not a big fan of PDA.  I'm happy to kiss my family in the morning, give them a "have a nice day" or "Love you!" as they head off to work or school, and then tuck in the kids at night with another "I love you."  I don't feel the need to make a public facebook post about how I have the most awesome family ever and I love them so much.  But that's just me, and I realize that there are public proclaimers in this world - and I'm totally kosher with that most of the time.

Exception.... when it come into my facebook feed DAILY.

And if that were the only annoying thing about it, I might still be fine.  To each their own love language or whatever.  But then there are the things that people actually choose to write, and I think that bugs me even more.  Maybe it's hard to come up with 30 real things to be thankful for (I wouldn't think so, we do live in an industrialized county in the year 2013).  But we're really only on day 17, and honestly I was annoyed on day 3.

(1) The thankful post that's actually bragging.  This is the most common.  These are things like "I'm so thankful my son is the best baseball player on the team."  Or "I'm so thankful my daughter decided to try the violin.  Turns out she's a natural and is now in the advanced orchestra."  So.....Your kid is awesome at sports or music.  Okay.  It's nice of you to share that in the guise of being all humble-like, but you know what - we all see it for what it is - bragging.

(2) Lies.  "I am so thankful for my awesome coworkers.  They are all wonderful!"  Um, here's the thing, no one's coworkers are all awesome.  Everyone works with at least a few a-holes, but somehow you ended up facebook friends with you boss and now you're brown-nosing.

(3) Things that are likely to be hurtful to others.  "I'm so thankful that we got pregnant on the first try!"  or "I'm so thankful that we can afford this trip to Hawaii."  You know what - some people struggle with fertility.  Many people are struggling to pay bills or are worried about losing their jobs.  I realize that the fact that you aren't in either category is exactly why YOU are thankful.  But public proclamation just tends to put down anyone else who is not realizing that dream.

(4) It's a stupid thing to be thankful for.  "I'm so thankful we were all smiling in our Christmas photo."  This is dumb, unless you have some reason to suspect people would NOT be smiling in their photo (like your husband cracks a smile only every 4.5 years and you just happened to catch it, or your baby is terrified of cameras and screamed uncontrollably during the last 6 photo shoots).

I know that facebook is, in part, a way to share good news and fun facts, and do a little bragging, shameless self-promotion, and whatever.  We all do that stuff.  It seems to be a part of the facebook social contract.  But if you are going to do it.  Own it.  I am not a fan of hiding it in the face of the "Thankfulness."  It seems to me to be more "I'll be all thankful for the stuff that's going great for me. Because not only do I know my shit's more awesome than your shit - I'm super grateful for that."

In a world run by me (wouldn't that be Awesome!), people could make one post on November 1st that said "hey, I'm going to spend a little time each day being thankful this month and I hope you do too" and then do it in private.  Follow that up with being thankful for stuff that's really worth being thankful for.

Jolly Old St. Nick

So, for those of you believe that Santa arrives on Christmas Eve and brings presents to you via your chimney, I say this: Absolutely True!  (also, you might want to quit reading now).

I was young when I was "told" about Santa.  But somehow, I think my parents (mom) and I has a tacit understanding that I wasn't going to admit it out loud, and so presents from Santa continued to appear under the tree for me up until about.... well, maybe they still do.  I had not looked forward to the day that the kids came home and asked me about it, but I should have had a plan because I know Jacob started to get suspicious last year.  Thank God for NORAD's Santa Tracker.

So the other day, Jacob and I were sitting on the couch and he said "Some kids at school are saying that their moms and dads put presents under the tree and say they are from Santa Claus.  Is that true mom?"

I'll note here I always have a bit of difficulty with the phrase "is that true, Mom?" due to Brian's tendency to tell our children tall tales, like, for instance, their toes will fall off when they grow their adult toes; which prompts them to turn their doe eyes to me with the phrase "is that true, Mom?" at which point I can only dumbly stare at the floor and mutter "uh....." to which they will then turn back to Brian and say "that's not true Dad."

But this time I managed a "well, what do you think?" because there's no defense like a good offense.  Also, I needed to buy some time.

Jacob replied that "well, of course they are wrong!" with the conviction and tone of voice of someone who clearly thinks they attend school with morons.  But then a quick moment of doubt: "Right, mom?"

So my reply (that I'm not totally happy about giving) was this: "Well, if you stop believing in Santa then he won't visit you and your parents will HAVE to buy the presents for under the tree because wouldn't it be sad if there was nothing there on Christmas morning.  But I hope that you still believe, because I really don't want to do the extra shopping."

At which point Jacob looked up at me and laughed: "yeah.... you don't want to do any extra shopping."

S**t the kids say...

Somewhere, someone is keeping a list of stuff their kids say while playing video games.  Because this is what my kids are saying and it makes no sense to me:

There are Orcs, so clearly's there's going to be Ogres.

It's MY TURN to spawn.

Did you see that Boss run past the Lion into the endzone?  No - watch the replay!

The slice and dice is failing!  The slice and dice is failing!

I trapped all those sheep so now I'm mining redstone.

Oh crap - she's posting about math - AGAIN

So, I was wondering what percentage of our struggles with the elementary math curriculum was materials-based and how much was child-based (since our lovely daughter makes no qualms about the fact that she HATES math).

Well, I'm getting an answer to that and it's...... largely materials-based.  Because we now get to watch child #2 work through the totally incomprehensible math curriculum and get stuck for totally different reasons.

One concept in elementary math is estimation.  They start working with multiplying double digits and one thing they do is some hokey version of guess-and-check.  You have 7x23.  First estimate your answer and then do the problem and check it.  At this point I will note that I've never been clear on how much of an "estimate" is allowed here.  Like - are you supposed to say "23 is like 20, so the answer should be close to 7x20 = 140" or can you just look at the thing and say "yeah, 475 looks good."  I don't know - there is no real direction on that.

This was a problem for Allison because she never grasped the concept of estimating.  And to be honest - I didn't want her to grasp that concept.  Getting her to slow down and do the problem as it was supposed to be done was challenging enough.  "Wait - I get to guess!  Wow, I can get this done quickly!!"

So for her I took the rounding approach mentioned above.  "Well, 47 is close to 50 and 50 times three is what..... 150, good - write that.  Now let's DO the problem for real."

Jacob is now on the same material and the challenge for him is different.  He can estimate, but doesn't want to.  He wants to know the answer.  He wants to solve the problem in his head, write down the answer as the estimate, then solve it on paper and pat himself on the back for being such a good guesser.  "But Mom, 7 x 23 is 161.  Why do you want me to write anything other than 161 as the answer to this problem?"  I don't know, man.... I don't know.  Just do it, will you?

This begs the question of - Who is this serving?  What kid is learning better this way?

And stay-tuned for my follow-up post: Why is that wrong answer not wrong; and why is that correct answer not correct?  a.k.a. - how to get partial credit on a multiple choice math exam.