Where's Your Mommy?

The wee ones and I went to the pool today. It was the first time I've ever navigated the pool alone. With two small children who are both active and like doing different things in the pools, I'm generally just not comfortable without one adult per child as my ratio. While both wee ones know how to swim - and Mister Man has demonstrated his prowess by swimming twenty-five meters without touching the bottom - that doesn't mean that I'm comfortable with them much more out of arm's reach.

Granted, this is just me. I'm paranoid. I know this, and I'm ok with it. I read about kids who know how to swim still drowning. I know the story behind the two year old boy at Mister Man's school who is still in a coma after a Memorial Day pool accident. It's just the way I am. I have my rules, and they work for me - and fortunately the wee ones respect them. That's why we tested the only one adult theory. It worked wonderfully, I'm happy to report.

Not all parents go with this same theory, and I'm fine with that. For the most part. There are parents who watch from the edge of the pool rather than in it. There are parents who let the lifeguards monitor their six and seven year olds while they sit in their lounge chairs and read. While that's not what I'm comfortable with for my children, I don't judge. Generally.

Today was an exception. Twice.

A boy who couldn't be more than three or four was tiptoeing near where the wee ones were jumping into the pool from the edge and then climbing back out. The water was only three and a half feet, but I could see that the boy was on his tip-toes, holding his head back to avoid the water getting in his nose and eyes. There was no parent in site. As I looked on, giving him a wary eye and noting no adult in site, the lifeguard helped him to shallower water where he could safely stand and asked that he be sure to stay in the shallow area. Hello? Parent? Guardian? Nanny? Babysitter? Anyone? I was glad that it was a relatively cool day and the pool wasn't very crowded.

Less than a half hour later, I heard an announcement on the loudspeaker, "Will the mom of Tommy who is wearing the yellow SpongeBob swimsuit please report to the guard shack." I looked over, and I could see a little boy, maybe five but probably not (nope, not the same kid, fortunately) holding the hand of one of the lifeguards just looking forlornly towards the pool, doing his best to fight off tears. I looked around, curious to see whose child he was - as he'd obviously gotten lost and couldn't find his mom. Five minutes later, the message was repeated. No mom appeared.

Another five minutes later, the volume on the loudspeaker was turned up, and the message altered. "Will Kelly the mother of little Tommy wearing the yellow SpongeBob Squarepants swim trunks please report to the guard shack. Please." Interestingly, there was still nothing.

Really? You haven't seen your four or five year old son in, what, at least twenty minutes at this point - that's being generous and figuring he sought out a lifeguard to help find his missing mom ten minutes after he last saw her, and in all honesty, I figure he was probably happily playing for longer than that - and you aren't searching frantically for him? You aren't walking around the pool, worry hastening your footsteps as you begin to fear the worst, knowing it's been too long since you last saw your child? You aren't running to the lifeguard shack yourself begging them to help you find your missing child? You aren't alert enough to recognize your child's name, description and oh, I don't know, your own name to come sprinting to reassure your child that everything is ok?

The announcement for Kelly to please come claim poor Tommy was made a fourth time. A few minutes later, I saw a woman bending over him, dragging him back to the chair she must have finally vacated. I won't give you any stereotypes as to what she looked at, because in my mind, ignoring your child and relinquishing your parental responsibilities isn't subject to a single stereotype. She didn't appear worried to me, however. She looked angry with him, and she was dragging him by the arm, as though he'd done something wrong and embarrassed her. I turned away in disgust at this point because I realized that I'd begun judging her. I wasn't ok with her parenting choices. In my mind they'd gone too far from my own and could so easily have left her child in a dangerous situation.

And so the wee ones and I finished up our pool playdate. I hung out with them in the pool, helping them in their follow the leader game, cheering them on as they went down the slides, and monitoring them as they played in the waterfalls, jumping in and out of the pool. I recognized that it was my choice, and I was grateful for the lifeguards who are so astute so that parents can monitor at their own comfort level, which isn't mine.

And I began to reflect that at some point, I will need to back off. I will need to let them play in the pool without me standing over them, ready to grab them if they show any signs of distress. Someday I'll be bringing my book and reading in a chair, though glancing up at the end of every page to mark the wee ones visually in the pool. Not yet, but someday. But I promise that when I do, I will make sure the wee ones know where I am, and I will be listening to any and all announcements on the loudspeaker.

At what age did you give your children independence in the pool? Or when are you planning to?

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It's A Slippery Slope

Before I get all heavy and serious and depressing, go visit my other site for a nifty giveaway. I promise, this post will still be here when you get back.

***

I'd told myself that I wasn't going to post about this. It's a week past the speech (yep, you all know the topic now, don't you?), but it just keeps on with a life of its own in our district.

It started out two weeks ago yesterday when I went to our presidents' council meeting where the PTO presidents across the district get together twice a month. The superintendent told us about the speech and that he'd been getting angry emails from parents since the night before wanting to know why he was mandating that all students in the district watch the speech. Considering that he hadn't known there was a speech and had to google it to find out what the parents were talking about, in his own words, "I hadn't even known about it yet to mandate it." That didn't stop the parents in our district from freaking out.

The decision the superintendent did make, once he had all the information, was that it would be a teacher by teacher decision whether or not to show it, and if parents didn't want their students to see it, they could go elsewhere to study during that time.

Personally, I think the parents who were pulling out of school all day (and there were several) went overboard. The message wasn't a bad one, and I wouldn't be opposed to either of the wee ones hearing it (neither did, FYI). However, if I were the parent of a high school student whose -- say -- math teacher decided to show it for that math period, I'd be upset because my student now lost a day of teaching that the other identical math classes didn't for something that wasn't related to the class that my child easily could have seen later online at home.

I think my district made the right choice in leaving the decision to the teachers, as they're the ones who need to decide if and how it fits with their lesson plans. The key being their lesson plans.

However, last Thursday a memo went out to all the teachers in the district. If they wanted to show the speech again, they had to get signed permission slips from all the parents in the class to show it. In other words, I'm a speech teacher or a civics teacher or whathaveyou and want to tie it into my lesson plan because of the history of it or to analyze the oratory skills, and I now need the parents' approval of my decision to show it in the classes that didn't have me as their teacher during the original broadcast.

Whoah.

Ummm, what?

If I have a legitimate reason to reshow the speech, then I have a legitimate reason to reshow the speech, and it isn't about politics.

How soon before we have to get permission slips to start watching other potentially politically charged -- but valid teaching tool -- speeches and moments in history. Do we decide that the Clinton impeachment hearings now need a permission slip, too? The way that the memo to teachers is worded, yes, they do.

And that means that maybe the Challenger explosion, Reagan getting shot, JFK getting shot, MLK's I Have A Dream speech and more -- they all need the blessing of every parent in the classroom now in order to be shown.

Yes, we had some vocal parents. But why are they now deciding how teachers preside over their classrooms? And how quickly does the administration realize what they've given away?

Sometimes it's about trust. It's about knowing that you've taught your child well and that your teacher is going to teach your child well. It's about knowing that you have a critical thinker who can analyze anything they see and draw their own conclusions about it. I wrote awhile ago about helicopter parents, and this? This really scares me.

Helicopters?

I was with my mom and the wee ones at a kids' maze the other day when she turned to me and remarked that the helicopter parenting really started early. I gaped at her briefly, taken aback. I looked around and thought for a moment before replying.

To me, it didn't seem like helicoptering. I have horrid images of the helicopter parents who don't let their children have any independence, who never let them become their own people. I've read the articles about the parents calling bosses demanding to know why their children were passed over for a raise, the ones who help their children do the research for college papers, those who have forced many colleges who have deans dealing only with the annoyances of the helicopter parents.

By God, I've even laughed (from my verrrry far away vantage point of having a five year old as my oldest child) about the idea of having an orientation at college just for the parents. Really, college is for the children. Why on earth do the parents need their own program? Help the kids unload their boxes into the dorm, take them out for dinner, and give them a hug and a kiss good-bye.

But perhaps my superiority is merely an illusion of my far away vantage point. As my mom so eloquently pointed out, when she was a child, there were no parents constantly there telling them how to play together. They either figured it out or didn't... and socially that is where they developed.

In the maze, parents were constantly walking up to the netting to scold their children (me included, when Mister Man used his foot to shove a younger child down a slide and then again when he tried to climb up the slide instead of just going down it). A child would periodically come out crying, and the mom would sooth away the tears.

For me, that's where I draw the line. "No blood, no foul" is my mantra now with the wee ones. They may come out crying about a child who was hitting them, but they need to figure out how to keep the child from hitting them, and they aren't truly hurt. My thought was that (especially for Mister Man who needs the help with the social cues) if I were to model and give him pointers on the correct behavior he should have and then let him use that knowledge to help himself shake off the inevitable dings and scrapes of childhood rather than crying "bully" each time, I would be fostering the independence in him that I so badly want him to grow into.

My mom's words shook me though. Is me going up there or calling him out of the maze each time he makes a misstep taking the wrong path? Should I let him falter, so long as he isn't really causing injury to another child?

Today, there is a different criteria for parents. If I let my child run wild, you know the other moms will be whispering behind their hands about me. We strive to teach perfect gentlemanly behavior in all our children from the earliest age by instilling our rules into them -- the constant "don'ts" and "nos" they hear incessantly. Is it really any wonder that so few children will introduce themselves anymore? That children don't so easily instantly bond and start a game but are more shy in expressing themselves so often?

Knowing that neither of the wee ones will hurt another child and will always look after each other (I did hear him say to another child that he wouldn't do something to Little Miss because she's his sister and he loves her), I finally sat back to watch.

And slowly, the games integrated more children. The messy game of tag where I'd pulled Mister Man aside a few times evolved. It became a game of ghost in the graveyard - though not one I'd recognize from my childhood. That evolved into hide and go seek before it was time for us to leave.

And there was not a tear shed by a single child. The sounds were the raucous laughter and shouted instructions of children playing their own self-directed games.

Huh.

I really don't want to be a helicopter parent, for both my own sanity and that of the wee ones. I want them to grow up socially adept and respectful of themselves and others. I don't want to be that mom with those kids.

I'm not sure where the balance is, but I think I need to sit back just a bit and let the wee ones enjoy playing. Maybe.

Where do you fall on the helicopter scale?