I’m Not Saying There are Parallels…But

The school year for folks around here got underway this past week. Teachers and parents are teaming up to ensure the little ones receive a quality education. Or maybe they’re not.

Each year, I find myself wondering who makes the decisions when it comes to what teachers can and cannot do for their students. Seems like educators are finding their hands being tied on the most bizarre levels. I’d talked to my best friend today about how the first week of school went for her daughter. I suspected it was harder on my friend than it was her little girl – and I was right. She told me she’d spent some time helping her five year old loosen and tighten the big cap on her thermos because the teachers aren’t allowed to touch a student’s food or utensils. After I asked her to repeat it a few times – just to be sure I understood, I was speechless.

After I got off the phone with her, I spoke with another friend who also has little ones in another school zone who started school this week – one is in kindergarten and she also has a third grader. Turns out, these days, the first week of school is spent with educators and parents clashing over everything from which teacher is assigned to their little darlings to what time they eat lunch. One parent wants her little ball of sunshine put with another teacher while another parent is hell bent on keeping his own little gem out of a “stricter” teacher’s classroom. I don’t envy the teachers. Since when is being strict a bad thing – especially when it’s a child whose parents give in to their every whim – up to and including kaboozling Mom and Dad to march up to the school and demand a different teacher? And what happened to a parent saying ‘Get over it. You’re going to have a lifetime of “strict teacher” moments’?

Some of these parents have the whole community up in arms – and it’s just the first week! I always thought we

The Little Darlings

sent our kids to school to gain an education while growing into responsible adults who don’t demand changes on a whim, who act responsibly and who recognize that we don’t always get our way.

Now, far be it from me to parallel one dynamic with another – but have you heard about some of the changes in our social welfare programs? Aside from the regulations being relaxed for serial welfare recipients who find looking for a job entirely too traumatizing, there are now other changes that will only cement some folks into continuing what’s worked so well for years. – which is, well – nothing.

The traditional paper food stamps have been replaced with EBT cards and according to a new study, the monthly funnel of money added to these government credit cards is simply too tempting. In many states, these EBT cards can be used for anything – even withdrawing cash from an ATM. And make no mistake: that taxpayer money is being used for liquor, concert tickets and shopping sprees at some of the nation’s most prestigious department stores.

The study was conducted in Tennessee by a consumer watchdog group. It included a review of more than 150,000 transactions made via EBT cards. The study was focused between October and December 2011. The study found the majority of transactions were being used exactly as intended, but there were many that left the researchers boggled. Here are a few transactions “charged” to these government aid cards:

• Tickets to tour Graceland in Memphis
• A $500 shopping spree at the mall
• A night out at a nightclub for $60
• Waffle House visits by one card holder that totaled more than $100
• $100 purchase at Dillards

As I mentioned, most welfare recipients may use their EBT benefits to withdraw cash from ATM machines. One EBT recipient made a withdrawal of $790 from an ATM at a Memphis liquor store. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services officials who oversee the program admit they cannot trace where the cash goes after it’s been withdrawn. These people are free to do with it as they wish with no accountability to anyone.

But maybe these people had parents who were willing to go to bat for them when they were in elementary school. Maybe they were allowed to swap strict teachers for those who were more lenient in the classroom.

You can see more of the report here: watchdog.org. You can see how the parents and teachers are clashing in just about any school across the country these days.

 

Let Your Heart Rule

Today’s typical teen faces a mountain of obstacles that I don’t think any other generation has ever faced. These days, teen violence is at near epidemic proportions and dating abuse has reached extraordinary heights. I’m sickened by the statistics and maybe what’s most scary for me is that these relationships are evolving with dynamics most teens have never known. Many teen girls who are abused by their boyfriends have never been exposed to abuse on any level. They’ve never seen their parents abuse one another and they were raised in traditional loving homes, yet they find themselves accepting behaviors from their boyfriends that would terrify their parents. It doesn’t always occur to parents that their teens are being abused or are abusing the ones they date. We just always assume we raise our kids right and “right” includes remaining dignified, respectful and an unwillingness to hurt another. That’s not always so.

February is Teen Dating Violence Month. There’s a new campaign, Let Your Heart Rule, that was founded to bring this social problem to the forefront. Verizon and Break the Cycle have partnered in an effort to encourage teens and parents to take a stand against teen violence. There’s a reason I’m so drawn to this campaign, but more on that later. Here are the top ten warning signs that your teen might be involved in an abusive relationship, either as a victim or an abuser:

• Name calling and insults
• Demanding access to text messages and voice mails
• Isolation
• Excessive texting
• Explosive tempers
• Violent mood swings
• Physical abuse
• Telling or being told what to do and what not to do
• Blaming the victim for actions that the abuser takes (“You made me do it”)
• Insecurity and extreme jealousy

This campaign is so important – for teens, educators and certainly parents. When we’re 16 or 17 and madly in love, we think we change the world. And if we can change the world, we can certainly change one person. With time, wisdom and maturity, we realize just how unrealistic that logic is. Unfortunately, that can sometimes come too late.

I married when I was twenty. I knew nothing; what twenty year old does, right? I’d never been exposed to violence on any level, I didn’t know what drugs looked like and I certainly couldn’t look at someone and know they were taking drugs (and still can’t). The marriage ended within two years, but when I left, I left with a beautiful son who was three weeks old. Three weeks old. All I knew was that there had to be something better for him. I also left with too many scars, partial hearing loss and an inability to have more children. Again, it was that mentality that I was going to change the world and one soul couldn’t be that difficult. My life is incredible now and has been for two decades (that three week old son is now an amazing and brilliant 20 year old). But it changed me. The hardest part was hindsight; recognizing how hard it was for those who loved me but who were helpless for those few years (we dated for close to a year before we got married). All I know is I was raised in a solid and loving home and yet I still fell for someone who was so far removed from what I knew. So yes, this campaign is so important for families.

Every high school in the nation should strongly consider taking part. Parents should most certainly take part and every teen who’s ever been called fat, a whore, trash, bitch, worthless or any other devastating name should know just because it comes from someone she loves, it’s no different than her worst enemy saying those things. In fact, they’re one in the same.

For more information, visit the Let Your Heart Rule website.

 

A Must-Read Before You Begin Your Holiday Gift Shopping

It’s that time of year when marketing specialists are working closely with their clients in an effort to get the latest products front and center, just in time for Christmas shopping.  Whether it’s gadgets, toys, album releases or automobiles, everyone’s scrambling to ensure their latest must-haves are timed perfectly for public consumption.  What the experts might be missing, however, is the subtle shift that’s taking place these days – and if they’re smart, they’ll take notice of it sooner rather than later.

I begged my mom for these shoes for WEEKS before Christmas!

The recession over the past few years has really caused many of us to take a step back and re-evaluate our “stuff”.  Job losses, foreclosures and uncertainty about the future has made many realize all the things they’ve acquired over the years mean little if there’s no house to put them in.  Priorities have certainly shifted.

We all want our lives memorialized in some important way; we want to stand apart and we want meaning attached to what we hope will be a well-lived life.  There’s a reason for all the endless models of BlackBerry, iPhone and computers; and there’s a reason for countless ways of personalizing everything we own.  No one wants the same cell everyone at the office has.  Before long, though, it becomes tiresome and usually, all of these “things” become a burden.  So if we’re not as excited by the prospect of unwrapping the latest iPad on Christmas morning, what is it that will have us declaring, “This is the best gift ever!!”?

Brace yourself – the answer is actually quite simple.  This year, sentimentality rules and the value is not even slightly based on how much money was spent.  Husbands and wives are presenting one another with beautifully framed photos of their childhoods, or better, they’re looking through all those old pictures in search of finding two pictures – one of themselves and one of the spouse – that are similar in pose and age.  It’s the symbolism that’s expressed in these one of a kind gifts and they’re the ones that will be long remembered after the iPad and BlackBerry is an antiquated has-been – much like the beta tapes from the early 1980s and 8 track tapes of the 1970s are.

Want proof?  Four words: the Christmas of 1995.  I received a lot of gifts, but don’t ask me what they were.  I truly can’t remember – except for one very special present that my Mom made for my sister and me.  It is by far the most treasured gift I’ve ever received that came wrapped and from under a Christmas tree.  It was a book of index cards, spiral bound, that she wrote in her beautiful Catholic school-inspired handwriting.  In it, she spoke of where each of us were that year – my dad, my sister, her kids and my Jacob and of course, she and I.   She put in writing all of those hilarious stories from our childhoods – my sister’s brazen comments to her teachers in hers and my adamant declarations to my own kindergarten teacher that I did not come from a stork was put in my green recipe book.  She put all of the recipes that we were raised on and included a few different ones that she thought I’d like in mine and a few my sister would like to make for her own family in her book.  She told stories that we’d never heard before, each card a memorial to our family.  I can tell you, without a doubt, when the time comes to gather up and head north when a hurricane approaches, I make sure I have photos and my recipe book – the rest of the “stuff”, including my flat screen, furniture and even my library of books – it all stays behind.

When it comes right down to it, isn’t that what a gift should mean to all of us?