Campfyre Stories

Things are gonna get easier.

I can’t blog too much on this topic until after it winds up resolved, so I may be dancing around the subject a bit.

We need to find a new school for Spawn.  The Jr. High that he’s been going to is not a good school at all and we need to get him out, for a myriad of reasons.  I’ve been a fan/advocate of the school voucher idea for a long time now, but we still don’t have them, they don’t appear to be in the works, and what do you do when you have no options outside of 1) let your child be abused in a failing school system/district (NYS has something like 8 of the top 10 worst in the country) or 2) suck it up and get him into a private school?  Hopefully Spawn will qualify for scholarships because I don’t know how else we’re going to do this otherwise.

I finally saw, first-hand, the falling standards of the American (public) education system last night, when I suggested that Spawn read a book that was required reading for me in 6th or 7th grade and people told me that it was above his (8th grade) reading level.  I think that the level of honors classes that Spawn was taking may be slightly below the regular classes when I was his age.  That’s a pretty sad statement on our attempts to educate our children.

The argument went down that one parent is a hard-ass and the other is too coddling.  The child says there’s truth in both statements.  The parent(s) think that the two roles are the result of the opposing role.  There’s truth in that, too.  Coming to the common ground is emotional and difficult to navigate without bringing in old baggage, I think, but eventually you find it.

It’s hard to be sympathetic when you try to relate your child’s teenage experience to your own.  It’s hard to be judgemental when you try to draw the parallels.  It’s hard to be objective when you’re still harboring your own regrets or gripes from that time so long ago.  I think that parenting is supposed to be about teaching your child how to function in the real world while retaining a strong sense of individuality and self, but when you wrap your own childhood/teenage years into those of the child you’re trying to raise, I wonder how effective you’re going to be at teaching him/her to become a good person rather than shielding him/her from the mistakes that you (or your parents) made when you were that age.

This whole thing blindsided me.  I don’t know what’s going to happen or how it’s going to work out, but I needed to let off a little of the steam that’s building up.  I’m way stressed.  Maybe getting out of town will help.