“Today Phoebe asked me why I wear dresses all the time,” said my eight-year old daughter, Lena, one day after school.

In denial that girlie peer pressure, which I remembered from middle school, was starting in the third grade, I gave Lena’s classmate the benefit of the doubt.

“You know, Lena, sometimes kids have trouble making conversation.  Perhaps Phoebe just wants to talk with you, and discussing clothes is a way to start.  May be she likes dresses, too. ”

Lena gave me a puzzled look.  “Last week, when I wore my satin skirt, Phoebe asked if I was going to the prom,” said Lena. “Phoebe hates dresses.” 

Come to think of it, during the two years that Lena and Phoebe were in the same class, I had only seen her wearing jeans and thin, pastel T-shirts.  It didn’t matter if it was too cold for a T-shirt or too hot for jeans; Phoebe’s outfit was the same.   Phoebe’s  T-shirts either had botanically incorrect flowers, Hannah  Montana, or “edgy” slogans like “Boys Drool and Girls Rule. ” Most of the girls at Lena’s elementary school dressed in the same can’t-wait-to-be-a teenager outfit.

“Well, why do you care what Phoebe thinks?” I said, which is probably the most naïve thing a parent can say to a child.”

A couple days later, Lena wore a black skirt, bright green T-shirt, black leggings, and a black small sweater.  I thought the strong colors made her look particularly beautiful. She was upset when I picked her up. 

“Mom, today Phoebe, Michaela, Niki, and Camaron all asked me together why I was dressed all in black, like a witch.”

I patted Lena’s head until she felt better.  As we drove home, my eleven-year old son, Walker, who is soon to be in middle school said, “You know Mom, may be Lena needs to start dressing like the other girls.”

I couldn’t help clicking with disgust.  “Why does she need to follow everybody else?”

“So she can be popular, and fit in,” said Walker

“Aren’t the popular people the ones who think for themselves?”  I said.   I let my kids put in a CD, so I could have the last word. 

The next day, I picked up Elena after going to the gym.  I wore a T-shirt that shrank too much in the wash.  As I sat on the bench while I waited for Elena to load her backpack, I noticed Michaela staring at the bit of my stomach that my T-shirt revealed.  Michaela then looked at her mother, and rolled her eyes. Michaela’s mother rolled her eyes back at Michaela.  I turned crimson and frantically yanked by shirt so it would stretch into my shorts.  I was still shaken as Lena, Walker and I walked back to the car. 

I hoped Lena hadn’t seen anything, but she had noticed the eye roll, and worst of all, my embarrassment. All she said was, “Aren’t Michaela and her mom mean?”

I agreed, and finally understood what Lena had to face every day. 

By Beth Touchette

 

Labels: Beth Touchette, black skirt, CD, dresses, elementary school, Hannah Montana, peer pressure, T-shirts

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I’m a mom who’s ready for school to start up again. Not elementary school -- dental school. My husband’s on break for a week before he starts quarter number five of his twelve-quarter program.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that he gets to hang up his shirt and tie and spend some time with us -- especially since during the school year I’m relentlessly on duty at home while he’s relentlessly on duty at school or studying.

During this break, we’ve been able to do some meaningful activities together; camping at the ocean, riding bikes along the bay, cutting out paper coconut trees in our son’s kindergarten class, drinking homemade lattes on the sunny porch.

He’s gotten to do some meaningful activities for himself, too; tuning our bikes (which I had no idea needed tuning), organizing his tool box (which of course was spread out for several days over said sunny porch), and surfing the Web a lot in his underwear.

But when our kids pulled off their shirts and pants on Saturday to run around the house in their underwear yelling, "I'm Daddy! I'm Daddy!" I felt we’d all seen enough of him for a while.

I found myself eyeing that shirt and tie, happily looking forward to another kind of break.

By Anjie Reynolds

Labels: Angie Reynolds, bikes, daddy, dental school, elementary school, husband, lattes, mommy needs a break, need a break

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On Friday, my husband and I toured the middle school our fifth-grade son will be attending next year.  I recognized parents I hadn’t seen in years, since our kids attended different elementary schools.   We had chatted at the playground as we pushed our babies in swings, or may be we had crossed paths at Mommy and Me Music Class.  All had larger waistlines and more wrinkled foreheads than I remembered.   

We listened politely to the middle-school principal.  She didn’t have the soft, sweet voice of an elementary school principal.  She told us how important it was to check our kids’ agenda every day, since our kids might lie to us as to whether they had homework or not.

I stopped listening. 

Walker would never lie to me.  I know Walker will never go near alcohol, or marijuana.  His cheeks will never grow rough whiskers, nor will his armpits stink.  My little boy has only been with me ten years and I’m not ready for him to change into a lying, odiferous youth who would rather hang out with other lying, odiferous males than me. 

I refocused once we started the tour.  We stopped by the gym first, where the eight graders were playing basketball.  Many of the kids seemed tall enough to touch the basketball hoop. Several of the girls were already one or two bra cup sizes beyond my chest.

We moved to sixth grade language arts class. I was relieved that the boys looked like kids, although the girls still looked like teenagers.  The principal asked the students what they liked about middle school.  One freckle-faced boy said he liked having several teachers and moving from class to class, because the day wasn’t so boring.  A girl with long-blond braids said she liked how she met so many new people from the other elementary schools. I asked the kids if they had any advice for us parents.  One brown- haired boy said to tell our kids to do their work, because now they had to get real As, Bs, and Cs: not 1s, 2s, and 3s. 

I gulped. 

I hoped my Walker’s somewhat laissez faire attitude towards homework wouldn’t result in a 2.0 grade point average.

That night, I read Greek myths to Walker.  He positioned his head in the crook of my arm.   I wonder how much longer he was going to do this.   I thought about asking him, but I didn’t want to make him aware that our nighttime ritual will be something he will outgrow. 

 That’s the one advantage I have in this growing up thing.  I know for certain he is going to change, but I don’t think he really believes it is going to happen.

By Beth Touchette

Labels: basketball, Beth Touchette, bra sizes, elementary school, grades, gym class, middle school, Mommy and Me Music Class, principals, teenagers

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“Whoa,” is my immediate response. I hesitate after this initial jolt and then pull up again, trying to lift my heavy throbbing head off the wet pillow.

My condition shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all I’d been up throughout the night gasping for water and trying to double up the blankets around my shivering frame.

I blink back at the clock, trying to register the urgency of getting up after five snooze alarms. My throbbing head cradles the pillow, which feels like a rock rubbing a sore. You’ve got to get the kids ready for school. You’ve got to get the kids ready for school. It registers: a checklist of actions dart across my numb brain. The recognition of how impossible actual racing through the morning is also registers, and compels me to try again.

Ooof, up I go, the motion seems to pull against the front of my skull, forcing my eye socket tendons tight against my brain, while a cascade of soreness ripples down my body.

On and on I stagger to my robe, to a sweater I hastily pull on top of the robe. Still shivering. Down the stairs. Ow, ow, ow to the kitchen where I stumble about pulling cereal cartons down and start laying out lunch boxes.

There should be a Mom Medal of Courage given at times like this when it takes every will of your being to press on.

“Mom, are you OK?” my nine-year old cautiously inquires as she skips down the stairs.

“No, I’m sick,” a throaty bark returns back. Her eyes widen.

All three children now eye me from the table. One of them decides to test the waters by beginning to tease another. It’s all I can do to manage a deep, “Don’t you dare. Not today. I am sick.” Little bodies retract in their seats and quietly finish their Cheerios.

This impact doesn’t get past me and I realize I’d better use it to my necessary advantage. "Mom’s sick today guys,” I begin haltingly. “You need to step up and help. I need help. After breakfast you need to. . . COUGH! COUGH!. . . put your dishes in the sink and go upstairs to get dre. . . COUGH! COUGH! … dressed. You need to help.”

And in an amazing fluid turn of events -- they do. Quietly, helpfully, swifly. . . obediently.

With time to spare they pile into the car without so much as a tease or a defiant standoff (the three-year old’s morning modus operandi).

On the drive, as I squint painfully past my headache to the street ahead, I hear William say that he is going to make me a get-well card. Lauren chimes in that she will, too, and that they will all make one together as well. Interjected in this loving conversation are hopes and wishes that I feel better. And soon.

Huge hugs at drop off at the elementary school and preschool, and I stagger home with the realization I have a rare almost three hours before pickups begin. I pull back on pajamas over tender skin and collapse into bed, weakly doubling up the blankets around me.

For a brief few hours I will get to do what dads do when they’ve been walloped by the flu. I will get to stay in bed and just sleep.

By Maija Threlkeld

Labels: elementary school, Flu, Maija Threlkeld, preschool, sick dads, sick mom

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I walk through the school yard, heading back to my car, ready to roll into work. Small groups of moms stand around the play area, chatting and drinking coffee from commuter mugs. My insecurities kick in and I wonder what group wants me.

Where do I fit?

There are the moms of older kids, who know everything about the school and how my kid will behave since they’ve been through it already. Sometimes they like to talk to me, to give me advice. I play dumb and grateful.

There are the soccer moms, probably rearranging car pools for the fourth time this week. My son doesn’t play soccer so that group is not for me. I also don’t fit in with the moms with money – I didn’t even know that “development” was another word for fundraising before my son started school.

Sometimes I feel like I’m back in high school.

It doesn’t help that I’m not good at broaching groups. I don’t know how to break in. If I nudge my way into the group and listen, am I invading personal space? If I laugh too loudly at some not so funny remark, or add my own comments, am I interrupting? I somehow missed the life lesson about how to properly infiltrate a group.

I find it easiest most days to be the working mom, too busy to stop. I smile and keep walking, trying to project purpose, somewhere to go. I nod hellos, sometimes tap lightly on a mom’s arm or pat a back.

Maybe by middle school, I’ll find my place in the school yard.

By Marianne Lonsdale

Labels: By Marianne Lonsdale, elementary school, High School Musical, middle school, outcast

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Today is picture day at my seven-year-old daughter’s elementary school. Last night she asked me to set her fine, straight, golden streaked hair in pin curls. While I knew she had read about pin curls in her Molly, an American Girl: 1944 book -- 1944 being a golden age for pin curls ­­­-- I was still taken aback.

When I was a girl, every year when picture day rolled around, my mother insisted on setting my slack, black hair. One year it was pin curls, another year rag curls and another pink foam rollers. On the eve of picture day, I slept restlessly with bobby pins or roller holders sticking into my skull while wearing a nylon, floral print roller bonnet or worse, toilet paper wrapped around my head to protect my mother’s handiwork.

In the morning, I would watch in disbelief as she unwound springy curls which made my round face look even rounder. By the time I sat for my picture, the curls would have deflated, losing much of their bounce.

This was the ‘70s and my straight hair was actually in. Both Laurie Partridge and Marcia Brady had shiny, satiny smooth manes hanging from parts down the center of their heads.

Not me.

My mother, who had her hair teased and “put up” weekly at the Golden Strawberry Beauty Salon, forbade me from wearing my hair parted in the middle. She insisted it just wasn’t flattering -- in hindsight she was right. But with my unnatural, picture day curls, I felt like a fraud. I longed for a school picture that actually resembled the girl I looked like every other day of the year.

And now my daughter wants pin curls for her picture day!

I shouldn’t be surprised. She did request a Princess Leia like hairdo for her kindergarten picture. She even supplied me with printed instructions on how to achieve the style from a booklet that had come with one of her dolls. Not one to damper such enthusiasm, I complied. And after a couple of attempts at twisting up her hair into even buns on either side of her head, I had to admit -- she did look darling.

But pin curls are out of the question. I fear she will be startled in the morning by the transformation. We compromise and settle on a curling iron induced flip (parted on the side, of course) that will leave her looking much more like herself.

By Tina Bournazos

Labels: '70s, An American Girl: 1944, black hair, bobby pins, elementary school, hair parted in the middle, kindergarten, Molly, pin curls, pink rollers, Princess Leia, school picture day, Tina Bournazos

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The letter informing us where my daughter, Phoebe, will go to kindergarten this fall arrived a couple of weeks ago. “Welcome to ABC School…” it began. It was my first choice out of the three schools I’d checked off on the registration form. I should have been happy. Instead, the whisper of doubt that had been in the back of my mind since making my choice last March was now as impossible to ignore as a car alarm gone ballistic in the middle of the night.

I wasn’t worried about student to teacher ratios, test scores or curriculum. One of the things that thrilled us most about Mill Valley when we moved here last summer was the reputation of its schools. When it came time to enroll Phoebe, I made the logical choice and selected the school closest to us.

But maybe I’m not so logical after all. When I learned that most of Phoebe’s friends from preschool would be attending my second choice school, I wanted to call the district office and beg for her to go there, too.

I know that she’ll make new friends wherever she goes to kindergarten. And I know that learning to cope with new people and situations is part of growing up. I’m just not sure if she’s ready—or I’m ready— to start from scratch again quite so soon.

Our move was harder on her than I’d expected. I moved frequently as a child myself, attending four elementary schools by the time I was 11. So I know how painful it can be to leave familiar worlds behind. But Phoebe was only 4 and, unlike me, she’s naturally outgoing. Moving wouldn’t be that big of a deal for her, I told myself.

I was wrong.

We were lucky to find a warm and welcoming preschool here. But often during the drive to drop her off—especially during those first months— I’d catch a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror looking uncharacteristically sad. “I don’t want to go to school, Mama,” she’d say. “I wish I were back at my old school.”

Pining for her old school eventually gave way to daily tales of escapades with her new friends. Recently, she even had her first sleepover with her “best friend” Isabelle (who will be going to school number two).

Last week I received another letter from the school district. Turns out there had been a mix-up—Phoebe was actually supposed to be enrolled at school number two. I couldn’t have agreed more.

By Dorothy O’Donnell

Labels: elementary school, moving, preschool, school choices

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