This Should Be...School Behavior, Reward Charting, and General Confusion, Part 2!!!

After blogging the other day about my youngest and my struggles to figure out how to help her navigate the school system and follow the rules in kindergarten, I also had to opportunity to discuss this with a friend of mind and I realized another larger problem I face.  I wonder how to name this dilemma. It feels so huge and such a huge part of many of my parental conflicts.  This is the big question I face almost daily.  Do I raise my kids to embrace the values I have used to guide my life and the values that the majority of our society and culture embraces or do I raise my kids to embrace the values I am working on developing that seem more conducive to happiness and a better balanced life?  I think most days I lean toward the later, however, this is one of those things that is much more difficult to do than to talk about.
 
In reflection, I could probably mine this topic for a lifetime of blog posts.  However, my discussion with my friend last night made me realize that most of the time I think my youngest is pretty amazing.  I really do not want to mess her up!  Deep down I think that most children are pretty good at living in the moment and enjoying life and then society takes them in hand and in the interest of education and the belief that we need to guide children in learning how to follow the expected rules, we crush their healthy little spirits and turn them into achievement driven unhappy adults.
 
I also think that the push to make our children learn more and do more at an early age does not seem to be working.  The generations after mine do not seem that much smarter, more successful, and certainly not any happier than my cohorts.  America does not seem to be developing in a positive way in any area from my own observations, and I am not blaming any generation for that fact, just noting that our pressure to educate and mold the children of America does not seem to be benefiting the children themselves or our society in any way that I can see.
 
Unfortunately, I was raised to be the ever-obedient, overachieving, good student and citizen, and every day I fight the urge to value achievement and productivity over intrinsic values like family, love, happiness, pleasure, and so on.  So there is a strong part of me that expects my children to excel in the school system.  I want my children to have the good grades, the good behavior reports, the fancy certificates, the praise from the teacher, etc.  Therefore, I feel like a bad mom when the notes come home from the teacher or the report card grades are not "straight A's."  As I write this I feel sort of sickened to find this is so important to me.  On the other hand, I clearly see teachers, professionals, and other parents, who would gladly judge me and hold me out as a terrible mother if I stopped encouraging my children to excel.
 
It seems pretty clear to me that the American school system promotes unhealthy learning habits for children, but I also feel hopeless at times on how to navigate the system.  Why do five- and six-year-olds have daily homework when there brains and bodies would be better served by playing?  Why do I hear of elementary school children falling asleep during homework?  Why is my child able to complete all of her school work in 30 minutes, but is criticized daily in a socially-acceptable way (behavior chart) because she would rather do what she wants to do rather than follow the kindergarten schedule?  However, even if there were a good way to opt out of this school system, will my children be at a disadvantage?  And if so, in which way?  Is it my responsibility to see my children can follow the demands of the society we currently live in, even if most people seem pretty miserable living by these demands?  I run into people daily who spend more time
living up to the demands of others than they do to their own needs.  I have spent most of my career teaching people to actually care for themselves in some way.  Why does our country excel in creating human beings who value success and productivity over meeting their own basic human needs?
 
Okay, I feel myself getting too philosophical in this blog post, and think it is time to end this and send it out into the universe.  I hope it makes some people think about ways we can reshape the world and the American school system.  For me, at least it helps to remind me that although a part of me wants my children to excel at everything, I should spend more time thinking about the lessons I really believe my child should be learning and finding ways to cultivate those lessons rather than just letting society and the school system override the lessons I have learned over my entire life.

School Behavior, Reward Charting, and General Confusion!!

I have two beautiful daughters, age 8 and 6. School has always been a bit of a challenge for me due to their unique skills and abilities and my status as a full-time working mom. (Let's not even talk about my positive history for perfectionism and overachievement in schoolwork). My most recent challenge has been to survive my youngest daughter's entrance into kindergarten. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say my girl is smart. She is very smart, reading well before start of kindergarten. She is pretty outgoing and sweet too.

HOWEVER, she does seem to have a lot of difficulty with sitting down, following rules, and focusing on what the teacher thinks is important. Now, these problems have been around since before kindergarten. In preschool, we had a fabulous teacher who loved and appreciated Sofia, but also worked with her to help keep her on track. I suspect I might have a few blog posts on her preschool days. I remember walking in to preschool and feeling oh so frustrated after getting the "What am I going to so with Sofia?" head shake.

I still believe that children develop at different rates in all areas. I hope that in time Sofia's weak areas will develop and even out in comparison to her strong ones. However, the school system does not seem to share my vision on child development (and at times, i do believe that the school system seems not to care much about any well-documented child development beliefs). I want to say here that this is no reflection on my daughter's teacher. I do feel that Sofia's teacher does have to put in way more effort to keep her on task in addition to her primary job of teaching 24 kindergarten students.

Okay, so this is not entirely a venting session.  It is actually a bid for help! I suppose in the perfect world I would have blogged for years about Sofia's development, her successes, and her challenges in school. But get real, I barely have to time to keep up with the minimum here people!

The issue today is my most recent behavior note I received from the teacher. We have tried a simple smiley face/frowney face chart, a red/yellow/green light system, and our newest behavioral system developed by the teacher. The teacher rates Sofia on 3 global behaviors: following directions, completing work, and focusing/listening. Sofia's day is broken into 5 time frames with a rating for each behavior 5 times per day. So basically she has 15 boxes to be rated as smiley or frowny. Since this chart system started, we have had good days and bad days and I can find little pattern to the madness. I have not found any link between better days/worse days and sleep, food, encouragement, etc. She did do better the one day I took off work and sat with her all day (but then I did what I do at home for homework and sat right next to her and basically redirected her as soon as she wandered off).

Anyway, enough with the context! I just wanted to share one of my recent behavior charts. Sofia received 15 frowney faces! Fifteen! The comments from the teacher were the following: "Sofia had a difficult day today.  I repeatedly asked her to finish her work but she continued to be unfocused and pay around. After lunch I sent her to the office to finish her work. Amazingly she finished all her work for the day in 30-45 minutes." So...what the he** does this mean?

With my training and work history, I have long pondered the diagnosis of ADHD.  I would say both my children show signs of attention problems. Do the meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD? I don't think so and frankly the diagnostic criteria for ADHD is pretty vague anyway. Sofia has always had difficulty focusing. Her problem seems to be that she wants to focus on what she finds interesting or important to the exclusion of anything else.

I fully understand why it might be hard to focus on your work with a classroom full of interesting things and people. I find it shocking more children don't have this problem in kindergarten. And I could see a child being able to focus in the school office which is probably quieter than the classroom. But the fact that she does the entire days school work in 30-45 minutes without supervision sort of stumps me.

No matter how hard I try to set better realistic goals for myself as a person and a mother, this still bugs the crap out of me. I hate not knowing how to handle things or feeling like everything you try does not seem to make a difference. I want to be the kind of person who just enjoys the moment, but I was raised to be an overachiever who craves perfection and reward for good behavior. I have always been a person filled with contradictions. I hate that stupid word balance. BUT, how do you balance the need for your child to learn to follow rules and achieve because the world does value and judge you on those variables with the need to appreciate the unique and wonderful person you already are (great for happiness but may or may not lead to school or career success).

Okay, input appreciated now that I have rambled on with some of my thoughts.  Any comments appreciated below!!