Smartmom is mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. You should not send your kid to school if he’s throwing up or has diarrhea!
Sounds reasonable, huh? But the old Conventional Wisdom has been turned upside-down, thanks to the insane competition to get into a good middle school.
Last week, another parent told Smartmom’s friend, Lawyer Mom, that it’s better to send her fourth-grader to school sick and then pick him or her up later than risk too many absences on the child’s elementary school record.
See, fourth grade is the year that matters for middle school admissions and middle school admissions people look at testscores, grades, absences and lateness.
And all things being equal, absence and lateness are the deal-breakers.
These middle schools don’t want the kids with the lousy alarm clock, slacker parents, or compromised immune system. They want the kids whose parents are stupid enough to send them to school when they’re sick.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Wouldn’t you know it, just days after this disturbing conversation with her friend, Lawyer Mom’s son woke up with a stomachache, accompanied by diarrhea, cramps, the works.
“Mommy, I can’t go to school,” came the young man’s voice from the bathroom.
Lawyer Mom’s body pulsed with worry as she heard her friend’s voice echoing in her head: Send him to school. Send him to school. You can always get him later after the teacher has taken attendance. Then he can make his exit. But whatever you do: send him to school.
“Look,” she told her 9-year-old son through the bathroom door. “You’re not going to die. Go for a couple of hours. If it gets really bad, I’ll come pick you up.”
O righteous parent who does what is best for her child! Lawyer Mom knew that, diarrhea or no diarrhea, she was investing in her child’s future. Harvard, Yale, Upper Carroll Middle School. Visions of Phi Beta Kappa were dancing in her head.
So what if he was coming down with a stomach virus? The present moment no longer exists: it’s all about the great big future.
Sure enough, the nurse called at 10:30 am. Lawyer Mom’s son told the teacher that he wasn’t feeling well and she sent him down to the nurse. “I threw up,” he told his mother over the phone.
Lawyer Mom ran over the school (she lives a block away) and picked up her son. She apologized profusely to him. Luckily, he’s an easy-going guy. He didn’t mind too much that his mother had sacrificed his health, his comfort, and the health of the other school children for middle school.
Later, Lawyer Mom emailed her son’s teacher and told her what happened. The teacher emailed back: “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. He doesn’t have excessive absences. You’ll get other kids sick.”
But what does that teacher know? She’s not the one choosing between the 90-percent on-time student and the 89-percent on-time student.
Smartmom herself heard the head admissions honcho at High School for Telecommunication Arts and Technology tell a group of parents point blank that, because the school had many more applicants than it can handle, she checks the number of lates that the child got in seventh grade.
If there are more than 10, she said, she just scratches the name off the list. “Lateness is a big deal around here,” she said.
It’s no wonder parents are in a tizzy about these things. Tizzies-R-Us. Last week, the New York Times revealed that parents are holding their children back until they are 6-years-old for kindergarten in order to give them an edge over their classmates.
What about a 12-year old kindergartner? Now, they’d definitely have an edge over their classmates. Why not hold the kids until they’re 14 or 15, and let those teachers deal with adolescent angst. And no, kiddo, you can’t work on your MySpace page during Choice Time.
Perhaps Smartmom is a bit sensitive on the topic because OSFO is not an early riser.
“If you don’t get moving, girlie,” Smartmom told her the other day, “you’re not going to get into the middle school of your choice.”
“I care more about my sleep than middle school,” OSFO said pulling her blanket over her head.
“Okay,” Smartmom said trying not to go ballistic. “So if you get into a terrible middle school, don’t blame me.”
Smartmom could not believe what she was saying. But she couldn’t stop herself: “I will not defend you when they ask me why you were five minutes late more than 10 times.”
The OSFO stormed out of her bed, got dressed, and kept her hair styling to a quick six, seven, eight (“Would you finish, already?”), nine minutes.
Thankfully, they got to the schoolyard just in time. The OSFO wouldn’t even look at her when she said goodbye. “I love you,” Smartmom whispered but she was gone.
Smartmom felt ashamed of herself and terrible for the things she had said to her terrific little girl, who, she hoped, wasn’t now completely traumatized and afraid about middle school like her mother.
And fear is what it’s all about: fear of failing, of not having enough; of not adequately preparing one’s children for the free market economy that we live in; fear that they won’t measure up.
Mostly, Smartmom is afraid that she has succumbed to the real parent trap: trying to do the right thing for your kid without really thinking deeply about what the right thing is.
Later that day, Smartmom apologized to OSFO. “Good, maybe I won’t have to hear about middle school first thing in the morning.” OSFO said still smarting from what Smartmom had said.
Smartmom promised she’d never bring up the topic again. But she knew she was lying. It was as inevitable as the occasional stomachache, a bout of diarrhea, or parents behaving badly.
