Massachusetts Preschools Add Toothbrush Time, Upsetting Some Adults – NYTimes.com

What other parenting tasks can we ask schools to assume responsibility for? When I was an administrator, I can remember parents asking me, with all sincerity, if we could have a class to teach kids how to do their laundry, balance a checkbook, do grocery shopping, cook for themselves, etc.

But by far my favorite anecdote along these lines was a woman who called into a radio talk show, complaining about the boorish behavior of some tennis fans. “When,” she wanted to know, “are the schools going to teach these kids some manners?”

Massachusetts Preschools Add Toothbrush Time, Upsetting Some Adults – NYTimes.com.

Kids ‘absolutely’ feel parents’ stress

There’s an interesting line buried deep in this article, which exposes the fact that most parents underestimate the amount of stress their kids are under. (Some don’t.) And of course, much of that stressis placed their by us parents: we expect straight A’s, we expose them to adult conerns and ideas via  movies and documentaries on Global warming, terrorism, etc.

Before they can fix the world, they need to come to love it!

 

Kids ‘absolutely’ feel parents’ stress, 30% worry about finances – USATODAY.com.

Adolescent Texting

From a NY Times article, the following (my emphasis):

“American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day”

If they are awake 16 hours, that’s 5 per hour, or one every 12 minutes, from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed, through class, meals, work, and everything else, 7 days a week.

 There’s a very important point the author makes about how teens need silence and privacy in order to realize themselves, and how this amount of texting does not allow that.

Read the full article here

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html?_r=1