Mashup: Parent Comment Rage and Beautiful Winter Images

I take guilty pleasure in reading the comments on my school district's Facebook announcements of delays and closures.  We've now had several of both this winter.  Parents go absolutely nuts, complaining about the administration.  One really fun facet: the comments cut both ways, of course.  If the district delays or cancels school, that's inconvenient and sends a bad message.  If the district holds a full day or only delays without cancelling, that gets its own round of second-guessing.

To share the joy, I've copied selected comments verbatim from these Facebook announcements and surprinted them on beautiful winter scenes.  Enjoy!


On the day of a delay

This from a snowy Saturday when the high school basketball championship games were not cancelled.  Linda Lane is the superintendent.  Bus drivers love to comment; not sure if they're parents of children in the district or not.

On a very cold morning when we'd had delays but as of then no school closures at all this year





















On the day of a cancellation for cold (but not snow or ice)

When after-school activities were cancelled because the weather went south during the school day

Flickr Photo credits
1  blmiers2 - winter bird in the snow
2  Denis Colette - Route de l'Arc-en-ciel...!!!
3  SBA73 -  neu i vent a la mola
4  Let ideas compete - hot air in cold air
5  blmeiers2 - Frosty Footpath - Winter Snow

The Onion Nails It

From The Onion, February 19, 2015

  

Your Attention, Please

It's kind of a long story, but Charlie reads the announcements over the PA at his middle school.  When I took him in late this morning, the school secretary said "I was just about to look for you.  This is your job; I don't want to do it."  She had a pile of announcements in her hand.  We've heard about Charlie doing this task but had, of course, never witnessed it.  I whipped out my phone to capture the moment.  Caution: the video is a little loud.

Particle Roundup February 2015

Call it the Jeffington Post.  It's your occasional parenting article (particle) roundup.  I see particles linked all the time on social media, and I read some of the ones that I see.  Here are some recent ones with my quick take on them.

What Ruth Bader Ginsburg Taught me About Being a Stay-at-home Dad.
While there's nothing actually ground-breaking here, it's well-written and an interesting slice of the at-home dad world.  The best nugget from the justice: "You can’t have it all all at once."

The Race to Nowhere in Youth Sports
This really targets parents who have bought into the hyper-competitive part of the youth sports spectrum.  It asks for changes from coaches and parents.  Unfortunately, it also lays out why change will be difficult to effect.  "The path is a race to nowhere, and it does not produce better athletes. It produces bitter athletes who get hurt, burnout, and quit sports altogether."

We're Ruining Our Kids with Minecraft; The Case for Unstructured Play
When I read this, I felt very validated about some of the choices we've made as parents: 
"If we want our kids to relearn how to play, we have to begin by exposing them to boredom."  We send our kids to camp in the summer, but we also structure their summer specifically to create boredom in hopes that they will overcome it of their own initiative.  Articles like this are fueled by scary statistics; this one features a finding that kids 8 to 18 spend 6.5 hours on screens per day.  That sounds outrageously high to me across the board.  I have no doubt that it's true of some kids, but where are they finding that kind of time?

This is more of a marriage essay (messay?) than a particle, but I saw someone link to it on Facebook.  The title "I Wasn't Treating My Husband Fairly, and it Wasn't Fair" should alert you to the kind of rocket surgeon we're reading here.  It's pretty annoying in the middle, so either read the whole thing or don't read it at all.  She finally gets around to a point that doesn't make me really resent her or her husband.