Just Can’t Cope Without My Soap

Courtesy of Flickr

Courtesy of Flickr

“Brit’s baby is Dante and Lulu’s,” said my wife’s email. The subject line read: I figured it out.

For those not in the know or the unaffiliated, Brit, Dante, and Lulu are characters from General Hospital. You know, “Just can’t cope without my soap, General Hospital.”

Now, I’d like to tell you I had no idea what my wife was talking about. However after a split second I knew just what my wife meant. And was surprised. I even emailed back – “Huh? How?”

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Give Me Back My Darn Email

Courtesy of Flickr

Courtesy of Flickr

I am not into Twitter. I am only quasi into Facebook.

However, I email regularly. I receive emails all day. It’s no exaggeration to say that I get over 100 emails a day. And that is my personal account.

Sure plenty of them, even the majority are junk emails. No, I don’t need a daily reminder of the sales at Hanes, Jos. A. Bank, and Lands End.

However, there are a number of emails that come through every day that matter. Business, personal. Whatever.

As you can gather, I have come to rely on my email very much.

And why not rely on email?

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Let Them Talk and Play

Author, Freelance writer, and educator - Margie Gelbwasser

Author, Freelance writer, and educator – Margie Gelbwasser

Today, I have a special guest. Margie Gelbwasser is the mother of SJ’s best friend (which counts for a lot in my house). She is also a real live successful author in addition to being a freelance writer and teacher.

Margie has written for a variety of magazines including SELF, Ladies’ Home Journal, Writer’s Digest, The Parent Paper, and Parents. She is also the author of two young adult novels. INCONVENIENT and PIECES OF US. You can find out more about Margie and her projects on her website, www.margiewrites.com

This is what my son was able to do by the end of kindergarten:

  • -explain the difference between square, rectangles, hexagons, and octagons
  • -read a pie chart and bar graph and make his own bar graph
  • -survey people and record their responses with tally marks
  • -read and explain main idea and main characters and draw connections to his life and the world from the stories
  • -write simple sentences

This is what I did when I was in kindergarten:

  • -napped
  • -played Pop Goes the Weasel
  • -rode around on those plastic sticks with a pony head at the end
  • -built picture frames out of popsicle sticks
  • – learned letters and numbers too

It’s a different world today, isn’t it? And while my kid had an awesome year with a fantastic teacher, the differences in what kindergarten is today compared to what it was makes me sad. The intense academic push starts so early. Kids should be socializing and building with blocks and playing, but with the push for more and more testing, all that stuff falls by the wayside. And what happens to the kids who are not ready to distinguish between hexagons and such at 5? There’s no data that shows feeding them so much so soon creates brighter kids. In fact, studies show the opposite (here’s a link to one such study: http://hepg.org/hel/article/479).

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Doctors are Not Your Friend

 

Courtesy of Flickr

Courtesy of Flickr

It had been a while since I went to the doctor, and I couldn’t put it off any longer. My wife strongly encouraged me to go.  “You have to make an appointment with the doctor. I’m too busy to worry about you going to the doctor too. If I have to ask you to go, you will regret it.”

Click here to go to Daddy Newbie and read the rest of this Guest Post

Please note this is an edited version of one of my first blog posts.