Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank by Celia Rivenbark Read Free Book Online

he hasn’t had a bath since 1998. There is simply no time.”
    To hear most parents tell it, Little Johnnie is so devoted tohis homework studies that he breaks only long enough to accept a tray of soup and cold cheese sandwiches slipped through the slot in his bedroom door.
    Soccer practice? Ha!
    Scouts? Who’s got the time?
    Karate? Piano? Birthday parties? You must be kidding.
    There must be too much homework. What else could explain those horrid wheeled backpacks that zip through school hallways at breakneck speeds, slicing ankles and tripping those unfortunate enough to be in their path? (If I get tripped by one more Diva Starz suitcase on wheels, I’m going to
lose it!
Oops, too late.) These backpacks the size of Guam (which, as I recall from my own geography homework days, is a small country somewhere between Chile and Mustard) must surely contain all the papers and books vital to completion of the night’s homework.
    These days, to hear the parents tell it, it’s all homework, all the time.
    Except, well, actually, it isn’t.
    We know this now, thanks to a study by the Brookings Institution, a famous Washington think tank. (Motto: “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, you
are
stupider than us.”)
    The researchers found that, in most cases, too much homework is, uh, a myth, and that truthfully, the great majority of kids have less than one hour of homework a night.
    Not only that, but homework has actually decreased every year since 1984. At this rate, pretty soon your kidshould be able to finish homework for five classes in a SpongeBob commercial break.
    This is great news for the parents who actually do all that homework. Anybody who’s ever been to a typical school science fair will quickly deduce that it’s incredibly difficult for most seven-year-olds to build a scale model of the space shuttle complete with astronauts that pee real Tang.
    So how did we get the idea that American kids are “over-studying”? (As I write this, a Japanese seventh-grader is laughing hysterically somewhere.) Well, some of them are, but just one in ten, and, yes, we know that’s probably
your
kid and we should just shut up.
    Face it. We can’t credibly whine about homework anymore. I know. I’m going to miss it, too.
    So what do we do if we can’t compete on the playground or in homework?
    We resort to Terrific Kids competitions.
    To tell the truth, I was never real fond of those “I’ve got a terrific kid!” bumper stickers you see on the steroidal SUVs in the carpool line.
    I mean, everybody’s kid is terrific, right?
    What kind of insecure weirdness is at work when we must have a bumper sticker on our car just so everybody else will believe it, too?
    Who cares? Should we drive more carefully in the presence of a vanload of Officially Designated Terrific Kids?(“Watch ‘em, Marvin; that’s the future of our country ridin’ in that Yukon.”)
    What kind of a parent believes that this “terrific kid” endorsement is an accurate tool for predicting future successes?
    Yoo-hoo! Over here, everyone! That would be me.
    It’s not easy to admit that at the Terrific Kids assembly at my daughter’s school, I was as green as a toad when two of her friends were designated “terrific” and stepped to the stage to receive their stickers and certificates.
    The very, very smallest part of me wondered, “What’s so terrific about them?”
    They’re adorable, sure. Good students, absolutely. Helpful and obedient? Check.
    So where’s
our
bumper sticker?
    Oh, this is just so embarrassing. I’ve now officially become one of the people I used to make fun of. What’s worse, I’m not sure it won’t rub off on my kid. Will she take on my awful competitive nature and begin to say things like, “Hmmmm, sure would be a shame if something were to happen to Little Susie to make her somehow less ‘terrific’!”
    I don’t think I have to worry about that just yet. So far, my kid seems oblivious of any of this and prefers to