"They share and love and share! Love love love! Share share share!"
Abbie is the Super Star in preschool this week. That means the class spends the week learning about Abbie, while Abbie spends the week oblivious to the lessons shared.
One of the major pillars of the Super Star week involves share bear.* Share bear, a curly haired red teddy bear, is the class bear. The next week’s Super Star takes share bear home for the weekend. The Super Star’s job is to keep share bear safe and entertained over the weekend. The parent’s job is to write about what they did for fun in a journal. The bear’s job is to survive until next weekend, which probably explains why they have a class stuffed bear instead of a class live hamster.
I hate the way the share bear concept coerces the parent into doing homework. Part of the assignment’s objective is clearly to help strengthen the child-parent relationship, but I’m busy, and I’m already deeply involved in my child’s life. How can I be expected to keep a daily journal, a log if you will, about my child?
Abbie was first in her class to be the Super Star, thought, and we weren’t going to start the assignment with abject failure on our part. We invented enthusiasm when Abbie brought share bear home last week, determined to be the best Super Star we could be.
We pulled the bear from her bag and gave it to her to begin their weekend of sharing experiences. She immediately threw the bear on the ground. Periodically, we picked the bear off the floor and gave it back to her, hoping to rekindle the relationship that’s supposed to exist, and she promptly pushed it away every time. Share bear spent the weekend underneath the dining room table, which indeed kept it safe, although its only entertainment for the weekend was the thrown food that landed nearby.
With Abbie refusing to share her life with share bear, we were forced to imagine the bear tagging along with everything she did. When we, and by “we” I thankfully mean “mommy,” sat down to journal the weekend, we realized how boring our lives are. I imagine other families spent the weekend shopping at the downtown farmer’s market, patronizing the nearby Latino festival, and filling the rest of the time with play dates and craft projects. The highlight of our weekend was visiting McDonalds before shopping for groceries. The restaurant at least had a playground, but still…
Mommy did her best to punch up the weekend. We played outside. We read. We napped.
Mommy felt horrible as soon as she finished the journal. She wrote it without Abbie’s input after she went to bed. Ideally, the child is supposed to help write the journal, offering suggestions about her favorite part of each day. Realistically, Abbie doesn’t answer questions, and has never told Dora her favorite part of the previous 20-minute adventure. I told her not to worry about it, that Abbie never responds to these questions, but the guilt didn’t subside. This was Abbie’s first homework assignment, and we just did it for her.
We agreed to never do her homework for her. For all future assignments, the target child must be in the room and awake while we work on it if the child is unable to do it alone. Maybe that’s the lesson the parent is supposed to take from the week.
* No relation to Share Bear
One of the major pillars of the Super Star week involves share bear.* Share bear, a curly haired red teddy bear, is the class bear. The next week’s Super Star takes share bear home for the weekend. The Super Star’s job is to keep share bear safe and entertained over the weekend. The parent’s job is to write about what they did for fun in a journal. The bear’s job is to survive until next weekend, which probably explains why they have a class stuffed bear instead of a class live hamster.
I hate the way the share bear concept coerces the parent into doing homework. Part of the assignment’s objective is clearly to help strengthen the child-parent relationship, but I’m busy, and I’m already deeply involved in my child’s life. How can I be expected to keep a daily journal, a log if you will, about my child?
Abbie was first in her class to be the Super Star, thought, and we weren’t going to start the assignment with abject failure on our part. We invented enthusiasm when Abbie brought share bear home last week, determined to be the best Super Star we could be.
We pulled the bear from her bag and gave it to her to begin their weekend of sharing experiences. She immediately threw the bear on the ground. Periodically, we picked the bear off the floor and gave it back to her, hoping to rekindle the relationship that’s supposed to exist, and she promptly pushed it away every time. Share bear spent the weekend underneath the dining room table, which indeed kept it safe, although its only entertainment for the weekend was the thrown food that landed nearby.
With Abbie refusing to share her life with share bear, we were forced to imagine the bear tagging along with everything she did. When we, and by “we” I thankfully mean “mommy,” sat down to journal the weekend, we realized how boring our lives are. I imagine other families spent the weekend shopping at the downtown farmer’s market, patronizing the nearby Latino festival, and filling the rest of the time with play dates and craft projects. The highlight of our weekend was visiting McDonalds before shopping for groceries. The restaurant at least had a playground, but still…
Mommy did her best to punch up the weekend. We played outside. We read. We napped.
Mommy felt horrible as soon as she finished the journal. She wrote it without Abbie’s input after she went to bed. Ideally, the child is supposed to help write the journal, offering suggestions about her favorite part of each day. Realistically, Abbie doesn’t answer questions, and has never told Dora her favorite part of the previous 20-minute adventure. I told her not to worry about it, that Abbie never responds to these questions, but the guilt didn’t subside. This was Abbie’s first homework assignment, and we just did it for her.
We agreed to never do her homework for her. For all future assignments, the target child must be in the room and awake while we work on it if the child is unable to do it alone. Maybe that’s the lesson the parent is supposed to take from the week.
* No relation to Share Bear
posted by Matt at
10:51 PM
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