Good Morning!
The weather people Lucy’d me again. Grrrrrr……. 😦
Quote of the Day
“No American should ever be killed in their house without warrant and some kind of aggressive behavior by them. To be bombed in your sleep? There’s nothing American about that . . . [Obama] says trust him because he hasn’t done it yet. He says he doesn’t intend to do so, but he might. Mr. President, that’s not good enough . . . so I’ve come here to speak for as long as I can to draw attention to something that I find to really be very disturbing.”
Rand Paul, during his filibuster yesterday
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Remember when Disco was cool?
Yeah, me either. 🙂
From Saturday Night Fever, Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven”
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QoD
Think back to your younger days.
What piece of clothing or other fashion item, hairstyle, or “look” did you wear that you look back on and laugh at now?
Mine? That’s easy. Think Don Johnson/Miami Vice suit. And a perm. 😯
And not just a perm, a HUGE FUZZY perm. 🙂
Thankfully, there are no photos, that I know of. 🙂
Wandering Views 
I never got caught up in the odd clothing or peroxide hair thing. Just to have something to wear was enough for me.
I need to get some breakfast.
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Now that I think about it, there is one photo. And it’s in a yearbook, so there are probably close to 1000 copies. Great. 🙂
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Good morning! Great question, AJ. I don’t really have a great answer though.
I guess my answer will relate to hair since you mentioned that. Because straight hair was popular at one time, I discovered I could take my long curly hair, wet and freshly shampooed, and wrap it around my head and put clips on it to hold it in place. It was essentially using my head as one big hair roller. Then because of the thickness of the hair on the roller, I would have to sit under the hairdryer for about four hours to get all the dampness out so it would not be frizzy. Then I would hope for low humidity weather (in the south of all places). It worked better than using the commercial straighteners. I had an extended study session when I would do the wash and dry. It was not done daily.
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I heard that some girls would iron their hair. I never knew of it personally. Most girls I knew had short hair. Some would streak it.
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QOD: Hot Pants. What were my parents thinking when they let me out of the house dressed like that?
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Big Hair–think permed, hot rolled, and Aqua Net. Also think an inch long all over a la Sheena Easton.
Shoulder pads
And a vision from my senior year of high school. Yellow Cordoroy pants, a pastel pink, blue, yellow, white gingham flannal shirt un tucked and a royal blue loose knit sweater over the top. It was my favorite outfit alternating with a pink cotten button up shirt with a round collar and a pastal madras plaid skirt with a white woven (possibly plastic) belt.
Luckily I have always worn contacts so there are no photos of me in BIG glasses.
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Good morning! I had the giant claw bangs in the 80’s. They are hilarious in pictures. I also have a photo of myself in sixth grade wearing knickers, argyle knee socks and penny loafers.
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Klasko, I wore the hot pants too, plus the hip-hugger, bell-bottoms and the perm. I saw a special on TV once that outlined the worse fashion mistakes of the 70’s. 80s and 90s. I had tried almost all the 70s mistakes, some of the 80s and I think only one of the 90s, so I’m learning.
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AJ’s link reminds me that Chuck used to have a record, tape, or something called “Hooked on Classics”. I think it was popular in the eighties.
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When a nation’s sermons and hymns become shallow and overly emotional, the people lose their understanding of Biblical truth and are easily led astray.
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Leg warmers!
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Chas, I did try ironing my hair. My mother did that. There was something about that hot iron so near the face that was not appealing! So we did not do that but once or twice.
I did have one pair of hot pants as I recall, but they were not as short as some. That was in college. I think I wore them to a college football game. Now that seems pretty dumb since that would have more than likely have been in cooler weather???
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Janice, it also gives your legs an uneven tan. I never wore short pants since I was 9 years old. I wear them around here sometimes in the summertime to work in. But I change if I’m going out.
Some girls look hot in hot pants. Most should avoid them.
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Chas, the ones who look hot in them should most especially avoid them, except around their husbands.
I didn’t have any embarrassing “follow the fashions” outfits, because our family didn’t dress fashionably. But how about embarrassing “how far out of style can you get” looks?
I was in eighth grade in 1980-81, when tube tops were in and girls lay down to pull their jeans on. I once looked around a classroom of thirty teenagers and realized that only one–yes, that was me–was not wearing blue jeans. Mom had bought me two pairs of slacks from the Sears catalog. One pair was green, and one pair was brown or blue. (I know I had knee-length brown shorts as well.) They had elastic waists and they had sewn-in creases down the front of each leg. They were modest (which is important) but they were way, way too far out of the realm of what my classmates were wearing.
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Levi’s cords with my comb handle sticking out of my back pocket; perms that always “took” well 😉 Big glasses (I didn’t start wearing contacts until I was engaged at the age of 22); very short shorts that I wore for a lot of years until I was more modesty-minded. I’m tall and proportionately long in the legs, and was attracting a lot of attention wearing short shorts and mini-skirts back in the day. Everything is at or below the knee now for this gal. 😉
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Cheryl, your first paragraph…yes. It took a long time for me to learn that. My parents never discouraged me in what I wanted to wear, and I enjoyed the attention much too much. I had no idea what I was doing to men when I wore things like that (until after I was married).
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My mom prevented me from doing some of the things that would have been disastrous — like bleaching and ironing my hair. 🙂 And wearing heavy, thick black eye makeup. Oy. Think Sonny and Cher through the years. Some of the more extreme looks included tight, floral or striped bangs and fur vests, neither of which I wore (or, more accurately, was allowed to wear).
But the styles in the late ’60s/very early ’70s leaned toward the natural — long, straight hair and many clothing styles that have had staying power (well, with the exception of fringed & fur vests; but fur-lined boots are back!).
Cords, bell bottoms, turtlenecks. I remember also “poor boy” sweaters as being a wardrobe staple for most of us, ribbed knit tops with mid to short sleeves that you’d tuck into your cords or jeans or skirts with wide, leather belts.
I remember doing the thing that JaniceG talked about — wrapping your long hair around your head to straighten it (since I couldn’t iron it; my mom loved my wavy hair and couldn’t understand why I didn’t appreciate my natural curl more than I did, but a long time ago I concluded that women always want the opposite hair from what they have — people with straight hair invariably seem to want to perm it; go figure).
The environmental enemy to maintaining sleek, straight hair out here on the west coast was the heavy morning fog we so often get. So I’d have to tuck my hair deep underneath my coats and jackets as we walked to school with all that dense, damp air swirling around us the next morning to keep my hair from curling up again.
Oh, life was hard for teen-aged girls back in the day.
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I have to say I am glad I “missed” and bypassed the ’80s fashions pretty much, at least the most extreme styles (I was out of college and working by then).
Although you could hardly buy even a simple blouse for work in those days without those huge shoulder pads (I usually cut them out). And all that really big hair. And chunky gold jewelry. Wow. It definitely was a “look.” It was in some ways the extreme opposite of the looks I grew up with.
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Life is always hard for teen-agers.
The problem is that they care what other teens think.
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Quite a few old hippies live on Whidbey Island. Many of them dress like they did when they were young, except more so. You rarely see anyone wearing a tie on the island, so it’s a shock to me when I go to Seattle and see people wearing ties as if they were something normal.
I wasn’t really a hippie, but I did wear an odd medallion around my neck and fr a while had a “Nehru” shirt. When I was a teacher, it was not considered “decent” for a woman to wear slacks. My wife never shaved her legs or her pits, but as she always dressed modestly no one besides me ever knew. When and how did it become de riguer for humans to turn themselves into hairless newts?
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One of my unfaith flock contributed a joke at our web site.
Three religious truths:
1. Neither Jews nor Muslims recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
2. Neither Jews nor Christians recognize Mohammed as the prophet of God.
3. Baptists don’t recognize each other when they are in liquor stores or strip clubs.
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Chas, I loved “Hooked on Classics”. It blended my two favorite musical genres at the time: classical and rock.
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Music quiz from this former public school music teacher:
Name the tunes excerpted in the “Hooked on Classics” recording I posted at 11:27:16. There are 17 of them. No cheating! 🙂
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I liked Hooked on Classics, too.
Women not shaving? Sorry, but that’s one trend (I doubt it was widespread, however) I never understood.
It reminds me of an introductory philosophy class I signed up for in college. In the first class couple meetings, the professor, a weird dude with really long hair, sat cross-legged on top of the table as we students, sitting in a circle were urged to talk about “anything.” The professor uttered nary a word to us.
So one student starts talking about how his girlfriend didn’t shave her legs and he thought that was pretty cool. How deep is that?
Anyway, I dropped the class quickly, I figured I wasn’t really going to learn too much there, I’d only get grossed out. I think the prof was on the list for firing quite frequently, but the administration could never really get rid of the guy. He was very popular with some of the more hippie-like students at the time. Ah the ’70s.
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Not exactly a joke, but a true experience about strip clubs. At one of my jobs, Ken Becket, a man so dedicated to making the same mistakes over and over, that we created the “Ken Becket award.” One of his repetitious errors was marrying many times, convinced each time that THIS was the right woman to spend his life with.
At this “start up” company (trying to make us all rich by inventing desktop publishing), the president, and two of the senior managers were fairly scummy people. They decided to throw a “bachelor party,” for Ken at a strip club. I have never been to a strip club before or since. To be a “good fellow” (and a little bit curious), I agreed to go to the party. When we met in the lobby of the club, the president informed us that Ken was not coming to the party for him. “Somehow his fiance [who would have been wife #5 or something like that] found out about the party. She told Ken that if he went to his party at the club, the wedding was off. So he chickened out, much to the disgust of his fellow reprobates.
My unsurprising discovery was: a woman writhing in front of a club of drunk, hollering men as she pulled off her clothes until stark naked was not sexually exciting at all. Not sure what anyone sees in it it. But that’s men, for you. Though my understanding is that there are strip clubs for women to view men stripping as well.
Wasn’t the Dance of the Seven Veils performed by Salome to get the head of John the Baptist the first case of a wicked stripper causing great harm?
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Oh, wait. I didn’t drop the class. The professor told us he’d give us a B even if we NEVER came to class — all we had to do was stop into his office once a week and “check in” (which meant literally just putting a check next to your name). So a number of us took him up on that option.
I tell you, the dude was weird. But heck, for 3 units, why not, it put me one step closer to graduation.
I think the college did finally manage to get him booted off the faculty, though.
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OK, I’m going to work — where I learned long ago that there’s no option just to randomly check in now and again. 😉
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6 Arrows – I am ashamed to admit that while I recognized all of the pieces, I could only identify 9 of them. 😦 My music education is sreiously lacking.
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Where’s KBells?
My daughter is doing math. Math is hard. I’m having to relearn fractions too. 😯
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I could whistle along to all of them except # 5. Here’s a quick guess:
1. Brahms
2. Flight of the Bumble Bee
3. Mozart
4 Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
5??
6. Beethoven’s 5th
7. Bach’s organ concerto
8. Mozart Eine Kleine Nacht Music
9 Beethoven Ode to Joy
10. William Tell Overture
11. That piano music played in A&E’s Pride and Prejudice
12. Rite of Spring?–I don’t think so, but I can’t quite pull it up.
13. Handel’s Bridal Processional
14. Handel’s Messiah
15. Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
16. What’s for dinner music?
17. 1812 Overture.
I’ve heard all of these many times, but I’m embarassed by how often it was Bugs Bunny who came to mind–though grateful for the music staff at Warner Brothers who provided the masses with some classical musical experience! 🙂
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Random, my husband said he figures a man can have either a bachelor party or a wedding, not both. I agree with him. We both chose a wedding, and we both consider ourselves very blessed.
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I just read an article about gun-owners buying prepaid insurance plans so that if they use their guns legally, they can have their defense paid for in court. Not a bad idea, I guess, in this crazy mixed-up world. In the article, though, it referred to George Zimmerman, and it referred to him as “mixed race,” and to the victim, Trayvon Martin, as “black.” I just don’t get how the race labeling works. We’re not supposed to refer to Obama as mixed race. In fact, we’re told it’s racist to do so. But for George Zimmerman, that seems to be an important qualifier by the media. Can any of you on the left of the political spectrum explain and justify this for me? I should probably ask this question in a forum with more people on the left, but I’m not part of any forum like that. I get enough of that from the people in my real life. I suppose I could ask them, but whenever I ask for any justification for any of their beliefs, they tell me they don’t want to discuss it.
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Ree,
Yeah, it’s hard to keep track of it all. What is and isn’t PC changes all the time, as do apparently, the definition of words. 😦
Identity politics sucks.
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I’ll be along later with the answers to the 17 classics at 11:27:16, in case others want to guess. Phos? InButNotOf? Janice? Maybe others?
In the meanwhile, this is for Michelle. 🙂
http://youtu.be/IrASRK6Um78
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Well – that Bradford pear is gone! 🙂
Mr. Klasko agreed to take down the one between our house and the neighbors 🙂 Of course this was after I told him that the estimator showed me where it’s going to break and take out part of our fence and the neighbor’s fence. We are getting rid of it later this spring. So we will get those lovely fire maples and I’ll only have one more Bradford Pear and a gum tree to get rid of. Yay!! 🙂
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Random, laughed out loud at the joke. Halloween is the biggest night for bars in Utah cause all the Mormons can go incognito.
Kim, yellow cords!!! We were so cool 😉 Remember wallabees and desert boots?
A tomboy and naturally modest, I did not go in for most of the out there stuff like mini-skirts and hotpants. My atheist parents probably would have been a tad permissive on this, but me and my sisters sort of followed their lead. They were very stylish, but never in the outrageous fads. Other than for my family to wash your hair and let it dry produce big, fuzzy fros–no perms needed here.
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I refer to Obama as “mixed race” all the time. In ancient days people were classified as “white” or “black” based on the “one-drop” rule; that is, if you had one drop of “black blood” (whatever that is, if you are bleeding, all blood looks red) you were considered “black” for purposes of slavery, segregation, or other discrimination. However, even there one could find meaningless levels of pointless discrimination with terms such as mulatto, quadroon, and octaroon. So is Obama an “m,” a “q,” or an “a?”
My first girl friend was clearly a mixed something, but as a young lad I was not much interested in her. All her “parts” were female; that is what most men care about.
However, even there, things get weird. I have known many homosexuals during my life (besides my daughter). Many have had relationships with people of both sexes before “settling” down with one gender. We do have the term “bi” to refer to people who “swing” both ways. I suppose there are people who can be described as “quad” in the sexual realm, but I am not sure I want to go there. So I leave it to your imagination, which I am sure is going even further in the other direction than mine.
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As usual I am dyslexic, incoherent, and completely out of touch. Should say first paragraph, “Is Obama an . . . or an “o.”
Should say (second paragraph) “interested in HER COLOR.”
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As more evidence the world is going to Hell (though not you, of course), I just found a web page called A Truly Godless Place: Why We Designed a Temple for Atheists. Don’t look at the atheist cathedral. http://www.good.is/posts/a-truly-godless-place-why-we-designed-a-temple-for-atheists/. You might be turned into stone.
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Here’s the religious joke of the day. This time, it’s about the “DOC.” They sound as bad as the Unitarians to me. What is a truly Godly person to do?
A Baptist, a Catholic and a Disciple of Christ were standing before the pearly gates.
Jesus himself met them: “I have one question that you must answer: who do you say that I am?” The Catholic replied, “The church teaches . . .” Jesus interrupted, “I didn’t ask about the church, I asked about you! You cannot enter!”
The Baptist answered, “The Bible says . . .” Jesus interrupted, “I didn’t ask about the Bible, I asked you! You cannot enter!”
The DOC then said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!” Jesus said, “Yes, that is correct!” The DOC then continued, “but on the other hand . . .”
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“Through conversations with De Botton it became clear that one of his primary concerns was with secular society’s need to be awed. This desire is something that we feel whether or not we subscribe to a faith.” –From Random’s article on designing an Atheist temple
It was awe–and my parents’ lack of explaination for it–that lead me to Christ. That intuition of something Other, something bigger than oursleves is deep within our DNA.
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My granddaughter is mixed race. Some people say half-Black, but I really don’t care; she is my granddaughter. I think some media might be trying to off-load White guilt by saying Zimmerman is Hispanic. Tribalism is a human sin. It is found in every culture. The worst and most violent bigotry today in LA is between Black and Hispanic gangs. But these are very small-souled people.
Larger souls know that character is expressed by action, no matter the color of your skin, your gender, your religion or your orientation. I watched with a Lesbian friend of mine an amazing spectacle. Her wife had too much to drink and was being one of those overly opininated people you avoid at parties. The more people were put-off the more she blamed them for being homophobic. I did not need to point out to my friend that culturally homophobia has become passe. It is time for gay people to live in the world according to their character, not their label.
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MP, 11:26:13 I told you a version of that joke two days ago. You gave me a dollar for it.
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My son is bi-racial, but since the social security card form didn’t have a box for that, we marked white. My grandfather was also bi-racial. His mother was a Cherokee Indian. That means I have enough Native American blood to be consider Native American, but since you are not allowed to mark that box without permission from a tribe I also, mark white. So far, it hasn’t make any difference to either of us.
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AJ, on the Math problem ask Chas and 6 Arrows, but don’t tell Mumsee.
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LOL 🙂
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If the child is homeschooling and under age twelve, sure, the parent needs to learn the math (or get a tutor). But if one is paying somebody else to teach his child, then the child says, “but, Mooooommmmmmmm, the teacher says I have to do it that way” and “but Teeeaacherrrr, mom told me I had to do it this way!” So, let the child learn from one teacher and don’t have too many chiefs in the schoolroom.
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I learned the math for many years, now I have a tutor teaching three of my children. But I still have to learn the math as I have two more up and coming….
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I help the Kid with his homework. I wasn’t helped with my homework. I sincerely didn’t understand it sometimes. My parents just let me fail and I never learned it. I may be over compensating with my son.
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I has a lot of fun with a census guy one year. It was odd to me that some ethnicities are very defined while others are huge generalizations, like White or Black. So under ‘other’ I put pink for one kid, taupe for another, sort of off-white for yet another. It really is all very silly isn’t it. The very earnest young man working for the census did his best to explain what he himself did not understand. Why would it ask if we are a Pacific Islander, but not Northern European? Which if you are Scottish or Danish or French are very different things.
Btw, if you ask my granddaughter what color she is she just says, “perfect.”
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Overcompensate, KBells! You can’t go wrong by overcompensating. Those study times will be times you both will remember.
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My parents never helped me with my homework. My dad quit in the seventh grade.
My mother in the third to go to work in the knitting mill.
They insisted that I finish high school, which I was also anxious to do.
Nobody thought I would ever go to college.
Elvera’s parents had the same attitude. Elvera says, “I’m glad my parents weren’t like most others. Most of the kids in the area were held out of school in the fall to pick cotton and couldn’t catch up. Many dropped out before graduating.”
It’s a different world today.
Not all the changes are bad.
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KBells: MP, 11:26:13 I told you a version of that joke two days ago. You gave me a dollar for it..
Correct. However, I don’t know how to direct that dollar. Dollars fly out of my pocket with no problem, but they usually need to be guided carefully. So where would you like that dollar to travel to?
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My dad (born in 1929) never went to school beyond 8th grade. My mom (born in 1940) graduated from high school, but didn’t go beyond that.
Dad always has to laugh when he relays the story of a former teacher of his who, when there was talk that the U.S. may put a man on the moon in the future, said that we shouldn’t try to send a rocket to the moon because it might knock a piece off the sun. 😀
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Isn’t this such an educational blog? 😉
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My father had an 8th grade education, and my mother finished high school and secretarial school. I can’t remember if my husband’s parents finished high school. My husband and I both have undergraduate degrees. Our son is aiming for a PhD. It appears the educational levels have been steadily increasing. I don’t think that is the case necessarily for anticipated standard of living.
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OK, to advance your music education (or your kids’), here are the answers to which pieces are excerpted in Hooked on Classics. I’m reposting the video with the answers and the minute marks listed below it if you want to know exactly where each excerpt begins. 🙂
1. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no. 1 (0:11)
2. Rimsky-Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee (0:20)
3. Mozart Symphony no. 40 (0:48)
4. Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue (1:08)
5. Sibelius Karelia Suite (1:32)
6. Beethoven Symphony no. 5 (1:52)
7. J.S. Bach Toccata in D minor (2:08)
8. Mozart Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade no. 13) (2:29)
9. Beethoven Symphony no. 9 (The Choral Symphony, with “Ode to Joy”) (2:35)
10. Rossini Overture to William Tell (2:50)
11. Mozart Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) (3:06)
12. Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture (3:20)
13. Clarke Trumpet Voluntary (3:36) (The listed title is a common misconception; the correct title is “Prince of Denmark’s March”)
14. Handel Hallelujah Chorus (from The Messiah oratorio) (3:49)
15. Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor (3:56)
16. Bizet March of the Toreadors (4:26)
17. Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture (4:41)
Also, at approximately (5:05), there are, I think I counted, four little snippets from the above list that are replayed — numbers 8, 5, 10, and 9.
🙂
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Klasko and Michelle, thanks for taking the challenge…I think you did pretty well! It’s hard to remember the names of pieces; their melodies and sometimes the name of the composer stays with us better than the titles, I think.
If it’s any consolation, I was a music major in college (admittedly quite a while ago now) and have listened to public radio regularly in the last ten, fifteen years or so, and I didn’t know the title or composer at all for #5. I also didn’t know the number of the Mozart symphony or the Tchaikovsky concerto. (And don’t ask me about opus numbers and key signature.) 🙂
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“What is and isn’t PC changes all the time, as do apparently, the definition of words.”
Yeah, AJ, but this isn’t even a case of the PC standard changing. At one and the same time, it’s racist to refer to Obama as mixed race while it’s clarifying to refer to George Zimmerman that way. I believe I do know why they want to have it both ways, depending on the situation, but I’m just flabbergasted at how blatant the left is with their double standards. That’s why I’d like to see how they justify it.
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I took my middle school kids to see a theatre version of Footloose. To get them interested I showed them a clip of the original movie with Kevin Bacon dancing in tight jeans. When the camera focused on his “lower midsection” for a second or two, the kids were clearly uncomfortable. For a generation raised on the internet, skinny jeans, low cut shirts, they just couldn’t handle guys in tight jeans. I watch old eighties teen movies with my daughter (John Hughes type) and she’s constantly amazed at the tight jeans and short shorts the guys wore in that era. She refuses to look at my teen pictures.
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One more, and then I’ll leave you all alone already. 😉 That #5 above is by a composer whose music I’m not too familiar with, but I do know and love this one by Sibelius: Finlandia. At about the 5-minute mark, you may recognize the hymn “Be Still My Soul”, which has always been one of my favorites, as it was one of my grandfather’s favorites. He lived next door when I was growing up, and always requested me to play “Finlandia” for him on the piano.
There is gorgeous scenery in this video, BTW. Worth a watch. 🙂
http://youtu.be/-_d0cKaNSPI
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I have seen Adios’ granddaughter and I can tell you for a fact that her “color” or “race” is just plain beautiful.
I have also seen a photo of “the Kid”.
I would be very happy to “match-make in about 15 or years.
You can take this information from a woman whose daughter called her a racist the other day. She told me she was going to call the authorities and tell them I belonged to the KKK.
Something to do with not letting her listen to thug-rap music.
I told her to give it her best shot–they couldn’t do anything to me.
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Kim,
We have an overly dramatic one too. 🙄
And because we love her, she won’t be listening to thug-rap either. 🙂
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Ah, race. I think the media calls him “mixed” because he is Hispanic with a German name. And since he shot a black youth, they have to claim white.
As for old styles, I had a red pair of tight jeans with a Puerto Rican flag patch on the back pocket, and another pair of pants that were red and white corduroys.After a while they looked pink. I like cords and wish they would come back.
And I had fro-like hair all my life. In first grade I was teased. By junior high I was envied.
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HRW! Peter L! Just who I wanted to see. Do teachers want parents helping their children with homework, if so how much? Or do they want them simply providing the time and tools? Or ignore it altogether?
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Peter L,
That’s exactly it. They want him to be white because that fits the narrative better, but it would be misleading to refer to him simply as white, so they say mixed race. And likewise, calling Obama mixed-race waters down the narrative, and unlike calling a mixed race person white, it’s okay to refer to them simply by their non-white race. (Of course the powers that be have decided that Hispanic is a category of white, but it’s a special “minority” category that still gets to be counted as aggrieved.) Man, I hate identity politics!
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mumsee I prefer parents to just provide time and tools, a little support. Too often I receive work that’s obviously not the child’s or even worse the parent taught the child an alternative method to solve math problems, one that introduces concepts far too early or just doesn’t work. Too many cooks…..
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Ree: As a Puerto Rican of pure EUropean descent I know what you mean.
mumsee: Since few parents in my district know my subject I would rather they did not help their children.
Pardon any errors as I am trying this on the used Kindle I just got.
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Thanks, Teachers, that is what I thought. Dr Rosemond says to give the child a quiet study area and time to do it, and allow three questions per night. That seems quite enough to me. Nancy Thomas, who deals with my kind of children, says to give them the quiet space and time and no help. One child we have will ask for help on every problem if allowed to. We have removed him from public school, fifth grade, and he claims to not be able to do third grade at home without significant help and he is quite a bright child, but has issues. These children thrive on getting control any where they can, and homework is a big one. I do not do him any favors by doing his work for him. And when they are in public school, I want the teacher to know what the child knows and what he doesn’t know so it can be dealt with.
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So, what do you do when you have a child who says he really doesn’t understand the assignment, just let them do it wrong or not at all? It has been my experience that most teacher will then just mark an F and move on. The child never learns what he was suppose to learn. In my case this was a subject that he usually likes and gets, so I believed him when he said he didn’t understand how to do it.
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It is hard to watch. But, for those parents who care enough to see that the child does his homework, you are probably in good touch with the teacher and can send an email indicating the son needs additional help and you will oversee additional homework in that area if the teacher chooses to send it. Or the teacher will pick up on it and give more direction.
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Or I could just help him learn how to do it. With Math it only happens once a month or so.
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Sure, as long as you are helping him. Many parents feel they are a failure if their child does not get all one hundreds or A’s, so they do it for him. It does not hurt us to relearn math and other school things. I understand it is a good way for fighting off dementia, keeping the brain active.
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Of course, my five uncles, all school teachers, have died from or are struggling with dementia. All very active healthy men well under the healthy weight levels. So I guess I will go veg somewhere with a big bowl of ice cream and potato chips as it does not matter. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
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The idea is to get the child to take the responsibility for his own work. Much like brushing one’s teeth and making one’s bed and doing one’s laundry. Personal responsibility so when they grow up, you will not be expected to do his college work also. Different people do it different ways, and a lot of ways work. But, with my children, who already have significant issues, they need all the foundation they can get. So I would not help them more than a little bit. That would not stop me from giving them other math work however, that would support what they are doing in class. Lots of similar problems worked with a parent might help a child see how it is done and get his own work done. But, like HRW said, they have an ordered plan for teaching this stuff. It usually works fairly well.
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