Are our children being bred smarter? I do not think so. Why then are reading standards going up, it has been twice now in the 5 years since my son started Kindergarten. Will this build self esteem? Will this build self confidence?

No, this is the road to destroying children’s minds. They are being pushed to meet higher standards all the time. And the week before we were given the notice that reading requirements were inching up, we received notice that Pre-K was taken out of our school. Now that’s quite counter-intuitive, is it not?

Why do these levels need to go up so often, or at all? Is there a rush? If we agree that children are not being bred any smarter today than 6 years ago, then leave the levels alone. It is not like we deny children the next level of book if they get there on their own. This constant increase in educational standards and requirements serves only to hurt students desire to learn in my humble opinion, which again, is counter-intuitive to the educational process.

But that is not all. There is some made up Common Core Curriculum that every school district is starting to embrace. It is my understanding that it is related to the needs of the college graduate. They worked backwards to see how those needs could best be met by college graduation. In doing so, as they get to the younger grades, the children are not developmentally ready for certain aspects of this new curriculum. That does not make any sense to me on any level. That is student abuse. That is stupid. Forcing children to learn material that they are not developmentally ready for is HARMFUL.

So why the Common Core? Money. People are paid to create these educational paths that make no sense. Then everyone is embarrassed to not institute them. And the students suffer. When the people that make the tests make the workbooks that the schools “should” buy, then you have collusion, and therefore greed driving the process, and not a real desire to help children learn. I find this abusive.

Lastly, a huge by product of the Common Core is testing. We have state testing to completely destroy our children’s self-esteem, to create anxiety for them to suffer with all through their lives, and to destroy any interest in real education. We are all told that the teachers are not teaching to the test. This is a lie. Everything is all abut the test and very little else. Additionally, concepts are introduced for 1-2 days and then the teachers move on. Nothing is covered in the depth that is required for the students to learn these “rushed” concepts. My son has a 4th grade Math book and he is expected to self teach. He has to read 8 pages ad then do an assignment. The teacher barely discusses the subject matter that the students are reading at home because he does not have enough time. There is too much material for the students to have a chance to grasp concepts on in a proper time frame. Can anyone explain how this helps the educational process? If the teachers weren’t teaching to the test there would be more time for the students to be taught the concepts they need for their education which is what I thought a teacher’s job was supposed to be.

And the students know they have these important tests to take, so they are being taught to be stressed. That is insane. The testing is so important that the majority of them are in an extended day program of 37 minutes, 3 times a week to get extra instruction. From 3rd grade to 8th grade they go through this.

Greed, over testing, lack of proper teaching: these are all going to drive our students to the wrong place, to a place of lower self confidence, a place of lower self-esteem, and most importantly to a place of poorer education, not richer. But someone is getting paid.

My son is a 4th grade student in a NYC public school. I see no Principals with the nerve to speak out in support of their students, they are all focused on test prep and keeping their jobs. I see no one willing to “rock the boat.” This is beyond disappointing, especially because of the extreme lack of organization for this year – the Common Core was just introduced and at first the State tests would not reflect this change because there was not enough time to design proper tests. Then they did the redesign and no one is prepared, they are getting new information all the time, no one is ready. And the most absurd part of this is that middle schools, who have to see the 4th grade test results to determine who is entering their schools in 2014, have stated off the record that they will be looking at this years scores with “A grain of salt,” if at all! They know all these students are guinea pigs this year!  This is nuts!

Disclosure: I have been meaning to write about the ridiculousness of the educational system for awhile and also came across this great article, I suggest everyone read it.

I know you all answered yes. And that’s great. I think we are all better parents than our parents were to us, mostly because we are just more conscious of what we are doing, the choices we make, and the research we do to raise our children. Our parents did not do all of the aforementioned because the times were different and they did not have to.

So you are a good parent, so what, who cares? For me, that is only half the job. The other half is marketing.

Does your kid know you are a good parent? What a waste if they don’t. I am a firm believer in the marketing method of parenting. When my son complains about my disciplinary procedures, I explain to him that he is getting a much laxer punishment than I received. In my heart I understand he would rather have no discipline, but if I explain the harsher discipline of the “olden days” I may get credit for being a better parent than he thought.

And sometimes I take it a step further. I have had instances where I have had to defend my child’s behavior at his school. Well, why shouldn’t I get credit from him for doing that? This is not like the highest level of charitable giving that our religious institutions raise us with that says anonymous giving is the highest form of charity. No, if I am going to work hard for my kid, he needs to know, I share with him what I have done. If he was there, I remind him of how defensive I got on his behalf. I want some of his self esteem to come from the fact that he had a parent who fought for him, who defended him, and who took the best care of him that he could have. Sometimes I have to make sure he knows this by selling myself, by marketing my work!

We went to the movies over this past weekend. My son loves the fruits of my blog labor. Sometimes he fails to understand that some of that labor must come from him. Just take the damn picture in front of the movie poster for my blog post! Just let me check my email to see if Alison or Adam wrote back to say where they were sitting! I had to go to the Javits Center afterwards and left my spouse and son to go home, I was furious the whole mile walk over there. And then I realized, my 9 year old’s behavior is not what matters here, it is my reaction. Holy crap, what a revelation. I know the relationship I want with my son, and I know only I can lay the groundwork to hopefully, if I am lucky, achieve that relationship. I may not, but at least I can give it my best effort. That evening we had a talk, I told him how I grew up, I told him how I wanted him to grow up, I told him how I wanted to have a different relationship with him than I had with my dad. I wasn’t thinking in terms of marketing at this point, I was just talking about my feelings and asked him to talk about his. Perhaps this was the most direct form of marketing that I could have done,

I want my son to grow up knowing that whatever happens between us, that even though I am the disciplinarian, I am also his biggest supporter and fan. I want him to know deep in his heart that daddy Mitch always came to his defense, always supported him and most importantly respected him enough to talk to him about any mutual issues that arose between us.

And if you think I have over thought this whole parenting thing, you are 100% correct!

The recent hot topic of gun control, which comes up stronger and stronger after every horrific incident in this country, needs to be discussed from the perspective of a dad who is against guns, raising a son who lives for weaponry.

We are NYC, Manhattan, pacifistic gay parents. We are against guns. When our son was little, believe it or not, a hot topic in the playground was whether or not to even allow water guns. Yes, we are that extreme in Manhattan.

My entire mind set changed when, at the age of 2 1/2, at a friends Christmas party, my son came out of their basement, after being there for 2 minutes, with 2 guns. A gun in each hand. Not just 1 gun, but 2.

That is when my realizations started to change. Perhaps love of guns/weaponry is an innate thing. I know that is a very difficult idea for many people, but from my anti-gun viewpoint, watching my son growing up and watching his natural affinity for guns, has made me alter my thinking.

He is a typical boy. Denying him guns didn’t work. He would make a gun with 2 of his fingers. Now he can make weapons with just pieces of paper. He does so all the time. It may be genetic, it may be in the straight male code. I don’t know what it is, but I feel it is perfectly natural, this attraction to guns and other weapons. And again, I do not support it, but we need to look closely at this subject because we need to accept that it is innate, and move forward to guide the situation, rather than think it is something we can “fix.”

Boys playing cops and robbers is not something that we teach them, of all the things they see on TV and in the movies, that is what they desire to copy. And regarding video games, my 9 1/2 year old son loves watching his older cousins play violent video games. I won’t allow them in my house at his age, but I can’t deny that he is naturally attracted to that action.

We recently spent a long weekend at Walt Disney World. We enjoyed the Indiana Jones show so much that we saw it twice. My son was begging for a souvenir (no surprise) and finally settled on a pistol, just like Indiana used. If this had occurred after the recent shootings I am sure I would have said no and been able to convince him. At the time I allowed him to buy the gun, I understand it provides necessary role play for boys, he is not looking to go out and one day commit murder. (Footnote, he forgot he has it, and I hid it. I am not beyond manipulation!)

So before you judge, take an honest look at how we are wired as a species. Because while gun control is super important, and one of the hot topics of the day, we cannot deny that there is a natural instinct to be attracted to weapons, most prominently in boys. Once we understand this we can move forward in the most successful way. Living in denial won’t solve the problem, but guidance through honest understanding of our own DNA, might.

That is how we have raised our son. People are not a color or a size or anything else that may set them apart descriptively in a different way from us. Because we either look for similarities or we celebrate everyone’s differences.

And differences abound. We know families with single moms either through adoption or surrogacy. We know many people with many different and/or mixed heritages. Our neighborhood is not homogeneous, thank goodness.

I grew up feeling different than everyone around me. That was not a comfortable feeling. I couldn’t wait to move into NYC to get lost in the millions so people could not identify me as the gay one, the fat one, or just the sissy. Yes, full of self esteem I was.

And my son is different. So I want him to feel he is similar to everyone in that everyone is different. He is adopted, he is mixed race, he has 2 dads. Could he be more set apart? Not in a homogeneous area. Thankfully our neighborhood, our school, our environs, are filled with a wonderful melange of folks. My son may go to a school that is whiter in it’s population and then to the boys club that is darker in its population  but we feel we have successfully raised him not to notice. And from what we can tell, he doesn’t notice, he just sees boys that could be his friends  Yes, he is one of those, everyone is his friend from the onset. So different from me who grew up afraid of everyone. I think his attitude will serve him well in life.

So then he comes home and tells me black this, black that, Rosa Parks was at the back of the bus, blacks were slaves, etc. I know this is part of American history, I know it is important to learn, but I also feel it undoes my work in teaching him we are all one people. I don’t harp on the fact that the Jewish people have been persecuted through the ages because I don’t want him to feel he is set apart from people of other religions. And I don’t want him to look at people with a different skin color as different from him. But I feel that the school curriculum has taken that away from me. And in my heart I know this must all be taught, but I feel that pinpointing differences is not the way to go anymore.

Blacks were slaves in America. Jews were slaves in Egypt, gays have always been persecuted, etc.. My fear is he is being taught to see differences in people, while I am trying to teach we are all in this together. Illustrate how everyone was oppressed, not just one people,  don’t harp on the differences amongst people, temper this information with examples of how we are all the same, how many peoples have suffered, etc.

I say it is time to move forward as one people, not as many separate factions. We all need to learn to teach our children in a new way. But how?