Category Archives: Education

Research-Based Parenting

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“Trust your instincts” is an excellent parenting strategy … but it’s not for me.

I choose not to raise my children the way I was raised. I have a deep-seated worry that if I go with instinct, I’ll fall back on the parenting style I lived with in my own childhood, replete with yelling, threats, and inconsistency. I want better for my children.

Before we started trying to conceive, I spent over a year in therapy. Ironically enough, I originally went in because my husband didn’t understand my reluctance to become a mother. At my first appointment, I told the therapist, “I’m here so you can tell my husband that I’m just too crazy to make a good mother. We just can’t have kids.” A year of talk therapy later, I’d come to terms with my childhood and come to believe that my depression was manageable condition rather than a tragic curse. I felt that I’d slain my dragons and could be the parent I believe that children deserve to have. I read parenting book after parenting book, taking notes on the things that made sense and even larger notes on the things that didn’t. I came up with my parenting credo, making sure that my husband was on board: Our goal is to raise a happy, wholesome, healthy, productive adult.

There’s a reason I overthink.

My research didn’t end when I became pregnant. I peppered first my ob-gyn, then the girls’ pediatrician, with questions. I selected doctors who would partner with me to give my kids the best possible start they could have. I selected a daycare program that would partner with me to raise J and M, not just provide us with a daytime babysitting service. Their infant class teacher knew them so well that I bought my house based on her recommendation. I wanted to situate my daughters to go to the school that their former teacher’s daughter attends. She assured me that it would be a good fit for them, and she was right.

I continue to read. The book that’s had the biggest impact on my parenting is Nurtureshock, published in 2011. I’m currently reading Stepmonster to get some insights into what I can do to encourage the healthiest and most positive relationship I can between my daughters and their new stepmother and stepsisters. There are pieces of Raising Your Spirited Child that I find helpful, but I hate the author’s tone and her suggestion that we need to shape a child’s world to her intensity. Instead, I choose to teach my girls to direct and control their intense reponses, channeling their spiritedness into creativity and community service instead of explosions and hysteria.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the dance studio lobby while M and J were in their ballet/tap lesson, reading The Foster Parenting Toolbox. Another mom asked me whether I was taking classes. I told her that I wasn’t. I was just beefing up on my parenting. This mom and I have been casual friends for several years, but aren’t particularly close.

“You don’t need to read that stuff!” she said. “All a child needs is love and discipline, and you’ll be fine. You’re a good mom!”

I flailed around for a response. I tried to explain that I feared that being a good mom didn’t come naturally. I needed to read the research and hear other parents’ thoughts to inform my own parenting. I’ve honed my instincts over the years until I’m pretty sure they’re trustworthy, but I still think through every act of parenting. It’s exhausting, but the last place I’m going to let myself get lazy is when it comes to guiding my children, within the strengths and weaknesses that come naturally to them, to becoming happy, healthy, wholesome productive adults.

A lot of people don’t get it. That’s okay. If your instincts work for your kids, good for you. But please, let me overthink with mine.

What’s your parenting approach? Do you run on instinct? Do you research? Do you balance the two?

Sadia overthinks the raising of her identical twin almost-7-year-old daughters in the Austin, TX area. She is divorced and works full-time in higher education information technology. Her overthinking approach works quite well, although she’s now attempting to end the weekly Saturday morning meltdown. First stop, sugar elimination from weekend breakfast.

Together

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I’ve made an informed decision. My daughters will be in the same classroom for second grade.

I solicited opinions from the people who know best what the classroom dynamic is between my identical twins, their teachers and counselors. Not only are all four of them thoughtful educators who know my daughters very well, one of the teachers is herself a twin and one of the counselors is a mom of twin boys.

While the general approach was that separation was often good for twins in general, no one seemed to have serious concerns about J and M being disruptive, distracted or under-performing should they be in the same classroom. M’s teacher clearly leaned towards encouraging apart time, but her concerns were general rather than specific. I was looking for reasons to reject my daughter’ preference. After all, I’m trying to teach them to make good decisions for themselves and dealing with the consequences of the bad ones. Their father didn’t care either way whether they are in the same classroom next year.

The only people with extremely strong opinions were M and J themselves, and they want to be together. I’ve asked them over and over whether they still want this, and they’re not budging, not even while in the middle of heated arguments with each other.

The feedback that I was going to weigh the heaviest was that from J’s classroom teacher. He teaches the girls separately for math and together for language arts. I do have to say that I feel for him. During Reading and Writing Workshop, he has not only my identical twin daughters, but another set of identical twin girls too! He says he calls someone the wrong name just about every day, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have trouble telling his students apart. I still sometimes call my daughter M by my sister’s name. They look, sound, and behave nothing alike. The only commonality is that they both let me kiss them on the nose.

But I digress.

Here’s what J’s teacher said: “I really think they will do great either way you decide. In second grade they wouldn’t see as much of each other as they do now if they are put in separate classes, so that is one thing to consider.”

I did consider that. As Dr. Segal mentioned in her post, just a glance at a twin to know she’s okay can help a child focus in class. My daughters have friends in common, but they have different best friends. They play together, but they’re as often apart as together at recess. They don’t feel the need to dress alike and have made their mark at school both as individuals and as sisters. I suspect that M and J know exactly what they need to be successful.

To round out the perspectives I got, here’s what M’s teacher had to say:

I appreciate you taking my opinion in consideration.
J and M are doing extremely well in separate classrooms. I think they need to learn to be apart from each other for longer periods of time. Granted they are in separate classrooms, they spend half of the day together during Writing and Reading workshop due to the nature of the Dual Language Program.
I can tell you from being a twin myself that being apart from my sister was very beneficial for us. We learned to speak up by ourselves whereas when we were together one or the other always spoke up for both. Being by ourselves taught us to be individuals.
I see it as the best of both worlds….time together and time apart!
Thank you!
And from the counselor the girls are closest to:
Since they are already in dual language together and are in class together part of the day, I think the teachers would be most helpful in letting you know how that works. During group with me, I noticed that they finish each other’s sentences/interrupt each other and are a little sillier when together, which is typical of sisters.  That makes me wonder if that would happen in class if together. On the other hand, they are also very helpful to each other and get along very well. Since I had them in a small group, I think their behavior is probably different in a large classroom setting. I would lean towards suggesting they be in separate classes, especially since they have dual language together part of the day. But I am comfortable supporting whatever decision you make.
This time next year, we’ll be making this decision all over again. It’s a new decision every time.

 

I'm a Home Run Hitter

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I’m a homerun hitter in this game called Parenting. That’s right! Some days I practically “hit the ball out of the park” with my parenting skills…but (of course there’s a but) then there are other days…those bleak days…where it’s three strikes and I’m out and I haven’t even finished my morning cup of cold coffee yet.

Last week I took part in a workshop, put on by a local social service agency in partnership with the Parents of Multiples Births Association I am part of. The workshop was on Positive Parenting and Raising Responsible Children (us multiples moms and dads need all the advice we can get, right?!) The facilitator used a baseball analogy in her explanation of positive parenting, which I will explain shortly.

We all want to raise awesome children and give them all we can to achieve success…but we learned maybe that is not exactly the right approach. We need to let children make mistakes, as painful as it may be to watch happen. We need to let them learn from their experiences, not clear the path or fight their battles for them, while thinking we are doing them a favour. We talked about the importance of give and take when it comes to the parent and child relationship. We heard about the reasons why children may seem to be “misbehaving,” when perhaps in fact they are having a hard time verbalizing or expressing what it is that’s actually making them react in ways we consider “bad.” We also learned from other parents’ reactions we are not alone when we wonder where the heck The Parenting Manual is and why didn’t we get training before we had multiples running around the neighbourhood when the lights are out and all the other kids are home in their beds?? Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight.

The facilitator of this workshop discussed the importance of understanding the difference between praise and encouragement. Another key thought was to consider the difference between punishment and discipline.  At first glance I am sure many parents, including myself might think these words are one in the same, just a different way to state them…but with further explanation many of us had our “a-ha moments” going off one by one through the session.

For starters the facilitator explained a concept called STEP – Systematic Training for Effective Parenting. The main point that drove it home (like a homerun) for me was praise is used to reward only for well-done, completed tasks. From this the child begins to develop the ideal that “to be worthwhile I must meet your standards,” allowing the child to develop unrealistic standards and measure worth by how closely the child reaches the parents’ perceived level of perfection. From here children learn to dread failure. On the flip side, in comparison, encouragement is when a child is recognized for effort and improvement. The child internalizes the idea that he or she does not have to be perfect and that efforts and improvements are valued and important. Based on this type of repetitive experience the child learns to accept his/her and others’ efforts. It also enables a child to learn discipline and persistence to stay on task.

Bringing up the rear were the concepts of punishment versus discipline. I thought, Aren’t they the same?…one just seems to have a meaner tone? I looked it up, because that’s what I do, and yes, they do have similar meanings…but “discipline” is also defined as activities, exercises or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training.

During the workshop, “punishment” was outlined as our belief that we must teach a life lesson and that a punishment, such as taking something away will make the child think before acting next time or “suffer the consequences.” You may randomly take something away, that has nothing to do with the problem or situation and will make no sense to the upset child. That sounds scary and frustrating…Then on the other hand is the concept of discipline, which is to train the child by working with him/her to develop effective strategies for expressing their emotions and managing behaviour to avoid grocery store mid-aisle meltdowns for all to see (and judge.) To discipline, you have to work at achieving your own skill of understanding a child’s reasons for behaviour and misbehaviour, use firmness and kindness in your approach, look for solutions and alternatives and the ultimate goal is to teach the child self-discipline. In other words don’t start screaming and yelling, thinking you’re going to help the already frustrating situation. In this sense you’re really reverting to child-like mannerisms because you can’t get your point across. I get it…but it’s going to take a lot of practice to make it right…and ultimately this whole concept of parenting indicates we should not strive for “perfection,” but rather a balance of confidence in our abilities and a willingness to persevere and try again next time.

To close, the way the facilitator of the workshop summed up these ideas is that when you start to learn to play baseball, you don’t immediately know how to swing and hit a ball, or pitch and throw a strike. This was my a-ha moment, after playing many, many summer baseball seasons over the years, I knew what she meant. I realized this idea of baseball is similar to learning to parent; these are all things that take time, dedication and potentially many mistakes along the way to become as good a parent as you can be. Rarely does a pitcher ever throw a perfect game and so it’s reasonable to think parents will make mistakes, feel like they should be thrown out of the Parenting game and maybe even take themselves out of the game for a few minutes to collect themselves and then start again with a fresh approach.

Our friends at GoNannies.com asked us to share some of their similar thoughts shared on their recent blog post, How to Gain Your Child’s Cooperation Without Yelling, so please feel free to check them out for more advice on discipline and gaining your child’s cooperation.

Talking to Kids About Chronic Illness

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My 6-year-olds love going through the drive through pharmacy. They’re fascinated by the hardware that allows me and the pharmacist to send clipboards, debit cards and medications back and forth without my having to leave the driver’s seat of my car. They never tire of the box magically closing just before it disappears into the cavern above our heads.

While we were waiting for my refills and debit card yesterday, M wanted to know what the medicine was for. I told her I’d explain on the way home. I needed a few minutes to gather my thoughts.

I have clinical depression.

I didn’t say I was depressed. I’m not depressed. My emotional and mood responses to the challenges in my life are proportional and appropriate. I see the little joys in my day. My temper is completely under control. I don’t find myself needing to examine my every thought to determine whether it’s a real one or the product of a brain that isn’t working right. It doesn’t take an all-consuming act of will to get out of bed, eat, or breathe. Not any more.

I explained to my daughter that, many years ago, I started having horrible feelings of sadness. There wasn’t a reason to be sad, at least not as sad as I felt. Some mornings, my brain would tell my body to sit up, but my body wouldn’t listen. The sadness was controlling my body. I went to a doctor and a counselor–my daughter knows about counselors because her school has two amazing ones–and tried to fix things by thinking about my feelings, talking about my feelings, understanding my feelings. It wasn’t enough. I tried all the things we practice at home to manage our feelings: deep breaths, time out, reading a book, writing about our feelings, asking for help. It just wasn’t enough.

Finally, my doctor told me that I have an illness called “depression.” Everyone’s brain has chemicals in it, just like all other parts of the body, to make sure it works right. For some reason we don’t understand, some of my brain’s chemicals were missing. (I figured that 6 was a little young to go into serotonin reuptake. “Missing chemicals” would have to do.) The doctor recommended that I take medicine to help. I didn’t want to take medicine to put new chemicals in my brain. That sounded scary to me.

“This is a scary story!” my daughter interjected.

I asked if she wanted me to stop. She wanted to hear the ending, so I continued.

I started taking the medicine. After a few months, I felt better. My body started listening to my brain, and I felt happy. When I did feel sad, there was a reason, and fixing the reason fixed the sadness. My brain was all better.

When I decided to have babies, I didn’t want those medicines in their bodies. Their brains probably would never need them, and it’s not a good idea to have medicine in your body that you don’t need. With a doctor’s help, I stopped taking my medicines, and I still felt fine.

I had my beautiful little girls. (M smiled at that.) For four years, I felt just fine. Then, one day, the bad sadness came back. I recognized it right away this time. I went back to the doctor, and told them that I had depression and that it was making me feel sick again. He asked me to try the medicines that had worked before, and they worked again.

“So if you don’t take your medicine, you’ll be sick?” M asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ll probably just be the same that I always am, but this sickness, depression, might come back and make my brain sick again. Since the medicine helps make sure that I stay healthy in my brain, I keep taking it. There may be a good reason to stop taking it some day and be careful about watching my brain health, but for now, I think I should keep taking it.”

“Okay,” she said. And that was that.

J looked up from the book she was reading. “Did you say something about being sick?”

I told her we’d talk about it another time.

Sadia is a divorced mother of precocious 6-year-old identical twin girls. She works in higher education information technology and has her depression well managed. She hopes that some day, the stigma of mental illness will go that way of cancer stigma. She believes that knowledge is power. So is compassion.

A Myriad of Multiples

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When I was in elementary school, there were three sets of identical girl twins in my grade. They were even in the newspaper.  I remember the picture that went with the article, with the six girls sitting stacked on a slide at our school’s playground.  (I never imagined that one day I’d have my own set of twins! )  As it turns out, my school’s meager three twin sets pales in comparison to one Tennessee school with fifteen(!) pairs of twins.

Double Take! Twins Explosion Hits School (video via Nbcnews.com)

With only 611 students at Castle Heights Upper Elementary School, thirty twins really seems like a lot.  And of course, where there are multiples, there are urban legends surrounding their conception—maybe it’s something in the water? Of the fifteen twin sets, three have been reported to be a result of fertility treatments, while the rest were ”luck.”  “We were in Vegas when it happened…” joked one mom.

Parenting twins raises all sorts of questions that parents of singletons don’t need to worry about.  One of those questions is whether or not to separate twins when they reach school age. Do you remember Sadia’s  experience with each of her girls in separate classrooms, and then separate grades?  Dr. Nancy Segal, who appears in the news clip, was here yesterday at HDYDI to address the benefits of separating, or not, twins in school and to give her recommendations for school policy on twin placement.

And when it comes to befriending other twin pairs, one of the Castle Heights dads jokes that the kids “don’t have a choice at our school!” What an interesting circumstance!  While juggling my own multiples can certainly “keep my hands full,” it does make me wonder what it would be like for them to have other twins to relate to. (And can you imagine what it would be like as a teacher at that school?!)

Do your multiples enjoy friendships with other multiples?

 

Guest Post: Separating Twins at School by Dr. Nancy Segal

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Today’s guest post comes from Dr. Nancy Segal, the director of the Twin Studies Center at Cal State, Fullerton.

Nancy L. Segal, Ph.D.
California State University, Fullerton
nsegal@fullerton.edu
drnancysegaltwins.org

The biggest dilemma regarding twins seems to surround the arguments for and against separating them at school. There is no simple answer to this question, but I strongly urge that there be no policy one way or the other. That is, each twin pair should be evaluated separately, taking their particular needs into consideration. I am, therefore, very much against mandatory separation of twins, a policy that is upheld strictly in some school districts.

Some schools maintain that twins will not grow up to be independent individuals if placed in the same room as their twin brother or sister. This is, however, not a research-based practice. It is known that when friends go off to school together for the first time they are more comfortable in their new situation, more interactive with other children and less likely to cling to their teacher. Interestingly, no one worries that two such children might not become separate, independent individuals!

Going to school for the first time can be a little daunting for some children, and forcing twins to separate from their parent and from their twin at the same time may be a lot to ask in some cases. A solution is for teachers to arrange for separate tables within the same classroom so that twins can see each other (that is often the only thing they need!), but develop separate friendships. I once tracked twins during recess and found that while identical were together more often than fraterals they were not together all the time. Often, just a glance at the twin was enough to make them feel relaxed and happy.

We also need to be mindful of twin types. Identical twins are in a very different situation that fraternal same-sex twins who, in turn, are in a different situation from opposite-sex twins. Identical twins may be confused by their classmates and teachers, due to their matched appearance. If identical twins are placed together parents should have them wear different outfits or hair styles, or even wear name tags! It is important that people learn their names and address them as such. Fraternal twins (both same-sex and opposite-sex) will probably not be confused—although some people may forget which name goes with which twin in the case of the same-sex pairs. Same-sex fraternal twins will generally have different interests and abilities and may benefit from separate classrooms in some cases. Male-female twins may benefit from separation for other reasons—little girls mature ahead of little boys socially, intellectually ands physically. Girls in these pairs tend to mother their brothers, behavior that may not always be beneficial for the boys. Above all, however, all decisions regarding school placement for twins should be rendered on a case-by-case basis and evaluated periodically by parents and teachers working together. Young pairs, regardless of twin type, may benefit from being together during the early school years.

A word of additional caution: I have worked on cases of older identical twins who have been falsely accused of cheating on exams and projects because they produce similar scores and essays. If identical twins are in the same classroom, they should never sit together while taking tests!

For more information about all sorts of twin-related subjects, please visit my website at drnancysegaltwins.org.

Bilingual Children

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Since I had my own children, I’ve started noticing other young children in my community, and by extension, their families. More and more, families are becoming racially mixed these days. Children of first generation immigrants like us are now having their own children, creating a hodgepodge of cultures in this third generation. It makes me wonder how parents of our generation are raising their bi/multi-racial, bi/multi-cultural children.

Amongst our friends and in Toddler’s classes, there are many such children. A lot of them are being raised only speaking English. The parents either don’t speak their first language well or choose not to pass it on to their children. Or, each spouse speaks a different language so they find it easier to communicate with their children in English.

I completely understand how difficult it is to raise bilingual children. It takes dedication to something that may not be the path of least resistance. My family moved to LA from Taiwan when I was 5 years old, so my first language was Chinese. However, at that young age, I very naturally picked up English. Our ease with English was so great that our parents had to impose a “No English” rule in our house so we would not lose our ability to converse in Chinese. My brother and I inevitably spoke English to each other while we were alone, but never with our parents. To them, our education in the Chinese language was just as important as our grades in school. There were shipments of elementary schoolbooks from Taiwan and weekends spent at Chinese school. Because of my parents’ dedication, today I am just short of fluent in reading and writing, and can easily function in a Chinese society without translation.

Studies show that the brains of bilingual people are different. Development in children who are bilingual is more advanced over those who are not exposed to a second language. In my case, it’s helped me score almost perfect on my SAT’s and excel in all levels of my education. Spending evenings with my father at the kitchen table reading the Chinese newspaper fostered in me a love for language that resulted in my career as an English teacher.

Therefore it’s no surprise that I would be adamant in raising my children to be bilingual. From infancy, I’ve spoken to them only in Mandarin. Husband is actually a Cantonese speaker (a different dialect of Chinese), though not fluent, but he’s learning Mandarin along with Toddler. My children will get the same opportunity to learn a second language as I did. In fact, they will truly be bilingual, as they will have both English and Chinese as their first language.

It will take even more dedication for us than it did for our parents, though. We are so much more comfortable with English than they ever were. At not even three years old, Toddler is almost just as strong in English already. With our iPad commandeered as hers and all that toddler programming on Nick Jr, it won’t take long for English to become her dominant language. I will have to strive to enroll her in dual language schools and provide her with regular, extended interactions with their grandmother. And then her siblings will come along and the battle will be even more uphill.

I hope they will someday be appreciative of these efforts as I am deeply grateful for my parents’.

lunchldyd is mom to a bilingual 3 yr old daughter and soon-to-be bilingual 3 month old b/g twins. 

I Know I Can't Be Objective

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My 6-year-old daughters are being evaluated for the Talented and Gifted program at their elementary school. If they qualify, they’ll get to participate in more in-depth study of certain subjects than their peers. The dual language program at their school, in which they participate, already incorporates components of the Talented and Gifted curriculum, and their teachers do a great job of giving them assignments that keep them challenged and engaged. Still, I really do think that they’d benefit from the additional small group environment of TAG.

Every parent knows that their child is special. I think there are very few parents out there who’d describe their children as average, even though the average child is, well, average. I’m not even going to pretend to be objective. In my eyes, J is the sweetest, most thoughtful child to ever grace the earth. M is the funniest, and it takes every iota of self control not to spend every second of every day kissing her most kissable nose. They are both brilliant. It’s a good thing that the people evaluating them for Talented and Gifted services aren’t their parents.

But, wait.

J and M both brought forms home from school yesterday. I’m supposed to fill out these “Scales for Identifying Gifted Students” comparing them each to their age peers. Under Language Arts, one criterion is, “Reads or speaks with expression to create meaning.” Under Creativity: “Is an excellent improviser.” Leadership: “Is sought out for peers for advice, companionship, and ideas,” and “Is viewed as fair or caring.”

I cannot be objective. I just hope that the teachers reviewing these forms know that no parent can be, and are looking more at the examples I provide than the rankings.

I also struggle not to compare my girls to one another. They’re incredibly evenly matched, but J is just a little more interested in current events than M. J was the one who cried every day of the Arab Spring uprising in Libya, while M merely listened to the news and commented. M is just a bit stronger in math. While J is content to work on multiplication and calculations of area, M has leapt ahead into volumes and higher exponents. I imagine that if I were the mother of just one of them, I wouldn’t pause to mark their abilities in those areas as “Exhibits the behavior much more in comparison to his or her age peers.” I’m not the mother of just one. I’m a mother of twins, and I can’t help but compare them to each other. I know I’m not alone in this; my friends who have several singletons frequently talk about how a younger child compares to how the older one was doing at the same age.

The girls’ dad gave me the pep talk I needed soon after I photographed each page of the forms and emailed them to him. “It is important,” he wrote to me, “not to compare our daughters with each other because is it not an accurate measuring stick. For this, I think we need to try to compare them to the other children we see and are familiar with.” He talked through with me some of the areas I was waffling on, and some of the areas that he was uncertain of, not having been around the girls very often this year. He was pleased to learn that J has developed an interest in World War II, and that M is started to want to read more about Native American life before European contact.

I was pleased to have his thoughts, his perspective, and his partnership in co-parenting our children.

Of course, my ex thinks our girls are even more brilliant than I think they are.

Do you aim for objectivity in parenting? How do you achieve it?

Sadia tries to stay half a step ahead of her genius 6-year-old identical twins in Austin, TX. She is assisted in her efforts not to spend all day kissing her daughters by escaping to her full time job in higher education technology in Austin, TX. Her ex-husband is currently stationed 900 miles away with the US Army in El Paso, TX.

Grade Placement Blues 2012, Part II

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In the first of these posts, I told you how my 6-year-old daughters’ old school failed to maintain accurate academic records for them.

In August of last year, I bought a new house. I packed up my kids, cats and household goods and moved 900 miles from El Paso, where my now ex-husband is stationed with the army,  back to the Austin area where my job and most of my friend are.

One of the first things I did was register my twin daughters, M and J, at their new elementary school. I explained their convoluted academic history to the registrar and showed her the note scribbled at the bottom of each of the girls’ transcripts: “Grades reflect 1st grade curriculum.”

The registrar made it clear that the scribble wasn’t going to solve our problems, and referred me to the school counselors. I explained to them that I wasn’t particularly attached to the idea of J and M progressing through school with kids a year their senior. My biggest concern was that they both continued to love school, and that they both learn something every day.

The counselors suggested that both J and M take a grade placement test to establish whether they were ready to enter 2nd grade at age 6. They would need to demonstrate having mastered at least 90% of the first grade curriculum to be allowed to skip a year and enter 2nd grade, which they would have done if they’d stayed in El Paso. It took only a few days to schedule the tests, and a couple more to get results.

M had qualified to enter 2nd grade in English and math, squeaking past the 90% cutoff with a 91%. She was 2 points below the cutoff for science and social studies, but the school had the right to choose to ignore those scores if they wanted. J, on the other hand, missed the cutoff with a score of 89% in math and in English.

This was déjà vu. I wasn’t about to split my twin daughters into separate grades, possibly for the rest of their school careers, without a very good reason. A 2% difference in test scores wasn’t a good reason in my eyes. Remember, a year earlier, I had caved into my now ex-husband’s desire see have our daughter J skip a grade while her sister stayed behind. The fact that the roles were reversed this time around just convinced me all the more that there was no reason to have the girls rush through school and miss out on being with kids their own age.

The counselors backed me up. They would also prefer to see M and J do first grade over again and stay with kids their own age. I had done intensive research and picked this school for them. It had a reputation of excellent teaching and valuing an individualized approach to learning. I didn’t care what their grade was called as long as J and M were safe, learning new things,  socializing with their peers, and enjoying school.

I did ask one favour. I wanted both my daughters in the dual language program. I knew that the other kids had had a year of both Spanish and English instruction in kindergarten. I figured that the disadvantage that J and M would be at because they would need to learn Spanish would be balanced out by the fact that they’d already learned the first grade material.

The Spanish-English dual language coordinator interviewed the girls. She reported that, although they had no Spanish comprehension at all, their English was strong enough that they wouldn’t stay lost for long.

I haven’t regretted for a minute letting M and J repeat first grade, although their father sees this as a major failure. He wants them to be evaluated to skip a grade again at the beginning of next year.

To my mind, school is at least as much about teaching social graces and a sense of accountability, learning to interact with peers, learning compassion and generosity, as it is about academics. The girls are flourishing in their new school, and the Spanish they’re learning will be a huge benefit to them here in Texas and in much of the world.

J captured it perfectly not long ago:

M was the only one in her class to get 100% on her science quiz! It was all in Spanish and she got 100%! When Ms C told us how well M did, I was so proud, I wept tears of joy.

Grade Placement Blues 2012, Part I

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In the autumn of 2011, when the US school year starts, I fretted over my daughters’ grade placement. To make an extra-painfully long part of this painfully long story short, after starting kindergarten with their age peers, J and M were skipped, at different points in the year, up to first grade. They started and ended their school year in the same grade as each other. For a while, though, there was a good chance that the twins would end up in different grades for the remainder of their academic careers, a prospect that made me feel a little sick.

One might think that the matter of the girls’ grade placement was resolved. They had both completed first grade with awards attesting to their all around academic excellence.  They had qualified for the 2nd grade Gifted and Talented program for this academic year. They’d carried themselves remarkably well in the face of the reality of how mean 7-year-olds can be. They’d even worked together to protect a classmate who was facing bullying.

As luck would have it, I requested official transcripts as part of my preparation for our 900 mile move. That’s when things got really ugly.

I reviewed their transcripts and began to suspect a problem. Both transcripts showed the girls as having completed kindergarten, not first grade. In retrospect, I’m glad that both sets of records had the same problem, so I didn’t have inconsistency between J’s and M’s. That might have landed me in the loony bin.

I called the school. I was referred to the registrar. I left a voicemail. After not hearing back for several days, I called back to see if there was someone else in the office who could help. I was referred to the assistant principal. I left a message in her voicemail too.

I gave up on telephonic technology and decided to play this old school. I drove down to the school and asked to see the registrar. She referred me to the assistant principal. Once I cornered her, she informed me that since the girls didn’t have placement tests on file, they had no way update their records to reflect their grade. I asked her why the placement tests weren’t on file. She told me the girls had never taken any. I reminded her that the school had conducted an extensive evaluation before recommending that J and M skip a grade. She said they didn’t include the testing piece because it involved ordering a test from the district. I reacted the way you would expect.

The girls could take the test now, she said, just to get the scores into their records. I agreed. I needed accurate transcripts for the new school district. Fortunately, M and J, like their mother, love tests. They just see them as extended puzzles. I filled out the form requesting testing twice, the form we’d never been offered before. I secured a promise that i would receive a phone call as soon as the tests arrived. I inhaled a smallish box of chocolates, then called my ex-husband to fill him in. He didn’t take it as well as I did.

Time scurried on, but I didn’t hear a peep from the school. I called to follow up, and was told that the district didn’t like to administer the tests on odd dates. Could M and J possibly sit for the test in August. Sure, I said, as long as it was before the 15th. We were moving away after that.

The end of July drew near, and I heard nothing from the school. I didn’t even mess with the phone and went in to find out what was going on. The assistant principal was on leave, I was told. I told them to find me the principal. They got me the registrar. She told me they were getting a new assistant principal.

I met with the new assistant principal before she’d had a chance to put photos of her kids on her desk. She said she’d follow up with her predecessor to find out what was going on. I asked whether I could give her what information I had. She pulled out a legal pad, grabbed a pen, and turned my Mama Bear wrath into a full page of notes. She would take care of things, she told me, and whether or not she’d made probe progress, she’d call me by Friday.

She actually called me on Friday. I began to hope that things cold be cleared up. Too soon. She apologized profusely, and herself acknowledged that had the school dotted their Is in the first place, we wouldn’t be here. However, district policy was that every application to be tested to skip a grade had to be approved by the school board, and they wouldn’t meet again until after the next school year had begun.

Fine, I told her. I surrendered. Was there any way that they could attach a letter to their official transcript explaining the situation? She agreed to do so.

To Be Continued