For 2012′s worst “Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children.”

Wow.

Destructive is such a strong word, as is oppressive.

What are some of these dastardly things?

Hmmm, you’ll find a Lego Friends product, as well as a Fisher Price toy, and even a ball.

Personally, I kind of hate all of the “smart” Fisher Price toys.  They creep me out.

Voting ends December 5, so hurry!

My  husband and I have been mulling over party ideas for our three year old daughter.  She was born after Halloween, but very soon after, so we thought about a Halloween-themed party.  Or we thought about just renting a bounce house, putting it in the front yard and being done.

Silly us, we should be doing this.

My daughter loves swimming.

Now if only we lived in Florida.

78% of you felt that a college professor who breastfed her child during a lecture acted inappropriately.  Some of you also disagreed with a sick child being brought to the workplace.  You know, I sort of see that viewpoint, but it just underscores how most women have few options when it comes to childcare, so I’m thinking it could bring attention to their situations.  17% said she was just fine, and only 4% didn’t know what to think.

Yesterday we had my son’s 10th birthday party and it was 99 degrees!

52% of you have no issues with infant male circumcision, and the recent just-short-of-a-recommendation from the AAP didn’t change that.  4% admit the new findings may have changed their mind, while 14% haven’t budged in their stance against. 23% say they don’t have a horse in the race, and sometimes I wonder why I put that voting category in there.  To me, it’s just an easy way to say that you don’t know.

Well, she’d better be prepared to slut it up as Hermione Granger, because tight, short, and shiny is most of what is out there on the store-bought costume front.  I’m sure you can find some that aren’t, but all of those listed as “most popular” are the ones that show the most skin.

This is called Robyn Da Hood Tween Costume, and I just can’t with the name.  Perhaps it has its origins in some movie that my seriously unhip 41 year old self does not know about, but I still can’t no matter where it is from.

Hermione certainly is looking grown up.  May I interest you in a shirt, Hermione? Shirts are your friend.

She certainly looks ready for a party, although I’m not sure it will include tea.

The list is practically endless.

And extremely depressing for us non-sewers.

As some of you may have read, the annual cost of child care in some states exceeds that of tuition for a four year degree.

Let’s think about that for a second.

I am all for paying childcare workers a fair and living wage, as well as treating their positions with respect.  But is the high cost of a full-time daycare truly reflective of a highly trained staff and a safe, stimulating setting, or  is it a business just trying to take advantage of a situation where both parents feel they need/want to work?

When I became pregnant with the Munchkin, my husband and I sat down and discussed what I was going to do with myself once our son was born.  My husband was all for me continuing to work, as he likes having money.  I too, like having money, but I pointed out to him that the cost of childcare would negate much of my earnings (although not all) but the net gain we would make from my salary wasn’t worth it to me.

This was a point of contention for a while, with him pointing out that we could hire some aging grandmother off the street who would come in for cheap.  Well, that might have been true, but I still felt that my son was best off with me as his caregiver, period.

So, as in many of our disagreements, I came out the winner.

If good, reliable childcare that didn’t break the bank in my area was obtainable, I might have considered staying at work, or at least scaling back to half or part time.

But it wasn’t.

And so here I sit, stay at home mother to a 4th grader and a toddler with speech and developmental delays.

Yeah, not looking good for a return to the workforce any time soon.

Is childcare in your area reasonable, or a big ripoff?  And how did it influence your decision to stay/not stay at home?

Aaaah, ladies after my own heart! 57% of you never pay retail if you can possibly help it, and 28% say more than they would like, which could be that they don’t pay retail 8% of the time, but that’s still too much for them.  9% say quite a bit, and 4% of you say almost never.  I would say that usually the only thing I pay “retail” for is groceries, but I try to be a bargain shopper as much as possible.  But, I don’t clip coupons.

Now, I’m sure all of you have at least heard about the incident of Karen Klein, school bus monitor, being horribly bullied by some tween and teen boys.  I watched a bit of the video, but had to turn it off after just a few minutes.  People are calling for the kids’ heads, and Karen now has over $500,000 in donations to her name, as well as a trip to Disneyworld.  There is much debate as to who is to blame for what happened, ranging from the parents to the kids to the school district. What do you think?

Because man, the whole thing was just stupid.   And get ready with some coffee and scones, because this is one loooong story.

In my state, some 2nd graders are tested for the gifted program. In some schools, every single child is tested, in others, only ones that have been recommended by teachers.  In my particular district, a test called the Naglieri is used.  The Naglieri is often used in many school districts with a large population of students that speak a second language or are economically disadvantaged, or both.  Essentially, it doesn’t have any words and uses pictures instead.

So the Munchkin was recommended to take the test, but upon doing some research and speaking with my sister, who is a GATE teacher, I found out that some students with verbal giftedness can do badly on the Naglieri.  Because duh, no words.  I asked that very question of the district GATE coordinator at a parent information meeting, and she did indeed admit that some verbally gifted students could be overlooked with that specific test.

Cut to my son receiving a HORRIBLE score on that test. I mean, according to the Naglieri, he wasn’t even performing up to grade level standards.  Which of course was not true.

I wrote a nice and polite email to the GATE coordinator stating that I didn’t think my son’s performance was reflective of his abilities, as we all could tell from his grades that he was obviously performing at or above grade level.

She replies that fine, if I would like, she could have a broader-scale IQ test administered, called the WISC-IV.  This is a two hour test conducted by a trained school psychologist that spans a larger set of skills than the Naglieri, which is mostly focused on logic.

So the Munchkin takes the test, and when he gets in the car afterwards, he tells me his brain is “on fire.”

Which I sort of took to be a good sign.

His test scores come back, and there are four subsets of results dealing with specific areas of skill.  His verbal is fantastic, definitely in the highly gifted range.  He has some good scores in two other subsets, but only in the moderately gifted range.  Then comes a low-ish score in the last subset.

I’m told that oh, too bad.  That low-ish score means my son isn’t good enough to qualify for the GATE program.  OKTHXBAI.

Wait, what?

Now, up until this point, I’ve been pretty patient.  They had dragged out giving me the results, and also said that they wanted to wait for his standardized test scores to come in before they made a judgement on whether he would get into the program.  That’s all fine and dandy, but the test scores weren’t due until about two weeks before school was supposed to start, which they were well aware of.

So all summer long I was biting my nails and wondering what we were going to do with him.  If I like anything, it’s having a plan.  I’m not a big fan of flying by the seat of my pants, especially when it comes to my son’s education.

When I was told that even though my son scored in the advanced band in both Language Arts and Mathematics, and even though he clearly was verbally gifted, that one low subset was enough to keep him out in the cold, I got mad.

And when I get mad, I do a LOT of research.

What I found was that for the WISC-IV, the test makers allowed for the possibility of unusual scores, and in very specific circumstances, dictated that if a situation like my son’s was to occur, there was an entirely different way to score his test.  Basically, there had to be discrepancies between specific subsets, and more than one standard score deviation between the two.  They call this the GAI, or General Ability Index.

Bingo!  I had the answer!  All the district had to do was recalculate the score based on the tables given to them by the makers of the test, and all would be well!

Picture me in the office of the GATE coordinator.  I have already sent her the link to the information I am referring to in an email, and I’m thinking this meeting is just a formality so that she can verify my son’s standardized test scores.

Then picture me with a very red face as she condescendingly tells me (in so many words) that I don’t know what the hell I am talking about and why don’t I just leave all this complicated stuff to people such as herself, who are the professionals.  She had evidently completely ignored my email. I manage to choke out that I am not talking to her about my OPINION about what should be done with his score, but what the actual people who built the test are telling her, the professional, what she should do.

I am given the complete brush-off and sent packing.

I distinctly remember grinning like a complete fool on my way back to the car, because if I didn’t have a maniacal smile on my face, I was going to kill the next person who crossed my path.  That happened to be some other district employee who smiled sunnily at me, not noting the glint in my eye that should have told her to run in the opposite direction.  I also remember telling my husband that I’d never been treated so rudely by someone in my entire life, and that I wouldn’t put the Munchkin in the damned GATE program if they begged me.

I also thought, HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE THEY DONE THIS TO?  Am I really the first person who has ever noted how the district is supposed to calculate those scores, as opposed to the incorrect way they have been doing it, apparently for YEARS?  I wondered how many kids had been incorrectly placed in programs or denied a place in programs they actually did qualify for because this particular district employs IDIOTIC ASSHOLES.  The GAI was there, it was specific, and they had never even used it. I was stunned, to say the least.

But knowing what I know about people, I was expecting an ugly uphill battle.  I decided then and there that we would place the Munchkin back into his homeschooling program, and the district could go to hell.

About a week later, I get an email.

Oh, by the way Ms. Glinda, we just so happened to recalculate your son’s score on the WISC-IV and it just so happened to turn out that his scores are actually much, much higher than we originally thought.  He is welcome to attend the GATE program (that starts in 3 DAYS) and we look forward to having him in class.

You don’t say.

Screw that noise.

I politely declined, saying that we, as a family, had already decided that he would continue homeschooling, and that I did not want to deviate from that plan at this very late date.

Vindicated, all I can say is that all of that was worth it, especially since now they are calculating the scores correctly, as they should have been doing all along.

And now that I look back on this post, I am proud to say I have written my first horror story.

Care Bears, selling for $1200

Pound Puppy, selling for $5000

Furby, going for $500

Cabbage Patch Kid, yours for $2000

Stretch Armstrong figures (God, who didn’t have at least one of these and beat the crud out of it?)  $17,800

via

The cups were on the lowest rung of the display, and one cup was orange and one cup was pink.  I definitely noticed animals on one cup, and only quickly glanced at the other one. Whatever, it was pink.  As long as both of them weren’t pink, I was good.

Until I got home and opened the package.

OK, ignore the purple cup. Do you see the graphics on the pink one? It’s got a purse, a makeup brush, a compact, and a mirror, among other things.

Am I wrong to think that this is just a bit too mature for a two year old?

I love makeup. I write a beauty blog. My daughter enjoys watching me put makeup on.

But it just seems wrong.

Amirite?