Behind the Wheel

Teenagers get a lot of sass from insurance companies about being the worst drivers on the road. They gab on the phone. They text. They drink alcohol. Mostly they’re just way too excited and inexperienced.
They’re subsequently punished with high insurance rates and frequent stops from the authorities.
There’s probably a lot of truth to all that, but I’d argue there might be an equally menacing threat out there few notice: The 38-year-old suburban mom.
These moms are, by most accounts, boringly safe.
They make their kids were bike helmets, sunscreen, retainers.
But get them behind the wheel of an SUV in a McDonald’s drive-thru with a clutch of 7-year-old soccer players buckled up in back and watch out.
It all starts with French fries.
Mom pays for the promised treat with one hand while changing the CD with the other. She passes the fries back to the third row, head swiveled in the direction of the hungry second graders while warning them to use napkins, the SUV inching forward as her toddler thumps her back from an oversized car seat behind her.
The toddler requests—no, demands—Sesame Street’s “C is for Cookie.”
That’s track 5.
No, wait, track 9.
Oops, wrong CD.
Mom pulls out of the parking lot with two hands shuffling through the seat pocket in the opposite seat behind her, a feat Cirque du Soleil, acrobats would envy.
Boys launch French fries.
Sisters squeal.
There is a great unbuckling and swashbuckling.
Mom’s eyes are riveted on the shenanigans in the rear view mirror. She is making demands, thinking of punishments, wondering where she has gone wrong.
The toddler pelts a sippy cup into the front seat then, suddenly hysterical, requests a lovey from the passenger seat. The lovey slips between the cracks and Mom contorts herself to find it, sunglasses rocking from hair to neck obscuring her vision for an instant.
The cell phone rings.
It might be an emergency, Mom figures, so she picks up.
Soccer practice has been moved to another field across town.
Mom speeds up, makes an illegal u-turn, punches the gas.
The SUV lurches forward.
“I spilled my milk!” squeals a defender.
Mom opens the glove compartment—there is nothing worse than the smell of milk rotting on a triple-digit day—and pilfers a half-empty envelope of baby wipes, two crumpled tissues and a receipt from JCPenney to mop up the mess. She catapults it into the third row while making a left turn.
There is a loud discussion over whose turn it is to clean up the mess.
Mom thinks about the breakfast mess and the dinner mess before that and who it was that left a wet swimsuit undiscovered in a plastic bag for a week. She does not remember and is accused of not paying attention.
Singing breaks out.
The song is Lady Gaga.
Mom joins in because she is actually fun, darn it all.
The kids are singing, opening all the windows, waving at construction workers, at dogs whose tongues wag wet, at serious bikers whose Spanx make them giggle.
The toddler chimes in with “Wheels on the Bus.”
She is louder than all the second graders put together.
She throws up French fries and milk.
Mom prays silently that there are no library books on the floor of the car where the splayed vomit now seeps into the car’s carpet.
Mom roars into the soccer field parking lot, pitches the SUV into park and begins the rescue mission, second graders evacuating like fire ants put upon with poison.
I know all this because I am likely the 38-year-old suburban mom behind the wheel.
Watch for my SUV: I am more dangerous than a teenager.

Click on Your Brain

From the Dallas Morning News, Dec. 17, 2011

Paul refused to stand up in the sand. He tipped sideways. Tumbled forward. Fluttered backwards.

My second-graders groused as they tried to prop their homemade paper figures of the Christian missionary atop sloping “islands” — boards we covered with shifting white grain and shells.

There was a great flicking of sand. An “I quit!” Some made pleas for rescue.

Of the dozen or so children who attended my Sunday school class that day, not one — including my own 7-year-old twins — could figure out how to make tiny Paul stand tall.

I eventually provided a strategy — dig Paul a hole and glue him in — and we moved on with our craft. That morning, however, a seed of worry planted itself in my mind.

My Sunday school class is made up of incredibly bright, wonderful children raised gingerly by middle-class, well-educated parents in Flower Mound, Highland Village and Lewisville. They attend some of the premier elementary schools in the Lewisville Independent School District. A few have been deemed so accelerated, they are plucked from their general education classes weekly to take part in LISD’s gifted and talented program.

Yet, when I asked this group of leaders to do critical thinking, they not only failed, they balked at even trying.

So when I received a survey from my neighborhood elementary school a few weeks ago essentially asking if I thought it was a good idea to provide my very young children and their classmates with in-school access to technology — iPads, iPhones, iTouches and the like — to do “research,” a red flag went up.

Simply put, I worry that kids will supplant critical thinking with quick clicking in a day and age in which creative, agile minds are necessary to compete globally.

Already similar concerns are swirling around LISD as the Bring Your Own Technology program is phased into the district’s 42 elementary schools over the next few months.

The initiative, installed in high schools last year, aims to “unleash personal technology” but remains optional so that families don’t feel burdened, said LISD Public Information Officer Karen Permetti. The hope is that teachers will engage students in new and different ways, she said.

“The kids love it,” Permetti said. “They say they learn best with technology … and they want more of it.”

Still, I find the issues ominous — and mind you, I’m not an anti-tech ogre.

My children get a kick out of practicing their numbers on Fast Math, a district-endorsed educational website that drills little ones on basic addition and subtraction. And Poptropica.com, which is used by LISD in part to teach history, helped inspire my son’s Halloween costume of the Greek God Perseus.

But technology offers only one type of learning. It doesn’t require kids engage their physical bodies or spiritual selves. They don’t have to negotiate with others or even interact with them.

Moreover, in my experience, programs designed for the very young place limits on their creativity and dominates playtime.

In fact, controlling technology was such a problem in our house that my husband and I eliminated the use of every type — including television — during the school week. None of my three kids wanted to play a board game, make-believe or even go outside when the option of technology and its instant gratification was available.

I can only imagine teaching a classroom full of small kids with hand-held gadgets: You’d have to be on fire to get their attention.

As a mother, a veteran K-12 education reporter, a liberal arts graduate and a taxpayer, I respectfully suggest that technology is a distraction to the real learning that needs to take place in our schools.

I’ll do my part by pushing my precious Sunday school students to think critically. Because I want Paul — and every single one of my church children — to stand strong on their own two feet.

Rain Gutter Regatta

By William Riekse

On Sunday I went to the rain gutter regatta. Rain gutter regatta is a boat race. But you can only use blowing power to get your boat down the gutter. At first I was scared. But then when I got there I felt a little bit better. My whole cub scout den was there to cheer for me. JD, Hayden, Collin, Jason, Brandon, and Chris were there. First we checked in my boat. My boat was a Texas Rangers boat. Then we played for a little while. Then the cub master told us the rules of rain gutter regatta. He told us to hold a pipe behind your back and hold on to it while you are blowing your boat down the gutter. Then it was time to start. I was up first. I was racing Jason. The guy that told us to start said READY SET GO!! I blew and blew and blew and I was so close to the gutter when I heard a pink! And I saw that my boat had made it to the end of the gutter! I won 2 out of 4 heats! At the end of regatta we got rewards! I got a patch! I want to go to rain gutter regatta next year!

Dude, that's my babysitter

In seven years of hiring babysitters, I've had one of nearly every kind.
There have been grannies and nannies, sweet middle schoolers and lovely co-eds, cheerleaders who are flirts and quirky actresses in maxi-length tie-dye skirts.
They've zoomed through our lives with their foam crafts and finger paints and pop-up books. They've played tag and baked cookies and watched Disney, women and girls who all truly care about the well-being of my brood.
But my new favorite caregiver is all that and more.
At six feet six inches, our new babysitter has a machine gun laugh, a wicked dodge ball serve and biceps bigger than my head.
My new babysitter is a 17-year-old dude.
I first hired Guy as a lifeguard.
He came to Grandma's house in September to monitor the big kids as they swam while the toddlers and their parents played out front.
Turns out, he lead a series of games for three hours then told me he had "the best time!"
Intrigued, I hired Guy again to lead backyard sports with my second-grade Sunday school class.
He was a complete prince, gently keeping the peace while constructively engaging the entire lot.
I was further sold when he suggested his little brother--a guest at the party--enjoy a bottled water instead of slurping up another sugary Capri Sun.
Guy didn't text.
He didn't talk on the phone.
He plans to attend college in the fall and has already shadowed local fireman and paramedics to get a taste of what those careers might be like.
I was downright smitten when I called him last week to offer up another job.
Still, my cultural bias interfered.
"Would you like to, um, come over to practice sports with my twins?" I asked.
I knew the statement was downright ridicious, especially coming from me, a woman so worried about gender constraints that I carefully provided my son with his own lookalike brunette doll and a pink stroller to push it in.
But my decision to tread softly comes with some knowledge of Texas men.
Unlike the guys I know out East and in the Midwest, the cowboys I'm acquainted with down here are happy to be modern guys--so long as you keep that fact quiet. Sure, they'll play with the kids in the cul-de-sac, switch out the laundry then start the dinner--so long as you don't bring up what they're doing. They'll moonily take their girls to a Daddy and Daughter Dance--albeit in their pickups--or sit down for a school conference--while glancing down the hall to see if other men are around.
I met one man at Kroger in Flower Mound who was eagerly reading the label on the back of jar of baby food.
"Ma'am, can you help me with this?" he politely whispered, eyebrows furrowed. "Does the 'organic' part really matter all that much? I want to do what's right."
Many studies claim that Americans have eradicated gender roles--research that includes Texans. They say men and women share the burden of earning income equally. Child care is evenly split. So, too, is the amount of time spent doing chores.
Still, it seems the guys I know down here like to keep a line of manly demarcation. They'll wear the apron--so long as they can keep their dusty boots and a Stetson in the closet.
Like many Texans before them, they want to forge their own path in their own way.
Meanwhile, I'll never know if Guy would have been offended had I used the term "babysitter."
And guess what? I'm not going to ask him anytime soon.
As long as Guy can outlast my kids in a game of baseball then reheat the mac-and-cheese, I'll thankfully call him "Dude."