Just a Guy

There is something that has been bothering me for a while now. I have one child in the public school system here in Chico and it seems now they are getting weeks off for no apparent reason. OK so well there is a reason. They think kids need more of a break. However they seem to be oblivious to the fact that many house holds do not have a parent at home. So every time they give the kids a week off we have parents that are scrambling to find care for their kids while the parents have to work.

This usually ends up with the parents calling family and friends or shelling out big cash to have their kid in a program or daycare. If they can't find anything then they have to take time off work. There really are not that many employers that are sympathetic to this nor should they be. Your kid is your responsibility not theirs. You made a commitment to your employer to be at work and in return they give you money. This comes from a parent of 2 kids. The schools job is to educate our children. If our kids need this break then why not make the school year shorter. Of course then we as parents still need to have the summer taken care of but at least then it is something consistent that we can plan for.

I already can hear "they give out a schedule at the beginning of the year" and really if that is all you have then wake up and join the discussion. Yes I am a little hot on this issue and have taken the tongue out of the cheek. If you need this reference explained, please do us all a favor and stay indoors.

Normally I try to leave emotion out of my posts but this is one that really gets under my skin. I would file this under rant. That means that I am in no way trying to present a rational or intelligent argument. It means that I am venting and I am not really concerned about offending anyone. Actually with my mood this morning the more offended you are the happier I will be. We all have those days from time to time. This is one of those days. I am angry about a great many things that are going on in our country and this topic just happened to be the straw that broke the camels back. As always I invite your comments as I believe that blogging is not a spectators sport. It is a participatory event.

Now back to the kids. I love my kids. But my kids can drive me crazy faster than any one. It's because they know you won't actually follow through on some of the threats we as parents throw out there. Our kids know how to push our buttons and when you take them out of their structured environment and give them free time and then give them paranoid parents that will not let them do all the stuff we did as kids because we have seen too many horrific news reports about child predators. If I had a week off as a kid and one of my parents were at home, they would not have seen much of me anyway. I would leave the house at 9 or 10am and be gone all day until near dark. I grew up on Heather Circle just off 5th Avenue and Mangrove. My play area went from Hooker Oak Elementary to Lindo Channel. I had from Sheridan to Mangrove. I had a big space to go play and have fun. I had a big area to find new and different ways to nearly kill myself on a daily basis doing something stupid like kids do. Now we are so protective of our children that we are stealing their childhood away. I realize I have gone another route but hey this is how my brain works. Even though I am aware of this I still have same fears as the rest of you. Somewhere along the way we as parents forgot the freedom we had when we were young and replaced those memories with our fear. Every so often when we get together with other parents we talk about those memories but the conversation always ends the same. Even when I am out and about and see some kids doing the same things I did as a kid I always think "do their parents know where they are?"

So now back to the week off. Yesterday I had dinner with my girlfriends family. One of her Uncles is a teacher. His statement was that the kids are still in for 185 days and he gets paid for 185 days regardless of how they split it up and he likes having the time off. That may or may not be a typical answer for a teacher. I don't know, I have not talked to enough teachers. Let's say for the sake of argument that it is the typical response. Then here is my answer. Hey moron your job is teaching kids and you get the summer off. Why in the blue hell do need any more time off. The rest of us that are not teachers get little to no time off and we work 52 weeks a year. If we are lucky we get the occasional holiday off. Try stepping into the real for a while and then maybe you will understand what this puts us through. I am a little over the top on this and that is on purpose. Some times going over the top is the only to get any ones attention. Normally I like to take a calmer and more intelligent approach but some times it just feels good to let go and rant like a mad man and damn the consequences. To sum I can end my argument in one simple statement. Life is not fair and if you expect anything different, you are only setting yourself up for disappointment.