Tamar and Rochel are both planning an evening out. They are going to the same place, meeting the same person, and spending the same amount of time there. Tamar is looking forward to the event, and Rochel is dreading it. How could the same event bring such different reactions? The answer, of course, is they are going to a PTA meeting. Tamar knows that her child is doing well in school and looks forward to getting a “nachas report.” Rochel is not looking forward to hearing about all the trouble her child is having.

PTA meetings are a longstanding ritual for parents of school-age children – at least they were in my day. Now, though the ritual is the same, the more up-to-date term seems to be PTC, for parent-teacher conferences. Whatever…

Since I enjoy talking to people and collecting their experiences, I thought it would be interesting to survey some parents, as well as children, for their thoughts. It can be difficult to reach people, however, so imagine my joy when I found myself in the JCC locker room with representatives of three schools. I had a great conversation opener and soon found that they had definite opinions about PTA meetings.

The overwhelming majority of the children in our community go to school; it is an expected part of life. But Baltimore also has a strong contingent of homeschoolers. A large part of the homeschooling community transfers to regular school for high school, so I thought it would be interesting to hear about that transition from the perspective of some former homeschoolers. This article is about three girls who are all now attending traditional schools.

Naami

Naami* just started going to school this year. As more of her homeschooling friends have started to go to school she wanted to go too, and her main reason is for the social life. Here are her words comparing regular school to homeschool:

“In school, you follow a curriculum, and there is a lot of pressure to stay at the same pace as your classmates. Homeschool lets you go at your own pace and learn pretty much whatever you want.

“There are many, many more social opportunities in school, as opposed to homeschool, where you have a small social life. With school, you get home late, and you also must study a lot. I sometimes feel like I don’t have enough time to myself, and I really wish the school day was a little shorter. In homeschool, I never had to study, but I still learned.”

When Naami was asked if she would homeschool her own children, she answered, “I personally don’t feel like I had the best experience homeschooling, but that was really toward the end, after my siblings and friends started going to school. I think it’s important to consider this if you are planning on homeschooling. Your child will probably have a much better experience if she/he is homeschooled with siblings or other children. I don’t think I will homeschool my own children, because I want them to have the experience I didn’t have. However, it depends very much on the needs of the child.”

Summer is over, but the memories are still fresh. As a grandmother of several campers, I have a sort of panoramic view of the contemporary camp landscape – a landscape that has changed quite a bit since we, or even our children, went to camp in the 1960s through the early 2000s. Some of my grandchildren ran their own camps, some worked with special needs children, some were regular campers, and one traveled to an exotic location. I will use pseudonyms so as not to embarrass my grandchildren. After all, it is quite a burden to have a grandmother who thinks every experience of theirs is an idea for an article!

Waitressing

Sora spent her summer in Migdal, a camp for special needs children. I remember from my teenage years that it was considered a privilege to go to a camp like that and work directly with children who are sick or who have special needs. I was curious what the draw is to be spending your summer doing this special work.

One morning, more than 30 years ago, when my baby was only four days old, a friend drove my carpool. She got into an accident on the corner of Taney and Cross Country, and all the occupants of the car were taken to the hospital. I rushed to the emergency room to be with my children. My father also came. B”H, no one was badly hurt, and my strongest memory of that whole event was how worried my father was that I was walking around. He remembered how new mothers were treated when he was growing up in England and was sure that a woman who had just given birth should not be walking around. I felt fine, but he urged me to go home.

Different Times

I asked Mrs. S, an elderly lady whom I used to visit, about childbirth in pre-war Czechoslovakia, where she grew up. “We children were very excited when we saw the midwife running through the street with her black bag; we knew that a new baby was coming. As a teenager, I was sent to a few of my aunts when they gave birth. Mothers were not allowed to get off the bed at all for two weeks, so I ran the house during that time. In fact, once, when two aunts were due at the same time, they fought over me since I was considered more helpful than their other nieces.”

Was there such a thing as postpartum depression? I asked her. Mrs. S. replied, “One of my aunts had a few girls and desperately wanted a boy. Wouldn’t you know: She gave birth to another girl. She didn’t want to look at the baby or nurse her. Maybe it was her hormones, although we didn’t know anything about that in those days. The father didn’t know what to do with his wife, so I said, ‘I’ll take her home with me.’ I was ready to do it, too, and named her after myself. It didn’t happen because, fortunately, by the time I left, the mother had recovered and decided to keep her little baby.”

Everyone who has children worries about chinuch (education). From the time a baby is born – and does nothing but sleep, eat, and cry – parents worry: Will the baby become spoiled if I pick him up the minute he cries? If I let her cry, am I teaching her that I don’t care? As the child grows older, the dilemmas just multiply, and of course, when he or she goes to school, chinuch becomes the teacher’s problem, too.

Are the children of our generation different from children 50 years ago? Probably. Each generation of children is affected by the surrounding society – as are parents and teachers. While we like to imagine that they used to just “know” how raise and educate children, whereas we have lost our way, maybe we are idealizing the past, and our confusion stems from today’s different social realities. Or maybe we are merely more aware of the complexity of the task. To get some insight on this very important topic, I surveyed parents, teachers, administrators, authors, and parenting instructors.

Today’s Children

Getting married? Weddings are a big deal, and most people have lots of questions beginning from the time of engagement through the day of the wedding. I sent some questions to local vendors to get tips on how to help the big event run smoothly and be less stressful. I also asked what the common norms are. As a friend told me, “I just want to be normal.” But when it comes to marrying off children, one doesn’t always know what normal is. I spoke to some of our advertisers, and here’s what they had to say. Hopefully these ideas will help.