Banty wrote:

In article , Rosalie B. says...

I have never been able to get over the outrage that was expressed when
I asked the kids to have a ruler with metric marks on it (in addition
to inches). I don't really understand why that was such a problem for
them. That was the only thing I asked for that wasn't a team
requirement. They acted like it took their mortgage payment or
something. And yet, they were OK with being required by the school to
buy a gym uniform from the school that cost $14.00

I also asked the kids to make a weather instrument and gave them
directions for various things that could be made from ordinary
household items. (This was 6th grade). One of the items was a rain
gauge, which in simplest form is some kind of container like a tin can
with straight sides, and a ruler or some markings on the side.

There were more complicated things (the choice was up to them) like
an anemometer which required a milk carton and some other items. One
mother was highly indignant because the pointer on this instrument was
made out of a "broom straw", and she "had to" go out and buy a broom
to get a broom straw and also she "had to" buy milk in a different
size carton than she usually got. I mean really!! She could have
used a toothpick or gotten a straw from a brush or any similar object.
Or she could have told him she didn't have those things, and to make
something else.

Well, those kind of complaints are pretty familliar to me as being on the Cub
Scout committee it seems every little item or the yearly fee or fee for campling
trip was objected to as something that will break the families' banks even
though every effort was made to do things on the cheap. But, in the end, the
five or ten dollars, or fourty dollar yearly fee would come in.

Where I *did* have complaints and had sympathy with other parents' complaints
was the short lead times that schools and activities like Scouts sometimes give
parents. If a child comes home even as far ahead as a Monday night with a
homework project due Friday that calls for a different size milk carton than
usually bought in that household, that can mean an extra grocery trip which
impacts the household evenings where meals have to be served, activities have to
be attended, bedtimes observed, etc. etc. There seemed to be an assumption of
an SAH parent who can run errands any given day.

The weather instrument was a quarterly project. If the parent didn't
know about it until the weekend before, it was because the child
procrastinated or didn't tell them.

I had a project each quarter. Really simple things like keep a
notebook of observations over several weeks - write a few sentences
about what you see a couple of times each week. Things like a leaf
collection. This was to teach them about longer term projects. The
weather instruments were a winter project after they'd had the fall
project done (the notebook of observations) and the parents knew or
should have known that the child had said project.

I didn't give any other homework other than the quarterly project. The
math teacher gave homework, the English teacher gave homework. The
social studies teacher and I didn't generally give homework. I sent
the parameters home at the beginning of school and each quarter.
As for the rulers, parents said that they couldn't find them,
specifically in the drugstore. But it wasn't as if I needed them the
absolute first week of school or would have shamed the child or
something for not having one.

Personally, I wouldn't try to have absolutely everything that the
child needed before the first day of school. Just give them the
basics and wait a week or two to get the more exotic things.

This is one reason why I took up the Cub Scout newsletter - to get all the
information out at least 10 days ahead of the Pack Night meetings, and *all* the
information out (as a Tiger mom new to Scouts I was told "but everyone already
knows that because we do it that way every year ..").

So consider if sometimes the problem is more in the timing of the requirements
than the actual dollar costs.

Banty