Awful Halloween costumes

In article , Splanche says...

I hear similar reasons for parents liking dress codes --
so they don't have to argue with their kids over what
to wear to school. Well, who is buying their kids clothes
that are inappropriate to wear to school in the 1st place?

In my experience, it's not a matter of inappropriateness, it's a matter of
decision making.... my DD is 9yrs old, and I still lay out clothes for her.
Otherwise she takes forever getting dressed in the morning because she feels
the need to try on twelve different things. She also doesn't check the weather
like I do, and she has a habit of pulling out short-sleeved shirts on days
where the high temp is 45F.


I think that's unusual for a nine year old. Maybe you can start teaching her
some outfit basics and give her a weather report the night before, and have her
lay out clothes and you check for appropriateness before she goes to to bed.
Solves all that.

But this theme of parents wanting to have the school environment nicely line up
with their particular codes and needs such that they don't have to apply
fortitude at home reminds me of another issue that came up in my district.

This didn't fly this year because the efforts started much too late (which to me
tips off just how clueful the proponents of this idea are..), but there is a
movement of some parents that the school and town (for intramurals, team sport
stuff, etc.) all observe a Tuesday Family Evening. The schools are to arrange
no homework, no team sports would be scheduled, scouts and other common youth
activities would re-schedule Tuesday meetings to another day. So that families
can have one day of the week without homework and other activities to spend time
together as a family.

My take on it is that, from a practical standpoint, it would only clutter up
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays all the more with many of these activities
because already they are not scheduled over weekends (team sports seem to have a
carte blanche concerning timing and days to meet.) Homework is seldom given
over weekends already due to parental pressures, scouts also stays away from
weekends except for specific activities. The other problem is - what of shift
workers and others who cannot schedule a free Tuesday evening for the parents to
start with? Not only would it not work out for a Family Evening for them, but
it would become all the harder to do family stuff on the evenings they *are*
home.

I could manage with this if it happened, although it would impact our other
weekday evenings in a bad way. But the main rub I have with it is that, with
fortitude, a family if they so desire can arrange a Tuesday Family Evening now!
By not doing clubs that meet Tuesdays or finidng alternatives, shifting whatever
homework they can off Tuesday and getting the rest done by dinner, and letting
certain consuming commitments like youth baseball coaches, know that Tuesdays
are off days for their children. Or finding another team. Or just not doing
it. Or perhaps Wednesday works better one year - make it a Wednesday Family
Evening.
And making it a family priority, standing up to the kids, the coaches, whoever
else and applying a little courage and committment toarranging their particular
Family Evening. And not bending everyone else's life around.

But noooooo. It's soo much easier if everybody just did the same thing, because
it may suit a certain perponderance of families.

Banty

Banty wrote:
In article , Splanche says...

I hear similar reasons for parents liking dress codes --
so they don't have to argue with their kids over what
to wear to school. Well, who is buying their kids clothes
that are inappropriate to wear to school in the 1st place?

In my experience, it's not a matter of inappropriateness, it's a matter of
decision making.... my DD is 9yrs old, and I still lay out clothes for her.
Otherwise she takes forever getting dressed in the morning because she feels
the need to try on twelve different things. She also doesn't check the weather
like I do, and she has a habit of pulling out short-sleeved shirts on days
where the high temp is 45F.



I think that's unusual for a nine year old. Maybe you can start teaching her
some outfit basics and give her a weather report the night before, and have her
lay out clothes and you check for appropriateness before she goes to to bed.
Solves all that.

I don't think it's unusual for a girl to try on many different
outfits in the morning. I think it's unusual for a parent to
be directly supervising in the process still at age 9. It was
very nice for me to tell DD to go get dressed for school, and
she did without any input from me or the BH. Occasionally, she'll
choose something that's not quite right for school, and she'll
change. Grudgingly. [I expect it to become progressively more
grudgingly in the next couple years ]
If your child chooses to wear something
that doesn't match the weather, I say let them and let them
learn about the consequences of the choice. Maybe it won't
bother them. (My DD has boiling water in her veins, it seems)
The exception being dangerous wind chills, in which case DD and
DS have to cover up as much skin as possible, but they treat
that as a game.
Anyway, if DD was taking a long time to choose, I'd
just send her to get changed earlier and earlier. I'm always
up before they are anyway.

Scott, DD 10 and DS 7.5

In article , Scott Lindstrom says...


I don't think it's unusual for a girl to try on many different
outfits in the morning. I think it's unusual for a parent to
be directly supervising in the process still at age 9. It was
very nice for me to tell DD to go get dressed for school, and
she did without any input from me or the BH. Occasionally, she'll
choose something that's not quite right for school, and she'll
change. Grudgingly. [I expect it to become progressively more
grudgingly in the next couple years ]
If your child chooses to wear something
that doesn't match the weather, I say let them and let them
learn about the consequences of the choice. Maybe it won't
bother them. (My DD has boiling water in her veins, it seems)

My son, too. Sometime's he's clueless about what he'll face, like when I forced
him to bring a polartrec hoodie to a Scout weeklong canoe trip in the
Adirondacks, and he admitted that once the sun went down, he practically lived
in it.

But for him a 45 degrees high for an ordinary school day would maybe have him
thinking about long pants, let alone wanting a warm shirt. He really *is* too
hot otherwise.

Banty

Banty writes:
It's not that I have a 'desire to have an ultra-violent Halloween' -
it's that, since costume preparation is a time-consuming and sometimes
costly thing, to pretty much require that kids have one for the school
venue, with stated thematic limitations, impacts what the home
celebration would be, which may or may not beholden to those
limitations. I'm rather for unencumbered choices, rather than any
specific one.

So, if the school has to accomodate parents like you and limit the
kinds of getups the kids can wear, I'd much rather the school just
stay out of it and not get in the way of whatever folks want to do
outside school.

Sure. You've explained that that's what you want. But there are many
more parents and children who want the costume party, so their
preferences outweigh yours.

David desJardins

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , Splanche
says...

I hear similar reasons for parents liking dress codes --
so they don't have to argue with their kids over what
to wear to school. Well, who is buying their kids clothes
that are inappropriate to wear to school in the 1st place?

In my experience, it's not a matter of inappropriateness, it's a matter
of
decision making.... my DD is 9yrs old, and I still lay out clothes for
her.
Otherwise she takes forever getting dressed in the morning because she
feels
the need to try on twelve different things. She also doesn't check the
weather
like I do, and she has a habit of pulling out short-sleeved shirts on
days
where the high temp is 45F.


I think that's unusual for a nine year old. Maybe you can start teaching
her
some outfit basics and give her a weather report the night before, and
have her
lay out clothes and you check for appropriateness before she goes to to
bed.
Solves all that.

But this theme of parents wanting to have the school environment nicely
line up
with their particular codes and needs such that they don't have to apply
fortitude at home reminds me of another issue that came up in my district.

This didn't fly this year because the efforts started much too late (which
to me
tips off just how clueful the proponents of this idea are..), but there is
a
movement of some parents that the school and town (for intramurals, team
sport
stuff, etc.) all observe a Tuesday Family Evening. The schools are to
arrange
no homework, no team sports would be scheduled, scouts and other common
youth
activities would re-schedule Tuesday meetings to another day. So that
families
can have one day of the week without homework and other activities to
spend time
together as a family.

My take on it is that, from a practical standpoint, it would only clutter
up
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays all the more with many of these
activities
because already they are not scheduled over weekends (team sports seem to
have a
carte blanche concerning timing and days to meet.) Homework is seldom
given
over weekends already due to parental pressures, scouts also stays away
from
weekends except for specific activities. The other problem is - what of
shift
workers and others who cannot schedule a free Tuesday evening for the
parents to
start with? Not only would it not work out for a Family Evening for them,
but
it would become all the harder to do family stuff on the evenings they
*are*
home.

I could manage with this if it happened, although it would impact our
other
weekday evenings in a bad way. But the main rub I have with it is that,
with
fortitude, a family if they so desire can arrange a Tuesday Family Evening
now!
By not doing clubs that meet Tuesdays or finidng alternatives, shifting
whatever
homework they can off Tuesday and getting the rest done by dinner, and
letting
certain consuming commitments like youth baseball coaches, know that
Tuesdays
are off days for their children. Or finding another team. Or just not
doing
it. Or perhaps Wednesday works better one year - make it a Wednesday
Family
Evening.
And making it a family priority, standing up to the kids, the coaches,
whoever
else and applying a little courage and committment toarranging their
particular
Family Evening. And not bending everyone else's life around.

But noooooo. It's soo much easier if everybody just did the same thing,
because
it may suit a certain perponderance of families.

We're already told to minimize homework on Wednesday because of church
activities, so I guess there already is a family night here. I don't know
how it works at the high school level, but at the elementary level, homework
is either weekly anyway (like having a set spelling list every week), or it
is completing work not finished in class, and tends to be minimal
regardless.

What I do in ensemble music courses is to require a set minimum amount of
practice (120 minutes a week for first year, or 20 minutes a night, 6 nights
a week), but to tell the children they can break it up any way they wish-so
if they have church on Wednesday nights, they might practice 10 minutes
extra on Tuesday and Thursday. Usually it takes only one week where they try
to cram a whole week's practice into one night to get the message across. (I
encourage parents to make practicing the child's job-and I don't require
parents to sign practice cards-it's pretty obvious who has and hasn't
practiced, and in general they do a pretty good job of keeping the logs up
to date).


Banty

In article , David desJardins says...

Banty writes:
It's not that I have a 'desire to have an ultra-violent Halloween' -
it's that, since costume preparation is a time-consuming and sometimes
costly thing, to pretty much require that kids have one for the school
venue, with stated thematic limitations, impacts what the home
celebration would be, which may or may not beholden to those
limitations. I'm rather for unencumbered choices, rather than any
specific one.

So, if the school has to accomodate parents like you and limit the
kinds of getups the kids can wear, I'd much rather the school just
stay out of it and not get in the way of whatever folks want to do
outside school.

Sure. You've explained that that's what you want. But there are many
more parents and children who want the costume party, so their
preferences outweigh yours.

Are you sure? There are many holiday parties and events which occur only
because the perception is that it's expected. (That goes for a lot of things,
we combed through the Cub Scout calendar when my son was involved to find that
some of the events were done only because they've been done for skeighty-eight
years, nobody would miss them, and the calendar was freer than we at first
thought to do *other* good stuff.) A poll of the parents may surprise you as to
how many are relieved not to have it, or are at least neutral, in which case why
make the expenditures in time and resources?

There also is always the option that, since after all it *is* a Halloween party,
those with reservations concerning some aspects of that holiday keep their kids
at home or arrange other activities. Rather than imposing on the celebration.

But IMO there's no reason to impose on instructional time to begin with.

Banty

x-no-archive:yes
Scott Lindstrom wrote:

Banty wrote:
In article , Splanche says...

I hear similar reasons for parents liking dress codes --
so they don't have to argue with their kids over what
to wear to school. snip

In my experience, it's not a matter of inappropriateness, it's a matter of
decision making.... my DD is 9yrs old, and I still lay out clothes for her.
Otherwise she takes forever getting dressed in the morning because she feels
the need to try on twelve different things. She also doesn't check the weather
like I do, and she has a habit of pulling out short-sleeved shirts on days
where the high temp is 45F.

I think that's unusual for a nine year old. Maybe you can start teaching her
some outfit basics and give her a weather report the night before, and have her
lay out clothes and you check for appropriateness before she goes to to bed.
Solves all that.

I don't think it's unusual for a girl to try on many different
outfits in the morning. I think it's unusual for a parent to
be directly supervising in the process still at age 9. It was

My sister would do this when she was in the 7th grade even (about 11
years old) - try on 4 or 5 outfits and discard them and come
downstairs completely mismatched and have to be sent up to change.
The problem was she never put her clothes back after she tried them on
- our mom had to go up and rehang them up for her.

She's still like that (i.e. indecisive about what to wear and also
what to buy). She had to get a personal shopper to advise her for her
son's wedding, and when her oldest daughter (my niece) got married the
older girl sent her younger sister to vet out what my sister was
wearing for MOB.

Some people are just like that.

very nice for me to tell DD to go get dressed for school, and
she did without any input from me or the BH. Occasionally, she'll
choose something that's not quite right for school, and she'll
change. Grudgingly. [I expect it to become progressively more
grudgingly in the next couple years ]

If your child chooses to wear something
that doesn't match the weather, I say let them and let them
learn about the consequences of the choice. Maybe it won't
bother them. (My DD has boiling water in her veins, it seems)
The exception being dangerous wind chills, in which case DD and
DS have to cover up as much skin as possible, but they treat
that as a game.

I would agree with that - as long as they have a jacket or something
to wear if it gets cold, I'd say short sleeves ds long sleeves isn't a
big deal.

Anyway, if DD was taking a long time to choose, I'd
just send her to get changed earlier and earlier. I'm always
up before they are anyway.

Have you never heard the axiom that work expands to fill the time
available?

grandma Rosalie

Banty wrote in :

[snip]
This didn't fly this year because the efforts started much too late (which
to me tips off just how clueful the proponents of this idea are..), but
there is a movement of some parents that the school and town (for
intramurals, team sport
stuff, etc.) all observe a Tuesday Family Evening. The schools are to
arrange no homework, no team sports would be scheduled, scouts and other
common youth
activities would re-schedule Tuesday meetings to another day. So that
families can have one day of the week without homework and other
activities to spend time together as a family.

Let me guess: they chose Tuesday after polling all the families who would
be affected, compared all the conflicting needs, and concluded that
Tuesday evening would have the least detrimental effect on all the families.
When I say "all", I of course mean the five families who came up with this
idea, not the other 550 families in your town, or any of the leaders of the
youth groups.

Let me predict: in a year or two, the school or social club would
start organising "family fun evenings" on Tuesdays. They might be discos
or games evenings, so that everyone can socialise together, without worrying
that the activities clash with homework or sports activities. Oh, and
whatever is arranged will assume that the child has two parents and one
sibling.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:44:12 EST, Banty
wrote:

But this theme of parents wanting to have the school environment nicely line up
with their particular codes and needs such that they don't have to apply
fortitude at home reminds me of another issue that came up in my district.

This didn't fly this year because the efforts started much too late (which to me
tips off just how clueful the proponents of this idea are..), but there is a
movement of some parents that the school and town (for intramurals, team sport
stuff, etc.) all observe a Tuesday Family Evening. The schools are to arrange
no homework, no team sports would be scheduled, scouts and other common youth
activities would re-schedule Tuesday meetings to another day. So that families
can have one day of the week without homework and other activities to spend time
together as a family.

My take on it is that, from a practical standpoint, it would only clutter up
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays all the more with many of these activities
because already they are not scheduled over weekends (team sports seem to have a
carte blanche concerning timing and days to meet.) Homework is seldom given
over weekends already due to parental pressures, scouts also stays away from
weekends except for specific activities. The other problem is - what of shift
workers and others who cannot schedule a free Tuesday evening for the parents to
start with? Not only would it not work out for a Family Evening for them, but
it would become all the harder to do family stuff on the evenings they *are*
home.

I could manage with this if it happened, although it would impact our other
weekday evenings in a bad way. But the main rub I have with it is that, with
fortitude, a family if they so desire can arrange a Tuesday Family Evening now!
By not doing clubs that meet Tuesdays or finidng alternatives, shifting whatever
homework they can off Tuesday and getting the rest done by dinner, and letting
certain consuming commitments like youth baseball coaches, know that Tuesdays
are off days for their children. Or finding another team. Or just not doing
it. Or perhaps Wednesday works better one year - make it a Wednesday Family
Evening.
And making it a family priority, standing up to the kids, the coaches, whoever
else and applying a little courage and committment toarranging their particular
Family Evening. And not bending everyone else's life around.

But noooooo. It's soo much easier if everybody just did the same thing, because
it may suit a certain perponderance of families.

When I was in high school, our school was supposed to keep Wednesday
nights free for the same purpose. What really happened, though, is
that local churches used that night for confirmation classes, so it
wasn't really a "family" night, it was a "church" night. Also, I
think most teachers blew it off...I don't remember receiving any less
homework on Wednesday nights than I did any other night of the week.
However, when it came to scheduling meetings for school clubs,
Wednesday nights were verboten. I was on the school paper, and the
only time we could find to meet was before school at 6 am...we had
decided upon Wednesday evening (we must not have been a big
churchgoing bunch) until our adviser remided us of the rule. So, it
was the wee hours of the morning for us due to the local church lobby.
--
Tamex

No matter how much Jell-o you put in the pool, you still can't walk on water.

**remove Tricky Dick to reply by e-mail**

Banty writes:
But there are many more parents and children who want the costume
party, so their preferences outweigh yours.

Are you sure? There are many holiday parties and events which occur
only because the perception is that it's expected.
....
But IMO there's no reason to impose on instructional time to begin with.

No, I'm not sure. I think the large majority of parents like this sort
of school activity, but I could be wrong. (Are there a lot of parents
reading this thread who would rather not have Halloween parties in school?)

I certainly don't think children need even more "instructional time".
My feeling is that the school year is way too long, has too many hours
in it, and constrains families too much (since we can't really pick and
choose which days to send our kids to school). But I'd be pretty
pleased if the schools would focus more on instruction, have shorter
hours and fewer days as a result (with the same amount of instruction),
and leave more time for families to do things other than school. (Which
would often be at least as "educational" as school, at least in my
family, although perhaps not in most families.)

So I'd certainly be glad to get things like Halloween parties out of
schools, although perhaps not for the same reasons as you. But I still
think we are both in the minority, and a pretty slim minority at that.

David desJardins