Digital Father Podcast

Your Kid’s Rotten School Day

Your kids had a bad day today at school. Really. Even worse than yesterday, and as far as education goes, yesterday was a terrible day.

Here’s why YESTERDAY didn’t work out so well:

• If your school allows costumes, most of the day was consumed with those costumes and their care, display, and discomfort.
• If your school did not allow costumes, the day was filled with discussions of costumes (all) and complaints about the prohibition of costumes (older children).

Whether or not costumes were involved, there was almost certainly a celebration of some type. In many schools, it was a Harvest Celebration. I applaud the more meaningful instructional component of this event. However, it still includes big piles of orange and black candy/ pastry/ decorations.

As for today, it’s a different issue. You see, while Halloween is a one day aberration, the week prior to Halloween often involves revving up and preparing. As such, the teachers want to get back to the real work of teaching. This is a great and noble aim, and I applaud all teachers for this goal.

Your children were woefully unprepared for this task today.

You see, they most likely ate poorly yesterday, if they ate any real food besides candy. They were revved up and over excited for the better part of the day. This is surely going to have a consequent fatigue period afterwards. Many of them were up later than normal last night while they tricked and treated about the neighborhood. These factors, further complicated by what may be a less than healthy snack and lunch today (”Mom, can I take a piece of my candy today?”) created today what may have been the perfect storm of inattention and distraction today in their classrooms.

It’s OK. Really. We expect it. We tried to plan around it, and the teachers always have a Plan B for the moment where their students are certain to fade out. I had one. I broke out the drums. They always find the energy for drums.

I just thought you ought to know.

(BTW- I talked in my most recent Digital Father Podcast about the whole sugar rush idea and whether it truly exists.)

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