By Annie

​It’s because of lunch bags. I know, sounds irrational, right? But hear me out.

Elementary school is hard on parents, especially full-time working parents with long commutes who have multiple school-aged kids involved in all the activities. I’m not talking about missing out on Muffins with Mom or having to leave work early in a shame spiral every other week for this, that and the other. No, mamas, I’m talking about all the papers. The forms, the permission slips, the reading logs, the spelling sheets, the rocket math, the sign-ups for Duck Hatching Party donations, the request for rocks the size of a 7-year-old’s fist, the early dismissal reminders and the summer camp info. The slow build of crinkled corners and friendly fonts that has been filling my recycling bin and eating my soul since August. 

As some sort of twisted mind fuck of a finale, my son came home last week with a schedule of “fun activities” planned for the last two weeks of school, all of which require special clothing and/or items each day. Camp day – bring a flashlight! Movie day – wear pajamas! Etcetera ad nauseam. But, the straw that broke this grouchy mama’s back is the oh-so-specific direction we received regarding today’s field trip:

Please understand that (1) I love and respect teachers, (2) I’m so thankful my son’s teachers are making the final weeks of first grade feel special and (3) I’m sure it’s annoying AF to be on a wagon trail with 60 first graders and have brown bags just disintegrating before your eyes because of poor planning.

BUT.

Surely… surely the paper bag can just be eliminated. If the brown bag/sweaty drink is the issue here, why aren’t we just eliminating the brown bag? Why do I have to put a bag inside of a bag? Why is a PB&J and a banana a double bag situation?

I just can’t, mamas. And yet, I did. Please help. Will someone else homeschool my kids for me? 

By Annie

Ahh, spring is in the air! Warmer weather, ballet flats, early panic about summer childcare and, oh yeah, the school’s spring fundraiser. Our school switched this year to a king-size candy bar sale. Maybe you're thinking, wow, that's even bigger fun for you and family this spring! If you are thinking that, I can pretty much guarantee you're not a parent – because this is the worst fundraiser I've ever been a part of. Here's why: 

1. King-size gas station candy is disgusting. Do you know what’s in a king-size package of Reese’s cups? 407 calories, 37.26 grams of sugar and 24.12 grams of fat, that’s what. We have a child obesity epidemic in this country, and rather than having a wellness-based fundraiser like, say, a walk-a-thon (where the school profits on almost 100% of the donations), we are filling our cupboards with enough chocolate to break a young, healthy pancreas. And it’s not even good chocolate! The school used to sell human-portioned chocolate bars from a small, family-owned company where you at least felt good about supporting a local business and purchasing something with a high-quality, small batch message. But this? If I can buy it at Sheetz, I don’t want to buy it from a second-grader.

2. The school only makes half the profit and parents have to hound acquaintances to buy overpriced shit they don’t need or want. I know you have to spend money to make money, and I’m sure product sales offer a quick-turn opportunity for schools to make a decent amount of money in a short period of time (uh... three weeks for us with little advance notice that this big spending was coming right before a major holiday) with very little effort. But it sure is putting a lot of effort and expense on the parents (many of whom, mind you, have multiple kids and are in a public school system to begin with because they can’t afford a lot of out-of-pocket school expenses.) In most product-based fundraisers, the school only makes $0.55 – $0.65 to the dollar… you can certainly see how it leaves many parents thinking, “Can I just pay the school $30 instead of buying $60 worth of chocolate?” 

Oh, and at $2 a bar, gargantuan gas station candy bars that represent a quarter of your daily calorie intake aren’t so easy to push off on coworkers in today’s corporate offices where employees are more interested in Fitbit challenges and paleo recipe swaps than they are in increasing their risk of heart disease.  

By Annie

Problem: Husband has a super early meeting and is long gone, Kid 1 is in the nasty throes of hormonal tweenhood, Kid 2 is down for the count with a double ear infection and a violent stomach bug, and Kid 3 is tired.

Plus, you’ve bought yourself 10 minutes to transform into a savvy marketing boss. Just hold off on treating yourself to a cupcake… blue tongues go over better in preschool than they do in pitch meetings. 

By Annie 

OK, OK, I get it. The 100th Day of School celebration is a marvelous idea from a pedagogical standpoint. It’s a timely opportunity for cross-curriculum learning centered on a common theme that allows for reflection, creativity and all the math. I was totally on board last year when Henry was in kindergarten, if a little confused by this relatively newfangled milestone. Admittedly, Henry was only partially on board:

But let me tell you, mamas, my enthusiasm was partly due to the fact that I assumed this 100 Day extravaganza was just a kindergarten thing. Imagine my shock and horror when the 100 Day papers started coming home in the almighty folder last week. And the first grade teachers? They are upping the game. Now we have to make a project (entirely at home in our free time) that uses 100 of any object AND the kids are supposed to dress up like they are 100 years old, which surely makes for some totes adorabs social media posts but is truly about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. What does a 100 year old look like? Wear? And how does that translate into actual clothing and accessories my 7-year-old boy can don for a day? Especially when I shoot down his request for a pipe? And is there something at best reductive and at worst ageist and offensive about this whole concept? Welp. Now in addition to the 3,117 things I need to accomplish in any given week as a parent of three school-age children and who also has a full-time job an hour away in the middle of a winter, I get to figure this out.

Fortunately, Henry is two steps ahead of me.

“Aren’t most people dead by the time they’re 100?” he asks, after the pipe idea is nixed.

“Yes,” I say, and his eyes light up with that mischievous glint that melts my cold heart every time.

“Can I go as a zombie then?”

We already have a zombie costume from Halloween. My heart flutters. I will try to say no… but, mamas? I can’t be 100 percent certain that I will.  

By Annie

​In hindsight, it was a simple request. 

Each child needs to bring a peeled, cubed apple to make applesauce in class. 

Certainly not one that should have resulted in me, quite literally, with my face buried in the kitchen counter, cheerful note clutched in my cold, shaking hands. I was caught in that thorny pause, you know, the one when you’re deciding if you’re going to collapse into tears of defeat or kick it into full-on rage-bitch mode. 

Peeled and cubed! I uttered under why breath, when my husband gingerly approached me, no doubt wondering if this was the moment everyone who knows me has been suspecting all along, the moment I actually have a psychotic break. Because all the school papers. 

PEELED AND CUBED! I holler, rage-bitch emerging. My husband listened sympathetically while I ranted, but… I knew. I knew the apple request was not obscene. This wasn’t a mental split. It was just a Wednesday. 

It was a simple request, really, well within reason of the first grade teachers. Only… it was two days before said apple – peeled and cubed – was due, and I didn’t have any apples. Not even a shriveled yellow one that had been kicking around the fridge for a couple weeks. We were completely apple-less. Procuring an apple – peeled and cubed – would require a trip to the grocery store, the nearest of which is 15 minutes away, and it was already a full 20 minutes past bedtime, and the following day was, as it always is with two full-time working parents with hour commutes and three school-aged kids, jam-packed.  

(And yes, that’s right, I said didn’t have an apple. Go ahead and judge me, assholes. I tried telling my tween just yesterday that apples are like “nature’s candy” and, let’s just say, it wasn’t well received. Unless, maybe you like profanity from 11-year-olds.) 

By Annie

Dear Ms. Hayes,

Your latest post for POPSUGAR caught my eye. Not because it hit on some hot button parenting issue that's close to my heart, but because the topic just seemed so absurd. Surely, I thought, there must be more to this than meets the eye. So, I clicked. I read. And I marveled that  A. someone published this and B. you really do seem this bent out of shape over the fact that moms are referring to their kids as… kids. 

Der… huh?

Yep. Apparently this quick informal noun isolates my child, positions him as nuisance or a brat (um, have you met my kids?), and detracts from the hundreds of hours I invested in selecting just the right name (which, incidentally, I never expected to be compensated for by a set number of times the chosen name was spoken).

My kid is a special flower, damn it, and his intricately researched name shall be used! 

OK, OK, let’s just take a giant step back and reenter the MOTY world for a hot second. We use “kid” a lot in our space (e.g. “My kid is being an asshole today” or “My kid peed on his sister’s face this morning.”) And it’s not just, as you flippantly suggest, because those three li’l letters are easy to type. “Kid” is actually a nuanced usage common to the discourse community of relaxed, non-helicopter, free-range-leaning parents. It’s part of our lexicon, and it bears a certain welcome edginess that, when tossed around by a leggings-wearing, disposable-coffee-toting mama, cues me into the fact that, hey, this lady is perhaps just a little bit brash and whole lot awesome. 

“Kid” says, sure, maybe this mama tries her darnedest to feed her kids organic kale smoothies peed out by Gaia herself every day while they all craft alliterative haikus around the breakfast table… but she’s not above Dunkin' Donuts and cartoons. 

By Annie

Let me start by saying that I love the Reading Fair. In fact, I adore it and everything it stands for. This former English major turned MFA student turned failing memoirist/adjunct composition instructor and now copy director at a small ad agency is just thrilled by the way it inspires kids to read. To read! To eschew YouTube tutorials and Musical.ly drivel and crawl inside the dogeared pages of actual chapter books? Yeah... pure wizardry. And the Reading Fair doesn’t just inspire kids to read but also to think critically about story structures and to create utterly unique visualizations of their budding analyses out of the very materials that elementary school magic is made of – trifold poster boards, construction paper and rubber cement. 

​You see, Fifth Grade Reading Fair Powers That Be, it is my deep affection for the Reading Fair and all its didactic glory that made me feel so betrayed when the assignment guidelines for your fine event came home in my daughter’s backpack, and I read your closing line on the instruction sheet:

By Annie

The last week of school for 2017 is approaching and, in addition to panicking about what to do with all this extra kid energy for the next two weeks, many MOTYs are also scrambling to pick up last-minute Christmas gifts for our kids’ teachers. What a lovely gesture, right? Giving a small token of appreciation to the adults who nurture and educate our children during the many hours they are in school. Right?? 

Wrong. 

Apparently, as a quick Google search will show you, there are all sorts of dos and don’ts when it comes to teacher gifts. All those ideas you thought were super cute (… or at least feebly passable)? Well, they are total shit. Here’s why:

Mugs – Teachers love coffee. Point taken. They don't love 37 mugs per year, nor do they have the shelf space in their homes or teacher lounges to store them.
​
Ornaments – Can you possibly, with your non-teacher brain, fathom just how many ornaments an elementary school teacher accumulates over the span of his or her career? Take 25 students (minimum) and multiply that by 35 years (minimum) and then you can begin to calculate a rough estimate of the gross proportions of offensively superfluous ornaments any one teacher may receive in his or her lifetime. 
​
Christmas decor – How about a nice little holiday decor for the home? Sound good? Um, who the actual fuck do you think you are, assuming you understand this relative stranger’s personal aesthetic within the sacred cove of his or her own home? Nice try, asshole.

By Annie

By Annie