Working for Lifestyle/Extras

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-22-2005
Working for Lifestyle/Extras
3621
Mon, 11-20-2006 - 11:13am

Hi Ladies :)

This is my first time on this debate board and I have been dying to jump into some of the topics, but I feel as though they are sooooo long (one in particular is over 1000 replies, yikes!) that starting my own specific one might work out better.

Anyhow, a recurring theme here seems to be what Moms should and shouldn't be going to work for. It seems some are of the opinion that is OK for Mom to work if she must to pay her bills but NOT if its to afford a nice car, house, good neighborhood. This is considered keeping up with the Johnses (who are they???) and thats bad.

Well, I want to know what in the heck is wrong with a women working to have nice things? I don't mean working and leaving baby in child care 16 hours a day, everyday...thats pretty extreme.

I enjoyed a certain lifestyle before having a child, should I have downsized that lifestyle once baby came so I didn't have to work? What about me *wanting* to maintain a certain lifestyle for myself, my husband, and my child makes me a (a) workaholic or (b) striving to keep up with the Joneses?

Don't some people (like myself) simply enjoy living in a nice place with nice things and want their children to have the same experience?

So please, anyone who thinks a women is wrong for WOH if she is not doing so to financially survive but does it to maintain a certain lifestyle...whats wrong with this?

Thanks all :)

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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-13-2006
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 12:05am
exactly how much money do you think a 16 year old kid is going to make at a part time job? my 16 year old is working two jobs, carrying a 4.o gpa, in the band and cheerleading, the number of hours she has to work is not that great, although she works all the hours she can. and while she enjoys band and cheering the are really a means to getting into the college of her choice. she need the extra cirriculars on her resume. she bought her own car, pays her own insurance, buys her own gas, there isnt much left over and certainly not enough to pay for $250 class rings, $400+ senior portraits, trips to visit colleges that are looking to give her scholarships - and im sorry that is my responsibility. my child is spoiled, no more so than yours however, my kids sure arent out riding their gators and 4 wheelers. but my child is also working very hard to have the things she wants and to enjoy her high school years - they are years she will never get back. i would consider myself a failure as a parent if someday in the future my children came to me and told me how miserable their high school years were because they couldnt do the things they wanted because we couldnt afford it.
Jennie
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-27-2006
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 1:03am

So you would be comfortable with your child at 17 driving across state or across several states to visit college campuses by themselves? You would allow your child to attend a college sight unseen by you?

**Of course not and that's not what I suggested.

If you were capable of that at 17 and your parents felt comfortable giving you such freedom, more power to you. There was no way my parents were going to let me do any such thing.

**My parents didn't do one thing to help me go to university. I went, sight unseen by them. This is one reason why we would never let our children go through it alone. That doesn't mean we have to pay for it all.

If course my parents afforded me the luxuries you mentioned. Actually I could have cared less about a class ring - but my dad's class ring is a big thing to him so he wanted me to have one. They also paid 1/2 of my college tution (that wasn't covered by scholorships) by getting a parents loan. In high school and college I paid for my spending money but studies were my first priority according to my parents.

**How do you figure that my parents expected any less of me? Even though I paid for it, twice I might add, they still expected me to do well. Why? Because I was paying for an education. I was expected to live up to a certain standard for what I'd chosen to do in life at that time.

I got the luxury of a tradional college experience - living in dorms - doing the sorority thing (I paid for that) and enjoying the whole experience.

**I did too only "I" paid for it all on my own.

Yes I had loans coming out - but I still figure it was worth it.

**I had no loans to pay back. It is doable.

o

"Besides this we have our living prophet, for whom I am grateful, and I hope to follow after him all the days of my life.&

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-27-2006
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 1:16am

exactly how much money do you think a 16 year old kid is going to make at a part time job?

**I worked full time through the summer and paid for all I needed during the year plus I paid for my first two semesters of university so that when I did go, I could afford to save for the next semester and have fun.

my 16 year old is working two jobs, carrying a 4.o gpa, in the band and cheerleading, the number of hours she has to work is not that great, although she works all the hours she can.

**I understand. My dd was working 30 + hours, carrying a 3.8 GPA and has several extra curricular activities going on. She had the advantage of working in the daytime whereas most kids are sitting in a classroom. We felt her grades were more important and nixed the job in favor of her studies, especially in her Math.

i would consider myself a failure as a parent if someday in the future my children came to me and told me how miserable their high school years were because they couldnt do the things they wanted because we couldnt afford it.

**oh brother. I wonder how other children feel since they can't do all the things they wanted because their parents can't afford it. That's not a reason. My parents could afford to help me, I wanted to do it on my own. When my brother whines about how horrible his upbringing was I have to wonder what home he lived in. He had to take his now grown kids to all the roadside historical stops and all the theme parks and professional games he could manage. When they lived in Europe, he had to take them to every castle and niche he could manage. I say "had" in a very sarcastic way. My parents did what they could for each of us with what they knew was best in child rearing. How dare a child come back on good parents and whine about not getting what they wanted? I think there are things best left unsaid....much of the time.

o

"Besides this we have our living prophet, for whom I am grateful, and I hope to follow after him all the days of my life.&

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-31-2005
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 1:19am

Like a high school class ring that is rendered obsolete by the college class ring four years later. It's a nice keepsake, but IMO a huge waste of money unless the high school diploma is going to be the last one earned. . . well worth the cost for a kid who has really struggled through high school, or perhaps a first generation high school grad.

But the senior pictures, definitely worth paying a professional for, and the class yearbook is quite valuable when those reunions come around.




Edited 12/20/2006 1:23 am ET by jungle_girl
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 2:06am

"It seems to me that if we're going to call a group of kids gifted, that group should be fairly small. Otherwise, they're not really gifted, just at the high end of typical. I would also argue that the intelligence standard of giftedness is rather narrow. I've known plenty of students with low academic achievement but with extraordinary artistic or athletic talent. Once you start looking at everybody's gifts, it's clear that lots and lots of people are gifted. Back to square one!"

No, you are getting stuck on the word, which, I grant you, is stupid. It is not a matter of singling out a group of kids as "extra-special." It is a matter of finding ways to ID learners who could benefit from approaches used with gifted kids. A few states use IEPs for these kids, which seems to me like a sensible approach. Ideally, identification should be needs based, rather than IQ based. Also, school IS about academics, and this is about meeting the academic needs of the kids in the classroom, not a question of whether everyone has things to contribute to the world (I take it for granted that everyone does, and hope that most reasonable people agree).

"I see, you're concerned about high achieving little kids. As I said before, I'm skeptical of looking at the top quintile or so, as measured by academic achievement or IQ scores, as automatically in need of special programming. I'd rather look at the whole child, and when we look at kids that way, we see that many of them have special talents."

I never argued that the top quintile needed special programming. I specifically treated the problems of GT and the top quintile as TWO, related but different, problems. I think it is a wonderful idea to look at the "whole child." What I do not understand is why doing that means ignoring the academic prowess of certain kids. When dd was in elementary, I quickly learned that when they started on the "whole child" business, it meant that the kid was screwed.

"I agree; I live in a district where all the kids are smart and all get their needs met, and I work in a district where the population is very diverse, and they all get their needs met, too. There is no ability grouping among kids up to sixth grade. Maybe it's because class sizes are small and there are lots of resources in this particular district that I'm not too aware of gifted or talented kids being ignored."

And that is a wonderful thing. However, you yourself have repeatedly said that it is extremely difficult to achieve such a situation, that the top students often DO get ignored, that high achievement is not a priority in many schools and so on, which is why you pay top dollar to have your kids in the school they are in.

"I'd never consider you a pain in any way. I'm okay with letting 2-3 kids do a project together. It's temporary, and they would be in other grouping arrangements. What troubles me is tracking for elementary school and reading groups organized by ability, both of which have been mentioned. IOW, more permanent groupings intentionally based on making judgments about children's learning potential, not the shared interest of 2 or 3 students in working together."

I know others have talked of situations that resemble tracking, and when we are talking HS ability grouping most commonly means some form of tracking. However, from the very beginning, I have also used the term "ability grouping" in its simplest meaning, a group of kids with similar ability working together in a group. I already posted that I am not advocating tracking for first graders (that would include not wanting a GT track at that early point). At one point I posted about my own experience with group work in school. We were grouped on an ad hoc basis each time we were supposed to do some small project in groups. There were no permanent groups, yet the kids in the top quintile NEVER got to work together, but were always spread out on the groups.

These groupings were not based on learning potential, they were clearly based on performance up to that point. Since the teachers clearly considered performance when making the groups, one must wonder which ideology drove the choices made. The approach did make the upper quintile learn, but the lessons learned were somewhat odd, certainly had no academic component and I am not sure they were what the teacher had in mind. The bottom line was that those kids were rarely given a chance to stretch and were kept from ever making an all out dash down the line. Now if they can be allowed to make a dash here and there, without ability grouping of any kind, fine, I am not wedded to any particular approach here. I am simply suspicious of approaches that contain certain key words, because in practice I have found those keywords to signal hostility to the kids at the top of the pile, academically speaking.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 2:25am

"... because from what I have read the child that enters preschool knowing at least 4 full nursey rhymes has a good start on the "learning to read" track."

This is exactly the sort of thing that gets my back up, and part of my oposition to flash crads, even this kind. This is not an attack on you at all, but try to analyze the above statement for a moment.

Why are nursery rhymes important for future reading?

Because they help build phonemic awareness and awareness of ending sounds.

At some point some researchers probably decided to investigate to what extent incoming students had been introduced to rhymes. Simple way to do this? Count up how many rhymes each child knows and correlate that to reading acheievement at the end of first grade or something. Lo and behold, those with 4 or more Mother Goose rhymes under their belts turned out to be good readers.

But those kids knew 4 rhymes, because their caregivers had sung them, read them, recited them etc often and made the experience fun and memorable. The important part was the awarenes this built over time, not the fact that the child ended up remembering 4 of the rhymes. So, it is a mistake, IMO, to focus on teaching the kid 4 rhymes using any and all available means. Efficiency is not the goal here. The point is to provide books (for all the reasons that pumpkinangel pointed out) and a rich linguistic environment, including rhymes and other verbal games.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-15-2006
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 2:27am

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It is so simple Pa! It is blinding, imo. She has decided for now SAH is the best choice for their family! She has no logical reason to work out of her home, because she does not want to.

While her children are in private, public school, or home schooled it is irrelevant.

Your right day care for children under school age DOES NOT fit in that mix.

merry christmas~ : )

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-15-2006
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 2:31am
Your post is very confusing. Age is a huge difference, how time spent, at school and day care is quite different.
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-15-2006
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 2:35am

But you can not and dont what? What does 24/7 have to do with a individual's intire life?

Verbalization's skills do put ones heart at ease, be nice! @@

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 12-20-2006 - 2:42am
LOL, and why are you having such a hard time accepting that it is not necessary to have special toys and make special provisions for "teaching" a baby to reach and perceive depth. It is natural development that will happen as long as you do not starve the child and keep him in a dark closet all day. His depth perception will not be superior by college time, because you dangled special toys in front of him when he was a baby. This stuff is a huge marketing gimmick, and I guess a nice way for mothers to keep themsleves occupied, entertained and wih a feeling of being useful.

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