Monthly Archives: March 2011

My daughter is unable to turn in her assignments.

I just got an email saying that two more pieces of work were not turned in. I want to stop punishing her, but she’s making it impossible. I’m torn between fury and empathy.

I feel badly for her because I know what it’s like to feel like school is getting the best of you, but I’m absolutely enraged as well. We’ve made huge sacrifices so that the kids can go to a swanky private school. I could have been on three round the world trips, first class, for what we’ve paid.

I don’t know if I should shake her or hug her. Right now I’m leaning towards shaking, with a small dose of ass kicking.

Jane hasn’t spoken to me in two days. She speaks, in small sentences, things like, “Can I have some orange juice please?” “Will you sign my homework.” and “Don’t forget to buy me a flapper dress for the Spring Sing.”

What she doesn’t say is, “I love you mom.” “This is how my day was” or anything else really. She had cried a lot the past two days, and although it’s a soul crushing experience for us both I know that I’m parenting well.

Two days ago I logged on to Power School (it’s like an online grade book) and found that my daughter hadn’t turned in thirteen school assignments. Thirteen. She had thirteen F’s, not because she’s not smart, not because she was sick, but because her binder broke and the papers fell out.

Not a crime.

Keeping it a secret from her father and me? That’s the crime.

This isn’t the first time Jane has had trouble turning her work in. She’s twelve, it’s not often that you’ll find an organized twelve year old. Part of school is learning to complete your assignments on time and to turn them in. I’m not panicked about this event, but every decision has a consequence be it a good or a bad one.

As a consequence to not doing her job at school Jane has lost her electronics for a time. That means no itouch, no computer, no blackberry and no borrowing my computer. She’s like a junkie in the afternoons begging to talk to her friends. Although I’m sure she’s not thrilled she is not suffering terribly, as we just play a little more chess and cards in the evenings.

Some of the kids are having a dance party on Friday. Jane is not going. She is punished. There are tears and she has pleaded with me to please let her go, to please take away any other thing but not the dance.

Every part of me wants to send my daughter to the dance. Every hair stands on end when I see her cry. I know how horrible she feels, how left out and lonely Friday will be. I know that this makes it the perfect consequence and that it will be a memorable event for her, and hopefully she will learn a lesson while the stakes are still low.

Mr G called me today when I was driving the kids home from school and asked how everyone was doing. I explained to him that he was on speaker phone but he wouldn’t hear from his daughter since she no longer speaks in my presence. I smiled because I find that smiling is the best way to keep the tears from falling.

When Mr. G came home from work today he made a beeline for his daughter. He kissed her on the forehead and said, “Cut it out.” Jane gave him a quizzical stare, and he repeated himself for her.

Still I’m the enemy not because I’m the one who invents the discipline here, but because I’m the enforcer. I love Jane enough to follow through even when it hurts.

This hurts.

I often tell my children, “Nothing worth doing is easy.”

I believe this to be true. I believe it’s imperative to stand up for what you believe in, and to stand up for what is right. Today I did not do that.

Today I sat across the table from a woman and listened to her complain about the gays. I nodded in understanding while she prattled on about how America is teaching kids to be gay, and I smiled at her while she spewed hate and talked about the righteousness of her church and her family’s devotion to her church.

I needed her to be an ally for my child so I didn’t tell her that she was hiding behind religion while teaching her children to be intolerant. I needed her assistance so I didn’t tell her that I don’t respect her and that I think that she’s narrow minded and ugly on the inside. Instead I smiled.

In the very short term it was the right thing to do. In the long term it was wrong.

When she said to me, “School wasn’t like this when we were kids, there were no gay teachers.” I did say to her, “It was like this for me.” Because even though I don’t recall a teacher having a partner I also don’t recall teachers talking much about their spouses. I don’t know who my teachers slept with or who they loved. It didn’t matter to me then and it doesn’t matter to me now.

What I did today was allow a woman to not feel shame when she should have. It ruined the rest of my day and I’ve spent the hours since then replaying the scene in my head, only in my head I smile at her and say, “You’re wrong. Your church is full of gay people, your priests have a disproportionately high number of gay people, and I pray that neither of your children are gay, because you’re going to make them want to kill themselves.”

And in my rewindable world she stutters and stammers and sees the error of her ways.

And then she is nice to my child.

My world doesn’t rewind. It pretty much sucks.

The phone rang Monday Morning.

“Hi, this is Tamar with infolinks and we’d like to honor women by giving $1,000 to the charity of your choice.”

“Um, okay, can it pay my daughter’s school tuition?”

“Sorry, it can’t.”

“Could I withhold just $300 so I can get a Brazillian Blowout? You should see my hair today, I look like a charity case.”

“Unfortunately we would need to give money to a 501c charity that benefits women.”

“How long does it take to get that paperwork done?” I wondered aloud while twirling my dried out hair.

“I’m really sorry Jessica, is this a bad time?”

“Oh no, I’m so sorry. Well, I guess if my daughter’s tuition and my hair can’t be considered women’s charities we should probably give some dough to the Dream Center. They’ve got a brand new residential facility for trafficked girls.”

“Oh I love that. I mean I hate that we need that, but I love that they have it.” Tamar said.

And we worked out the details, and the Dream Center will be getting a check for a thousand dollars this week, because helping women do more than their hair matters.

Infolinks, In-Text ad provider, funded this donation in honor of http://jessicagottlieb.com/ in an effort to show their support to women bloggers on International Women’s Day

My morning was spent on the phone with insurance companies today. In addition to checking the status of my appeal for my Simponi I needed to get a firm understanding of why Mr. G’s three hour shoulder surgery was $62,068.84.

I love United Healthcare for too many reasons to list, but one of them was the giggliness of the agent. I was thinking that perhaps the $60,000 bill was meant to give me a heart attack and then they’d make a few extra dollars giving me chest compressions before I died? She thought I might be onto something.

At the end of the day the insurance company will pay just shy of $4,000 and we pay $1,000. The good news is that our maximum out of pocket per person is just $2000 so even if Mr G needs a ton of physical therapy (and it looks like he will) our medical bills will end shortly.

I’m unclear on why hospitals do this. Does anyone ever pay $62,000 for an outpatient surgery? Is there anyone in medical billing that make this make sense to me?

The only happy part? They took party pictures, I’ll share of few of them with you after the jump. If you’re easily skeeved out skip them.  (more…)

Screens are quite simply a part of our lives. My kids love their computers, their phones, their iTouches and TV too. I understand their love of being entertained, we all understand it, but explaining moderation to kids?

Oy.

Not all TV shows are created equal, not all websites are created equal. Can we help each other find a few of each that actually teach kids something? What do you suggest?