PowerSchool

Muskogee Public Schools moved to a new gradebook system called PowerSchool. Parent Connect is no longer working, but soon parents will be able to log on to the new system. Parents will really be pleased with the ease of use and the amount of information contained in the PowerSchool program.

In PowerSchool parents will be able to have grade reports emailed home weekly or daily as they wish, making notification much easier. They can get on whenever they want and view their child's grades in every class and click on the teacher or subject to get a breakdown of the assignments. They can click on the teacher's name to be taken directlly to that teacher's email, so they can leave a query for the teacher. The only information lacking at the moment is lunch account information, but plans to provide that additional support are being discussed.

All in all, this Internet based program will be much easier for parents to manage. One drawback is that a parent must have a different name and password for each child in the family, but it is a minor issue compared to the increased information and the easier notification system. Rather than logging on for each child, the parent can have that email notification generated directly to their inbox, if desired.

PowerSchool is not available yet, but should be within the next week or so. Watch for information about registration in your child's school newsletter or weekly memo home. Connecting to PowerSchool gives you the power to monitor your teen's success, provide support when needed, and ensure your child keeps moving toward his/her educational goal.

For more information, just leave me a comment here and I will get back to you with the answer. Also be looking for the first parent conference day coming up in a couple of weeks.

Are you Listening To Me?

In the last column I discussed a little book called How To Traumatize Your Children. It is a sarcastic How To that guarantees any unfortunate recipient of it's advice a straight trip to years of psycho-analysis. Honestly, the un-named author's perspective helps to illustrate possible mistakes we are unwittingly making as parents. The here to anonymous author gives his take on The Seven Parenting Styles. We will cover control today and continue with "instruction" next week.

#1. Exerting Control: Your Child, Your Property
As a controlling parent, you of course know what's right. You know what your child should fear and what he/she should believe. You have the final say on what your child should wear every day, shat friends he should have and how much food she should put in her mouth. Because there is no room in your universe for your child's ideas or opinions, you save money on art supplies or violin lessons. While it takes a bit of work to become a controlling parent, the results for your child are impressive-obedience, rigidity, psychosomatic stomachaches, lack of resourcefulness, a lifetime of discontent-that many parents believe it is worth the effort.

The controller is a special type of parent, best suited to individuals with leadership skills and a strong perfectionist drive, generally under girded by a stimulating combination of failed dreams and entrenched self-loathing. At estimated 60 per cent of parents were themselves controlled by their parents, giving a leg up to those who enjoyed this type of upbringing but far from ruling out those who did not.

The advantages to controlling your child are plentiful. When children are young, they tend not to talk back, and you can quickly squash any backtalk with punishment, criticism and withholding of love and affection. You'll save your self the inconvenience of having to deal with gray areas and your child's indecision. This early stage obedience makes your job easier when in the teen years your child may try to rebel. Already laying the groundwork with strong consequences, you can send him away to "wilderness camp" or a "working ranch."

The basic rule of thumb for this style is, If it irritates you or you have an opinion on it, take control.

You Are The Boss
Your child is a generation younger than you. This of course means that, you know better! You have spent a lifetime developing dogma and wisdom and by golly, your children will benefit from it. As a parent, your job is to micromanage every move, and their goal in life should be to please you and follow your orders.

You did not have children to submit to their feeble whims and wishes. Instead your offspring are lumps of clay to be molded in your image, They should consider themselves lucky to have you because you know everything.

Your children do not need to waste your time, learning to make decisions on their own or exploring their internal thought processes. Ultimately they will have friends, teachers, professors, bosses and spouses to make decisions for them, so it doesn't serve their best interests for you to teach them anything other than blind obedience.

Your Children Are Your Property
Not only did you give your children life, you gave them a rood over their heads and food in their mouths. You pay for toys, orthodontia and the clothing you pick out for them. You pay for the activities and sports you wish them to participate in. Clearly, your children belong to you body and soul, Until they are 18 and no longer accepting money and housing from you, they must accede to your rules. Remind them frequently of this fact with such statements as, "when you pay the bills, you make the rules."

When your children accept your charity, your children relinquish all rights to self-government, privacy and choice. You changed their diapers, why wouldn't you read their diaries?

Remember, Dissent is Verboten
The ready answer to their questions is always, "because I said so." You are an adult, you know best and are never wrong. Children should respect their parents and accept their leadership blindly. Your children are lucky they have you to think for them. If your child voices disagreement, it means she is bad and doesn't love or respect you, in which case you crack down hard and withhold your own love. Whether you call it lip, sass, backtalk or disrespect, it ranks as one of the most punishable offenses.

When your child disagrees with you, tell them they are stupid or ungrateful. Make it clear that you love them when they agree with you. Limits and boundaries are clear-cut and nonnegotiable- there are none for you and many for them. Allow no dissent or the game is over for you.

Criticism is One of the Most Useful Tools For Parents.
Not only does it serve to punish poor behavior as well as reinforce your position as property-owning boss, it undermines the self confidence so that they believe (correctly) that they couldn't survive without you. A child with poor self-esteem is more easily controlled than one who has developed confidence through praise and independent exploration of the world. Criticism should center around intelligence, appearance,judgement and attempts at independent thought.

Everything is Dangerous
Your job as a parent is to protect your child from an infinite array of perils while instilling in her the accurate belief that people are not to be trusted, all dogs foam at the mouth, germs lurk everywhere and life is fatal. Curiosity is bad, all but parent approved friendships should be avoided and exploration and discovery are not allowed. See how easy it is to instill a life long skill of fear? What should be feared? Everything!

So, control on! You'll have the lifelong results of "I said so!"

Next week? I know you are eagerly awaiting, "Stages of Control" and it's results for your very own child. "

Paging Sigmund

I happened across a silly little book called How to Traumatize Your Children. The tongue and cheek premise is, since" all" parents will traumatize their children, we can learn how to do it better and more effectively. It actually is a Parent How To-in reverse. What follows is a simple to do list that guarantees years of therapy for your child.

#1. Unreliability: The Enemy of Security and Trust
Parental unreliability is at the root of the majority of childhood trauma. Not being someone your children can count on erodes all kinds of trust-trust that others will care, trust that others will tell the truth, trust that others will be there no matter what. Indeed, most children who grow up with unreliable parents have difficulty trusting as adults, so your unreliability will set your kids up for a lifetime of dysfunctional and failed relationships. So, never follow through on your promises and don't honor any commitments. Works every time.

#2. Your Child's Cues and Needs: Ignore Them
Your parenting approach should have nothing whatsoever to do with your child's wants or needs. Your needs come first. By not listening to your children, they will develop insecurities about about their own worthiness and whether or not they not their own minds.They will second guess their instincts and behave as doormats in relationships. Sooner or later, they will stop expressing themselves entirely.

#3. Warring Parent Styles
An effective path to trauma lies in each parent having a different approach to child rearing. Dueling parenting styles increases inconsistency, one of the most important trauma principals. Parents "not on the same page" results in fighting and hostility-ratcheting the trauma quotient a few notches higher. Remember-no united fronts. Make sure either parent's efforts neither support or reflect one another.

#4. Consistent Inconsistency
Nothing keeps a child on his or her toes like inconsistency. In a child's earliest years, this can manifest itself in a lack of routine. Forget regular mealtimes and bedtimes. When it comes to discipline and expectations for your child's behavior, you'll want to practice setting rules only to break them. No stimulus may ever garner the same response so your child will learn that nothing is to be trusted. Way to undermine your child's faith in the constancy of the world!!

As Michele Pfeiffer so "wisely" stated, "Like all parents, my husband and I just do the best we can, and hold our breaths, and hope we've set aside enough money to pay for our kids' therapy." Thanks Michele. That is definitely a parenting style to model ourselves after.

Why We Hate Us

Decency : proper observance of the requirements of modesty, good taste, respectability.

Courtesy: gracious politeness, considerate toward others, well-mannered.

Dick Myers, a journalist with National Public Radio, has a new book out called Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium. I happened to catch the interview this week and I am so relieved. I thought it was just me being nostalgic for the days when we did not lock our front door and I left my coat, along with other students' letter jackets, leather coats, and book bags, on a communal coat rack at Muskogee's Central High School. And nothing was ever stolen. Ever.

Myers, who gets tons of emails each week from readers of his NPR column Against the Grain, has ample fodder for his research into discontent. Complaints range from corporations who profess to care about us while they steal our retirement funds or rampant rudeness and vulgarity among all age groups to uncontrolled me-ism. The complaints seem to be consistent across the racial, age, and socio-economic spectrums. People hate what our society has become.

According to Myers the solution to the disillusion is simple - a return to some of the values that pre-date the 1960's. Myers claims the '60's "do your own thing" philosophy transmogrified into unchecked narcissism. This is an ugly condemnation of the former youth culture members, today's moms and dads or even grandmas and grandpas. But, I've gotta say, who couldn't see it coming?

When I returned to Muskogee High School after college and began teaching, a marked change had taken place in the teenagers. They wanted to know what it was like to have lived through the hippie era, and only a period of four years had passed between the time I graduated from MHS and the time I returned. I'm pretty sure they were in middle school when I left, and so, should have their own memories of so-called "hippies."

But not only that, I could see right away, in fact had many conversations with the students about this, that the Baby Boomer generation differed in one drastic way: we had been raised with 1950's values, and even tho' we may have rebelled, deep inside we knew right from wrong, good from bad, rude behavior from good manners. It was blatantly obvious even 30 years ago.

I would like to return to some of the values of the 1960's, as Myers suggests, but not all of them. I can't say that I would like for all moms to stay home or only men to be doctors. I can't say I would like for girls to have to wear dresses only to school, the way they did when I was a sophomore, or for only men to have the right to vote. And, I don't want to be relegated to my rocking chair at 63, the way the "elderly" used to be.

But I can say that no matter what, I would like for people to be respectful of each other. I can say that no matter what, I would like for people to do the right thing, whether they're rich or poor, young or old, black or white. I can say that no matter what, I would like to see us return to a more graceful state, because I've never understood how thinking people can be given so much and abuse it so greatly. Society cannot function well without these values.

Today's teenagers are tomorrow's adults. They stand poised to inherit this self-centered, ungrateful society we have created. It is up to us to behave as adults and give them the tools necessary to navigate through life by modeling respect for others before something happens that forces us to our knees, makes us abondon out wanton ways.

As Myers says, "There's a place and purpose for public aggression, drunkenness and lewdness...Certainly the Romans enjoyed it in their decline."

Paradise-Family Style

South Florida may never be the same. My husband and I took all the family to Anna Maria Island for a vacation. Vacation in the broadest sense of the word. We made Harvard Lampoon's "vacation" child's play. Wally World? Pshaw. Welcome to Wagner World!

Our grandchildren had not yet seen the ocean and it had been a while since every single one of us could go somewhere together. Dear friends have a place at Bradenton Beach on the island and I fell in love with the location. There are no high rises, no chain hotels or restaurants, no water parks or amusement rides. The island is only seven miles long and in some places, if you stand on the bay side, you can see the ocean side down the street. It is the Florida I remembered as a kid and I wanted to hurry and get there with my brood before it morphed into Ft. Lauderdale.

It only took three days, six trips to the airport and 2 rental cars to get everyone to our beach house. Catherine, out of college and gainfully employed could only stay three days, but we got her there and on the beach with the rest of her siblings. (She observed work was great if you just did not have to be there every day.) It was like the Bataan Death march to transport needed equipment and supplies to our sandy location, but like good Okies, we staked our claim every morning, complete with Ipod, canopy, loaded ice chests and pirate flag.

Our house was on the bay and Dolphin sightings became a regular part of our day. One of us would see them come up to the wall and run screaming into the house to get everyone. A manatee even showed up at our dock to check out the tourists. Grandaughter Annebelle really did learn to swim and took to jumping in the pool in her nightgown before breakfast. Before long, various uncles, Father's and Grandfather's would join her in the water. This was all before 8:00 in the morning. Even college and habitually late sleeping son was up early for omelette's and Key Lime Pie. (We ate it every meal).

In a nutshell, make that coconut shell, here are some adventures. Son-in -Law Greg went for his first deep sea fishing trip. The destination was 70 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. Greg began to get deathly sea sick about one and a half miles into the bay. After a first rate expedition with many Grouper and Snapper, he claimed he had made the water more interesting for the fish and that the successful catch was due to him.

Toddler Wagner got locked in the car with a hysterical Mother and trying to be calm Grandfather frantically trying to unlock the rental vehicle. Wag flagged down the pair most likely to have a slim jim on their person. "Uh no man, but uh, why don't you just call 911?" Little did the rest of know as we lounged a mile down the beach that the fire truck and EMSA vehicle speeding by were going to rescue Wagner. He proudly returned with a fireman's hat on his head and a sheepish parent and grandparent in tow.

For some reason, we were all highly amused by the seagulls. We gave them names and commented on their individual personalities as we fed them potato chips and Teddy Grahams. Other beach revelers did not find it so amusing. I, too, did not find it so amusing when an unknown family member put a Dorito on my head. One eager gull helped himself. Let it be known that if seagull eats off your head, it is not lithe and birdlike. Think thunk and baseball bat. Everyone certainly found my reaction amusing.

Note: People on an island are really proud of their fish. They eat a lot of it. Grouper. Snapper. Tuna. Scallops. Shrimp. Crab. Mahi Mahi. A waiter's face kind of falls when you order chicken or a hamburger. Sorry Charlie. I consider fish a novelty, not a food group.

All the boys went sailing one afternoon. The girls wisely allowed them their boy time. It was a grand experience except for the nurse sharks they sailed over

and who circled the boat.

Another day we took a pontoon over to an uninhabited island that was an outpost during the Spanish-American War. My husband's grandfather was a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt so Warren was ecstatic as he explored the gunnery turrets and look-out towers. There was good shelling but the Jelly Fish were in abundance. The game plan was to tread lightly and avoid their tentacles at all costs. Giant tortoises went about their business as we followed them through the jungle. Lizards as big as Iguanas ran between the flowers. Who needs to go to Galapagos? Darwin could have just headed southwest at Sarasota.

We ate too much. We stayed up too late. We laughed until tears rolled down our faces. We bought goofy t-shirts and silly sun glasses. We drank foo-foo drinks with umbrellas. We watched sunsets over the water and tried to catch the green flash. We told old stories and shared new ones. We walked alot. We drank fresh squeezed orange juice as the bay woke up around us. We did five loads of laundry a day. We took lots of pictures. We sailed and kayaked and wave- runnered and cruised. We cooked out and all sat around the Hasty Bake, just as our ancestors gathered around the fire and shared time. Three generations of family enjoyed the ocean, the sand, the island and most importantly, just being together.

Senior Moments

We are down to the last two school-aged children in our family, barring a couple of them who are still in law school and one undergraduate. It happened so quickly, I guess it proves the adage "time flies when you're having fun," because all the kids have been great people and watching them grow up has been tremendous fun. Not that there aren't more good times ahead, but getting them all out of public school does mark a milestone.

My neice, Katy, has entered her senior year in high school. Talking with her mother, my "little" sister who is twelve years younger than I am, reminded me of the agony of senior year. People in their last year of high school are both an exasperating and exhilarating crowd. They can simultaneously make a parent mad and proud.

As my sister was bemoaning my adorable neice's behavior - happy one minute, gripey the next, just a little but bossy, and able to make cutting remarks without intending to - I reminded her that she had done the same thing to me on occassion when she was a teenager, which came as a complete shock to her. Being tewlve years her senior and also her Latin teacher when she was in high school, I remembered it very well. It was long before I even had my own children, much less teenagers, but it taught me a lesson I took to heart and helped me to help parents of my teenage students going through the same process.

You see, my little sister was as sweet and adorable then as my neice is now. She would never have intentionally hurt anyone, least of all me. She wasn't even cognizant that she had ever said anything snide to me, because to a teenager it doesn't mean anything. They are merely exerting their muscles on the way to adulthood. It was said and it was over and she loved me just as much as she did when she was eight or twelve or even ten minutes before she said it. And I never stopped loving her, either!

Parents who have seniors about to start back this year, take heed and have faith. There may be things said this year that are just part of the growing process and they should not be taken to heart. They may make you think you are losing your mind or having a senior moment of your own. There will be many ups and downs this year with emotions, your child's friends, life altering decisions to be made. Remember to try to enjoy it, both the good and the bad. Try to maintain your ability to laugh, because being mad and yelling won't help. Your teen doesn't understand and no amount of pleading, begging, fighting, cajoling, or passive aggression will help. I'm not saying you should accept rude behavior, but only to understand that this too shall pass regardless of what you do. As the new expression goes - it is what it is.

Good luck to all students and parents with this school year, especially those entering their last year of high school.

It's Too Darn Hot

Why are we always surprised when it gets so hot in Oklahoma? We greet someone, it's so hot! We express surprise at the temperature as it flashes on the bank sign. Triple digits today! Or we observe, the lake has turned over. Doesn't it do that every year in August?


One thing for sure. It is too hot to turn the oven on. No matter the temperature, there is still a hungry family around the dinner table. For some strange reason, they still want to be fed. Here are a few easy to prepare dishes that don't require pre-heating anything.


Southern Shrimp Salad


2 pounds shrimp, pre-cooked and cleaned (prepare according to directions on package)
Chop into bite size pieces.
Prepare 1 cup rice according to package directions. Drain well and cool.

To rice add 1/2 cup minced purple onion, 1/2 cup chopped green olives, 1/2 cup chopped celery
Stir in 1 cup mayonnaise and fold in cooled shrimp. Chill and serve.



Make Ahead Curried Chicken Salad


De bone and remove skin from one prepared rotisserie chicken. Shred.
Add:
1 c. chopped celery
1 c. pineapple chunks, drained
1 c sliced green grapes
1 c mayonnaise
1/2 tsp curry powder
Chill overnight or all day. Before serving add 2 cups Chinese noodles

Duke Of Windsor Sandwich

Legendary Helen Corbett created this dish for a visit to Neiman Marcus by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It is delicious. Just don't think about the calories.

For each sandwich
Toast two slices of a good rustic bread -lightly buttered
Layer:
1 slice Swiss cheese
Add 2 to 3 slices of turkey breast
1 slice pineapple-water packed
3 strips of bacon (to keep the stove off, use the pre-cooked and microwave)
1 leaf lettuce

Make a topping of equal amounts 1000 Island Dressing and freshly whipped cream (unsweetened)
Put a large dollop of the dressing on the top of the sandwich and add the second slice of bread.
Serve with potato chips, a dill pickle and a knife and fork. Heaven!!!

Dessert? Put everyone in the car and head to the ice cream store for sundaes or banana splits. You only live once and school is about to start. Grab as much time as you can with the family because it's getting ready to be really busy again. Enjoy the last few days.