The above picture has nothing to do with the blog – I just like to post cute pictures of my kids. This blog is actually about the book I’m reading, Summerhill School by A.S. Neill. I’ve been reading parenting book s for a while, now I’m reading education books so I can figure out where to send the wee-tikes when the time comes. Apparently Summerhill School is the original Free School – the idea is that children learn best with “freedom rather than coercion”. Seems like a good idea – I mean after all who remembers liking the rules of school right? You don’t have to go to class if you don’t want, you can smoke, cursing is acceptable, basically anything that the students vote on goes – everyone has one vote regardless of age or rank, including teachers and administration. I’ve started this project to figure out what kind of school I want to send the kids to – and I’ve just started – don’t know where I’ll land, but I know it’s not going to be a Free School – it’s just too naive about human nature. I know that my children haven’t reached the age at which they would be eligible to attend Summerhill, but from what I know about them at this point we’ve got a ways to go before our votes are all equal. After all, these are the kids that think it’s a good idea to take eggs out of the fridge and break them on the kitchen floor.

I’ve read a ton of parenting and parenting related books over the last couple of years. I try to read about what’s interesting to me and parenting is pretty high on the list these days. So, I’ve read about potty training, discipline, diaper changing, co-sleeping, baby slings, baby food – I  read Daddy Needs a Drink and Operating Instructions,  but Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters is hands down the best parenting book I’ve read so far. I think this is the only parenting book that I expect to go back and re-read. Strong Fathers is basically a pep talk for dads; a pep talk with content and the data to back up the pep. The reality is that your daughter needs you – she needs someone to lay down the rules and someone to giver her a hug. I know this kind of talk isn’t always popular, but it’s true. I really think more dads need this kind of pep talk.

In my last blog I made the controversial statement that boys and girls learn differently – there was no comment so I am assuming that everyone agrees. A couple of days after my post I stumbled accross a great example. Harper has always loved books, and it’s not that D doesn’t, but he mainly just wants to turn the pages. Well, we were looking at a book that Harper has always loved, Can You Find Me, it’s a seek and find book – full of jumbled up pictures where you find the three dogs or the 5 cookies etc. Harper has always liked it and we’ve given it to several little people but I can’t remember if I’d ever looked at it with D – well, the second page has barnyard animals, but it also has tractors – D freaked out – he found all of the tractors on the page. Funny thing is he shows no interest in the pages with toys or food, but the pages with trucks, planes, and motorcycles – wow, he freaks – we’ve looked at the book for hours in the last two weeks. So, i’ve been on a mission to find him boy specific books – he may never care about Good Night Moon (although I bet he will) but if he likes trucks – well of course I’ll do anything to get him to look at a book.

I was sure that it was going to be another girl. When we had our first sonogram the nurse said, “look at that – it’s a…” and I shouted girl! I had seen one of those things before, but I was just so sure that it was going to be a girl. It’s just that I can have empathy with a girl’s problems, but with a boy it’s just so painful – I know exactly what he’s going to be going through and it’s almost too much to bear.

So, you can see the attraction that I had to Peg Tyre’s The Trouble with Boys. Here’s the shocking truth:

“They get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls; in elementary school, they’re diagnosed with learning disorders four times as often. By eighth grade huge numbers are reading below basic level. And by high school, they’re heavily outnumbered in AP classes and, save for the realm of athletics, show indifference to most extra-curricular activities. Perhaps most alarmingly, boys now account for less than 43 percent of those enrolled in college, and the gap widens every semester!”

So what right? Not my kid right? What are we supposed to do about it? Well of course there is no one answer, but Peg brings up a bunch of issues: video games, boy culture, the ways that ADHD is diagnosed. One of the most interesting chapters is about preschool. The criticism is that the hyper pre- schooling of the last several years is ignoring a boys natural need to learn through play. Forcing a 4 year old to sit a desk for hours is not helpful for either sex, but for a boy it’s much worse. We are teaching our young boys to dislike school.