The (Nit)Picky Mother's guide to Educational TV: Part 1

The Star Tribune has an article this morning on television shows geared towards preschoolers. It's a fluff piece designed to let us know what's new this year (the companion toys are probably already on sale at Target and Walmart). Along the main article, which tries to both encourage parents to limit TV and assuage their guilt for not doing it, is a list of Picks for Kids chosen by Liz Perle of Common Sense Media. I'm not entirely proud of it, but I'm pretty familiar with the latest kids' shows, and none of the shows on her list would have made my short list. I wish she had used a clear set of criteria (one of the shows isn't even broadcast anymore), and quite frankly, I wish she had better reasons for choosing them among the 100s of kids' shows on the air.

Here is her list with her comments and mine. I'll list the favorite shows in our house in a separate post.

"Franklin": A turtle who is constantly trying to emerge from his shell. "The characters are engaging and lovely and sympathetic, dealing with dilemmas that are appropriate for kids that age."

As a homeschooler, this show is a little too heavy on pro-school propaganda for me. Also, I find the way they have anthropomorphized the animals to be weird and inconsistent. Franklin and his family eat bugs, but when Mrs. Turtle was expecting, she was pregnant, instead of tending a nest. My kids do like this show, and it doesn't have an overwhelming number of licensed products associated with it, which both count in it's favor, but there are better shows out there.

"Little Einsteins": Animated kids who love the classics, and we're not talking Yogi Bear. "The title says it all. It's geared toward parents who want their children to be fabulous."

Hmm... do I want my kids to be "fabulous"? I want them to be happy, secure, well educated, and a bunch of other things, but I don't really care if they're fabulous. As for the show, my kids got bored with it after seeing it about 3 times. I can't help but wonder where the Little Einsteins' parents are.

"Reading Rainbow": Former "Trekkie" LeVar Burton reads a book from cover to cover. "This is TV at its best. Not every family has parents that read to them. This is as close as they'll get."

Unfortunately, this show has been cancelled. I guess my kids get enough books at home, because the handful of times my kids saw this show they found it dull. I always assumed it was aimed at early readers rather than preschoolers.

"Clifford the Big Red Dog" and "Clifford's Puppy Days": Canine who constantly learns new tricks. "Clifford rocks. He's smart, loving and adorable and is a great companion to kids who are starting to have an active fantasy life."

This was a show we watched fairly regularly for a while, but we've moved on. It's not an awful show, but since I like to nitpick, I wish the relationship between Emily Elizabeth and her "friend" Jenna wasn't stuck in the rut of E stoically putting up with J's poor treatment, until J realizes she is wrong, and apologizes. As the mother of two girls, I don't like seeing the heroine act like a doormat.

"Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat": Curious cat born from the mind of author Amy Tan. "Fabulous. It broadens our sympathy for people who don't look like the girl next door."

Ms. Perle's comment is interesting to me because the only Chinese people I've seen on this show are the adults, and they aren't very sympathetic-- kids are going to relate to the animals. Having said that, Sagwa is a pretty good show. The characters aren't one dimensional, the stories are interesting, and it is visually appealing. The historical Chinese setting, language, and cultural references are a great bonus. I would be happy to have my kids watch it regularly, but while they enjoy it occasionally, they usually prefer to spend their TV time on other shows.

Babykeeper... just hanging around...

This is a device Mommysentials is selling to restrain an older baby or toddler in a public restroom. I can see the appeal of it, after all restrooms are germy places, and some kids are born to run and will take off as soon as you sit down. But I won't be buying one of these, and I'll tell you why:

1. When I am out with an older baby or toddler, I almost always have a stroller. Bringing a stroller into the handicapped stall does the same job.
2. I have never had a kid who runs away from me in public places; if I did, I would invest in a harness (combined with discipline, of course).
3. The downfall of all of these occasional-use kid items is that they don't do you any good unless you have them with you. The advertisement claims that it's "small enough to take wherever you go", but the metal hooks have to weigh something, and since we've already established it's only useful when you don't have a stroller, that is extra weight to carry around on your shoulder. My history with this type of thing is that I carry it around for a month, never use it, and it doesn't survive the next diaper bag purge. The day after that I actually need it.
   
4. The hinges on public restroom stall doors are not designed to hold children. I'm sure most of them are up to the task (especially steel ones), but I don't want to test them this way. Particularly because not every child is going to hang there as happily and calmly as the kid in the picture.
   

I suppose that there are situations where this would be very helpful, I just don't think they're common.

A college cost calculator...

Here is an explanation of how I got the tuition predictions I used in my "Saving for College" post below. I looked up the current tuition at the schools of interest using this College Cost Finder
Then I took that number and used this college savings calculator to figure out what we'd need to save. I did assume a rate of return of 8%, and I'm taking advantage of the fact that I don't have to have all 4 years of tuition saved up on the day my child starts college. If I used their default rate of return of 6%, the required monthly savings would be @$300.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up!

And I'm in it! If you haven't seen it, Category 5 has written up a piece on the Weather Conditions on the Trail of Tears. It is truly a fascinating read.

Homeschooling and financial freedom (or lack thereof)

As we begin our first year as "official" homeschoolers (my oldest is now old enough to attend kindergarten at the school up the street), my family is declaring its independence from formal learning institutions. However I find myself, as a non-earning homeschooling mom, more dependent than I ever thought I'd be as an adult. My husband's income pays our bills, and my days are spent addressing the needs of our small children. I am not a martyr, and so I'm doing my best to find a path which lets us homeschool while giving me a little more independence, both financial and intellectual. We are just beginning our homeschooling journey, but we have gotten as far as we have thanks to the help of a generous community of homeschoolers, and I am wondering if there are any members of that community who have already traveled the path I am trying to find. It seems like one that could benefit many of us.

I feel very fortunate that our family is able to afford to live on one income, but there are drawbacks for me as the non-earning parent. Since I quit I no longer have a 401k and I am not fully vested in social security. Financial experts recommend that women have their own retirement savings, and I agree with them, as does my husband, fortunately. In the unlikely event we are unable to depend on my husband's income (due to illness, disability, divorce, a change in the economy, or even a desire on my husband's part to share the burden), I may again need to earn a salary. Finding a job after a long absence from the world of work may be challenging, and if I return to my old career I will almost certainly earn less than I was when I left several years ago. Add in the challenge of finding a job which is flexible enough to allow us to continue homeschooling, and it sounds like a nearly impossible task.

To address my financial concerns, I have made some changes and am researching others. In addition to the retirement savings I accrued while working, I have a Roth IRA to which we contribute regularly. I am actively researching ways in which I can contribute financially to our family's bottom line. My goal is to find an opportunity I can pursue part-time which has flexible hours-- this may be a small business which I run out of our home. Ideally, it will earn enough to compensate me for the time away from my family while keeping my skills current, engaging my mind and giving me contacts in the world of work. Finding time to run a small business well while homeschooling my kids is a major concern for me.

In order to get myself vested in social security, I need to earn Social Security credits, and so I will either need to pay myself a salary through my small business, or I will need a second job. I can earn a maximum of 4 social security credits each year, and to do that in 2006, I would need to earn $3880-- not a small amount of money, but not a full-time job either.

So, those are my goals. Is there anyone out there who can offer tips to get achieve them, or would like to walk along with me as I seek them?

Non-earning parents in single income families are often at greater financial risk than their partner, and because homeschooling families are more likely to have a non-earning parent, and that parent is more likely to be out of the workforce for a longer time, I believe it's important for the homeschooling community to discuss this issue.

Comments are appreciated.

Target.com is missing my order!

I do a lot of online shopping (shockingly, shopping with 3 kids under 6 in a store isn't a whole lot of fun). I have mostly good experiences, however I'm getting frustrated with target.com right now. I ordered a "bumbo seat" for my enormous baby 3 weeks ago. When I placed the order, I was promised delivery by the end of the month, which I was ok with, although it would have been nice if it was marked out of stock or on back order on the website (I see now that they've added availibility information). Last week I finally got a shipping confirmation, but I was concerned because the ups tracking information never got past "billing information received". When the ups tracking info hadn't changed a few days after the package was allegedly shipped, I sent an email to target.com asking about the discrepancy. I suspect the reply I got was computer generated-- it just repeated the information on my shipping confirmation email, including giving me my ups tracking number again. UPS still claims not to have received my package.

Yesterday was the day my package was supposed to arrive, according to the most recent estimate from target.com. I sent a second email today, using their "you didn't answer my question" link in the previous email. Hopefully I'll merit having a human being look at my problem and I can either get my package ASAP or just cancel the darn order and get my baby seat from a smaller retailer that's a little more responsive to their customers.

There's no such thing as bad taste...

Or maybe there is. This handsome guy could come to your bathroom for the low price of $90 (originally $150). He holds a second roll in his hat and he's sporting the bare-midriff look. I'd love to see a bathroom where this fits (I think).

I hate cheating...

It's always been a big pet-peeve of mine. One of my favorite professors in college started each course with a speech about how he wouldn't tolerate any cheating, and would in fact do everything in his power to get a cheater expelled. So I was interested to read Jay Mathews' ideas for reducing cheating on college essays. I was disappointed in his suggestion, though because it puts the cheater right in their comfort zone-- cheating in their own high school.

10 Ways to Fix College Admissions

By Jay Mathews

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; 9:48 AM

It is mid-July. College campuses thunder with the sound of high school students and their parents touring dorms, questioning admissions officers and sampling cafeteria food before they decide which schools to apply to.

....

3. Write college essays in class

---

The college application essay "editing" industry has gone too far. Students can now send in a few hundred random words and get back, for less than $100, a very polished essay written by an Ivy League graduate. And some parents just cannot resist rewriting whatever their child has done. The colleges should require that the essays be written in class, with the teachers signing the papers saying they were done in their presence without anybody's help, and sending them directly to the counseling office for mailing to the college. Quality 3, Likelihood 2.

There are a few flaws with this idea. First, it puts a burden on schools that schools will bear differently. Some kids may be limited to a single class period to write, while others are given expansive amounts of time-- as any writer knows, editing is huge, so the amount of time allowed to write will greatly effect the quality of the work. Some will have access to word-processor (a must for anyone with lousy handwriting), and others won't. It's true that life isn't fair, and some kids are going to have easier access to resources, no matter what, but tipping the application process even further against them is lousy. If allowed to write outside of school, many more kids would be able to find a computer to use, either at the library or at someone's home.

Second, the committed cheater probably won't be fazed. All they'd need to do is smuggle a pre-written essay into the classroom to copy over. I imagine that not every teacher would be thrilled to have college essay proctoring added to their schedule, so they won't all do a great job babysitting.

Third, some schools and teachers will cheat. There are high schools that get a lot of prestige from the college placement of their alumni, and they may decide to take a lawyerly approach to defining what "written without help" means.

I have my own suggestion for how to reduce cheating on the college application essay. During orientation, require that each incoming student write an essay on a surprise topic in a uniformly proctored setting. These essays can be compared to the ones submitted with their application, and if they don't seem to have been written by the same person, based on quality of writing and grammar, the acceptance is rescinded. It wouldn't catch everyone, but it would weed out the worst offenders. An additional advantage to this approach from my point of view is that homeschoolers wouldn't need a special accomodation to participate.

Saving for college...

We've been revisiting our finances, and looking at college savings. To put our kids through college at a Wisconsin state school with in-state tuition, assuming tuition continues to rise as it has been, we need to save $250 per kid, every month until December of their senior year of college. Or, we could just let them borrow $140k-- that'll give them a nice start in life. If we were going to save enough to send them to MIT, assuming tuition and fees continue to rise as they have been, we'd need to set aside $883/month to be able to afford the estimated $578,756 cost.

Umm $578,756? How could 4 years of school possibly be worth that much? If a student borrowed that much money and paid it back over 30 years at 4.75%, it would cost $3,019.07 per month, more than $36k a year. I'd like to say this is such an absurd value, it proves that the estimates used at the college savings websites are seriously flawed, but I'm afraid I'll be wrong. After all, colleges get to sell themselves to 18 year olds with no real understanding of debt or even the value of money, and parents don't seem able to say no when their kids are opting to sell their future for a fancy name on their diploma.

My hope is that the coming generation will think long and hard before taking on the debt a high-priced college education is likely to require. Mainstream magazines are already questioning whether college is "worth it". Thanks to the internet, there are many degree programs from reputable universities available to anyone with an internet connection, and typically at a much lower cost than attending on campus. It's true that a student who attended college online wouldn't get the real "college experience", but there could be advantages to an online program, such as working in your field while in school. With the growth in options to traditional colleges, I believe traditional institutions won't be able to let tuitions rise unchecked indefinitely. If they don't get their costs under control, attending college in person may become a luxury few people are willing to afford.

At the very least, I hope that if my kids choose traditional colleges, they go with an appreciation for the unique opportunity college can be, and a plan to get the most out of it. I will be certain they understand the cost of whatever debt they take on. Not having any student loans has given my husband and I a lot of freedom in deciding how our family should live. I would love for my kids to have that same freedom, but if "the experts" are right, it may require some hard choices on their part.

What exactly did they expect?

The Washington Post has an article this morning about the stress men feel while in Labor and Delivery with their wives: The Feeling Her Pain
Intensity of Childbirth Experience Leaves Some Men Feeling Ill-Prepared. You'd think there would be some sense of irony here, considering that the main source of their discomfort is the fact that their wife is in agony. Childbirth is SCARY FOR WOMEN TOO. I have unusually fast and intense labors, but it would terrify me to be there without someone to advocate for me, and given the fairly intimate exposure, I prefer for my husband to be that advocate. I understand that childbirth is kind of gross to watch (there's a reason I've never asked for a mirror to witness it myself), but, seriously guys, suck it up, and be there for your wives.

A word of warning: if you think childbirth is gross, wait till you try parenting! Whether you're all passing around the flu, or someone needs stitches, kids require a strong stomach.

Luckily, kids are worth it.

Search Engine Optimization Basics

I don't have a lot of time to devote to it, but I find search engine optimization fascinating (yes, I'm a geek). It surprises me how often I find a website that looks beautiful, but hasn't done even the most basic things to ensure that the site is listed correctly in search engines. Most of what I know about search engine optimization, I have learned from my Dad, who, with my Mom, sells beautiful Amish quilts online. Here is the information I think everyone who designs websites should know.

Search engines (google, yahoo, msn, etc…) use “web-crawling” programs to find and categorize websites. To make your website easy to find with search engines, you need to have links to your website from reputable websites, and your website needs to use the right words (keywords) in the right places so the programs categorize your site correctly. The best way I know to get links from reputable websites is to have valuable, original content; you can also trade links with other websites, and buy ads. The text of the link (the blue text people click on) matters-- if the link is just your web address (eg http://novatowi.blogspot.com/ ) it won’t do you as much good as if it is your keywords.

Making sure your keywords are in the right places in your site’s HTML is an easy thing to do. Your keywords are the words people might use to search the web when they’re looking for sites like yours. Essentially, the web-crawling programs read your source code and assume that the topics that come first in the source are the main topics of your site. To look at your source code, open your site in IE or Firefox, click on the “view” menu, and then “source”; the source code will open in a new window. Your keywords should be in your website’s title, meta-description, meta-keywords, and in large type at the top of your website’s text (as seen in the source code— if the site has columns of text, make sure that the column listed first contains your keywords). It is also good to have keywords in your website address. The “meta-description” is the blurb you see under the title when a site is listed in a search engine. It should be a couple sentences, and should both include keywords, and be something that would encourage a person to look at your site.

Each page in a site should have a different title and description.

A couple surprises I get everyday...

I have signed up to receive The Writer's Almanac and a daily lesson plan by the New York Times via email. This means that everyday, I can read a poem I would likely never stumble upon on my own, and then read an article in NYT I would have likely overlooked. It's probably not as good as having a large circle of well-read friends, but it fits into my life more easily.
Culture
Cool links

Yet another blog...

We'll see how this goes! Thanks for looking.

Ellen