I spent yesterday in Court.

The question over child custody is one filled with many passions.

What matters to a court of law? There are no standard answers.

What is the bench looking for? Again, there are no standard answers.

The one undeniable goal for any family is to place the family focus on the child. It’s not as simple and easy as it sounds. There are many adults who simply can’t make a child the first priority because the struggle to survive is the first priority.

I read a lot of theology and philosophy because I like the challenge of complex thought. In order to be able to begin to enjoy something like complex thought, it’s obvious that certain physical human needs need to be met.

These are safety, food, clothing, housing, and a sense of well being. Education of any kind requires that the basics be covered. People who are not comfortable because they are hungry, have no place to sleep, have nothing to wear, are going to focus on those things first, not education.

So, like the family who is comfortable, education becomes an important issue because there is time to invest in something besides the basics. Some families spend a lifetime just grasping for a roof, food, and a non-humiliating set of clothes.

When you look at a family who is dependent, who constantly has their hand out to anyone who is willing or even not so willing to supply the basics, who is dependent on the state for the basics, it’s easy to see how education is not going to be a priority. It’s going to be a secondary concern.

So in a court case that pits a dependent family against what amounts to an independent family, do things like education matter for the child?

In everyone’s life there should be a time when he or she is the focus of the family. Usually that comes in childhood. A child can grow up as the center of the family life, gaining and growing and able to live the life of the child in innocence and a kind of childhood bliss that allows creativity and imagination to develop. Childhood is short enough. It matters in that the child learns certain important things about life: the positive approach to the passions because the greatest part of being in the human community is the ability to be positive and to have the creativity to turn positives to art, music, literature, and complex thought.

Then, when the child becomes and adult, he or she is able to dutifully engage in being the adult and is able to let his or her children have the center stage. He or she has had a turn, and now it’s time to turn that turn over so the next generation can learn the same things.

When the family focus is on the adult instead of the child, the joys of life pass the child by. He is too keen on pleasing the parent, too keen on being the adult, keeping an eye on his parent’s well being, worrying about the parent, the household, siblings, and whether there is enough of anything to go around. The very idea of creativity, art, music a postitive look at life is buried with an avalanche of daily chores and cares.

Recreation is usually an issue. “I am not getting enough for myself,” cries the parent of a parent focused family. “More is never enough.” And the child makes up for what the parent thinks he is not getting, by going without. In an extreme case, the child forfeits his childhood altogether for the sake of the parent.

When the child of a parent focused family grows up, he or she will either become the parent and steal from his children or continue to give the focus of the family away – to his own children. It will never be his turn to be the focus of anything. It makes saints and sinners.

As we look into the profiles of families, a thinking person realizes that the lives of saints and sinners are both common. Suffering is the human condition. The question is are we clearly going to see what’s going on and stop it in individual cases, or are we going to blithely turn our heads and say it really doesn’t matter.

I love these out of the way places because it’s really so close to home. Borneo (check out the geography link) is one of the most primitive places on earth, but at the same time, when you read an article like this, you could be reading it in New York City.

Thirty Attend a Childcare Conference

By Laila Rahman

Thirty officers from the Department of Community Development of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Education are attending a “Training Course in Monitoring Quality Childcare Services for Children from 0 to 3 Years” from August 22 to 26.

The five-day training was organised by the Department of Community Development and cost-shared by UNICEF and Regional Training and Resource Centre in Early Childhood Care & Education for Asia (RTRC Asia), Singapore.

Conducting the training are Ms Lynn Heng Soo Lee, Senior Training Specialist and Mrs Geraldine Zuzarte, Training Specialist from the Regional Training and Resource Centre in Early Childhood Care & Education For Asia (RTRC Asia).

RTRC Asia is a leader in the training and development of early childhood professionals locally and in the region.

Their vision and mission are to enhance the quality of care and education of young children and to support early childhood professionals, parents and others who work with children. The centre works with partners who share the same goal to contribute to the well being of children and families in Asean and beyond.

Through active training, consultancy, workshops and educational programmes, they continue to make the vision a reality. At the end of the workshop, participants would develop an understanding of how to identify the developmental characteristics of infants & toddlers; physically, emotionally, socially and cognitively, to identify the developmental appropriate practices for infants and toddlers in areas of adult child interaction, environment, equipment and materials, health and safety, caregiver and family interaction and programming, to examine the components of quality care for infants and toddlers, to identify the procedures for implementing quality checks and follow up.

I couldn’t resist this one. It just seems so far away:

Minister Sarki inspects child care centres KATHMANDU, NEPAL, Aug. 21:

Assistant Minister for Labour and Transport Management Golche Sarki carried out an inspection of child care centres and informal education centres run by the Ministry at Gaurighat, Jorpati and Mahankal area of Kathmandu today.

The Centres have been established with the objective of rendering care-taking services and providing informal education to the children working as laborers at the local carpet factories.On the occasion, Assistant Minister Sarki issued instructions to the employees of the Centres to render their services with added dedication towards the children.

Also on the occasion, various educational materials were distributed to a total of 224 children of the Centres.

I noticed that someone tried to hook up with this blog site by typing in “child abuse.”

Every day I get fifteen or so email postings about childcare across the nation and world where a child has been abused, maimed, killed or sexually abused.

It would be very easy to post these stories, but child abuse is not child development, and I really don’t think it fits well here.

The question stands: Why would you want to read about children being abused?

If there is a positive story, I will post it, but nightmares about kids is not what this blog is about.

On the other hand, there was a criminal story posted this weekend that held some interest. It’s about medicating children in order that they sleep. Lots of parents over the years have given a taste of something to their own children when the absence of sleep makes a child uncomfortable. I have heard it recommended by doctors, but not often and not routinely.

The story here is about what happens when it’s a regular part of so called child care, and administered by a provider unbeknown to the parents. I think it’s worth publishing simply as something to know about for future reference.

My personal belief is that childcare is not the place for medication.

Story:

Tests found day care kids sedated

By GREG TUTTLE Of The Gazette Staff

The parents of three children who prosecutors said were sedated with drugs at a Laurel day care testified Friday at Sabine Bieber’s negligent-homicide trial, including one woman who said Bieber considered killing herself if police came for her. Patricia Roma said her 2-year-old son was among the three children who tested positive for an allergy medicine that prosecutors said Bieber used to sedate children at her Tiny Tots Day Care.

Another child, Dane Heggem, died of an overdose of the over-the-counter medication on Jan. 31, 2003, prosecutors said.

Roma said she spoke with Bieber the day the Heggem child died at the day care and numerous times after the child’s death as investigators were building a homicide case.

During one of those conversations, Roma said, Bieber said she was being unfairly targeted and would commit suicide if arrested.

“She said it was a witch hunt and that they were going to blame her because they wanted to blame someone for the death of baby Dane,” Roma testified. “And if they were coming to arrest her, she would kill herself before letting her children see her taken away.”

Roma also said Bieber described how she had “gone over their story” with her partner, and investigators would find no evidence to contradict it.

“She was sticking to her story, that was her story, and they wouldn’t find anything different than her story,” Roma said.

For the first time during the trial, which began Tuesday in District Court, Bieber appeared to show some emotion. She repeatedly wiped away tears as Roma spoke.

Roma was among a half-dozen witnesses who took the stand Friday. The jury also heard testimony from social worker Tana Johnson, who said Bieber tossed a small dose cup into a sink while being questioned at the day care two weeks after the boy’s death.

But Johnson agreed with defense attorney Robert Stephens that Bieber may have been removing the dose cup after being told she was being cited for a violation because the medicine was accessible to children.

Bieber is charged with felony tampering with evidence for the incident. She also is on trial for negligent homicide and three counts of criminal endangerment. She faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison if convicted. The trial is expected to last through next week.

Roma was the last of three parents called to testify Friday. The criminal-endangerment charges against Bieber allege that she gave their children doses of diphenhydramine to manage their naps. The drug is an antihistamine commonly known by the brand name Benadryl.

Deborah Ludwick said her son attended Tiny Tots Day Care in January 2003 at the age of 8 months. She said it came as a surprise when investigators told her tests showed the baby had the allergy drug in his system.

“I had no idea where it came from,” she said.

Her son did not need the medicine, and she had not given Bieber permission to give it to him, she said.

Monica Stricker’s 4-year-old son also tested positive for the drug. She said her son had been “sluggish all the time” but became “alive again” after Tiny Tots was closed after the death of Dane Heggem.

“It was like he was a different kid,” she said.

The prosecution began its case Wednesday with testimony from Travis and Calista Heggem, who said their son was healthy before his death and they did not give Bieber permission to give him the antihistamine.

During opening statements, defense attorney Robert Stephens said Bieber denies giving the children the drug to make them sleep and Dane Heggem’s death could have been caused by an undiagnosed heart condition.

I’m already fielding phone calls about Grand Parents’ Tea. It’s an annual event in September for getting to know grandparents and encouraging them to be more active in the children’s school life.

With more people working outside the home, it’s hard to coordinate a party that includes everyone, so we make a special event every September just for Grandparents, but mom and dad are invited too.

The Tea will be on September 16 at 3:00 and include cookies and tea.

If it’s nice, we can go out on the patio which means the playground.

Getting to know the grandparents has always been a real pleasure. We are constantly grateful for all the help and care our grandparents offer us. I wonder how many of them know that they can have lunch with us any day simply by dropping by. We eat at 12:30 and we love the company.

Grandparents often ask, “What can we donate to the school?” The best answer right now is “Anything you want,” but things like candy, apples, bags of carrots for the animals, little $1.00 picture frames for the art shows, cat food, books, playground balls, paper towel, cookies, and things like that really help not only the expense of running a school like ours, but helps keep the errands down.

If grandparents like to work with children, they are always welcome to come by and do some reading or spend a few minutes telling a story. We’ll do crowd control, so you can have a straight shot at teaching.

When we start fall field trips, grandparents are always welcome to come. We go out the farm and take a hay ride which is a lot of fun. We also go to the haunted library for story time during the Halloween Season.

We’re a family place, and we welcome any and all contributions of time, talent and treasure.

Rearing a child is not a dull experience. There are lots of selfish parents who think their lives are the only lives that count, that the very idea of spending time and energy on someone as insignificant as a child is beyond any expectation – at least for them.

Lots of selfish parents pass the job onto their spouse – could be the mother passing the work to the father, or the father passing the work exclusively to the mother. And what this narcissistic parent is saying is: let someone else do the work, let someone else build these children’s lives, I’m busy taking care of myself.

“Isn’t the fact that I’m here enough?” I’ve heard that one. “Isn’t my paycheck enough?” Heard that one too. The answer is no. And more times than not when an unselfish spouse is married to a selfish one, the children are short changed. One overworked parent carries the entire burden of rearing the children, much like the ant, and the other parent, the grasshopper simply amuses himself.

The parent is the primary educator of the child, and when the parent absents himself for any reason, the child’s formation is in jeopardy. The family is not set up to pamper one member while the other members go without.

Yet in a world of quick divorce and many marriages, that seems to be the ticket. “Make my life uncomfortable, and I’m leaving.” So the worker parent sacrifices everything for the one, and the grasshopper ends up leaving anyway out of guilt or because he or she is gets tired of a work horse partner. And if they stay, they stay with a chip on their shoulder which makes everyone uncomfortable.

Partnership in marriage comes from a deep desire to build something with someone. To build a life, to rear the next generation with someone you love. It’s an investment in the future, “a building up of riches” anyone can be proud to take into the next world.

Yet there are times when it all gets confused, and that confusion comes out of narcissism or a desire to love the self first and foremost. Then, the partner who is rightfully asking for the attention promised in the marriage vows becomes the enemy. Treating the spouse like an enemy amounts to deceit. It leaves the burden of what marriage is supposed to be about – real and genuine care – to a single parent, it leaves a partner alone with all the responsibilities of marriage and none of the rewards.

When I hear from someone how rearing a child is boring, I cringe. I wonder about all the other lacking pieces of life and wonder just how unhappy the bored adult is in all the other aspects of his or her life.

I was stunned to read this. It’s the Garden School revisited in a town next to where my daughter in law was reared. It didn’t cost 22 million dollars to begin the Garden School. It only cost $160.00. But they didn’t have Judy and Edith, and in there lies the difference. Read about what they do. They should have called us. Could have saved the state a lot of money.

Collaboration Key At Almost-complete Friendship SchoolTeachers Prepare Curricula as Ribbon-Cutting.

By PATRICIA DADDONADay Staff Writer, WaterfordPublished on 8/20/2005

Waterford — Ten kindergarten and 20 preschool teachers are preparing for a learning experience as new to them as it will be to their students.

The mix of veteran and new early-childhood teachers and instructional aides will spend next week boning up on math, literacy and science curricula, learning to use new laptop computers and organizing classrooms at the Friendship School, which has its ribbon-cutting Wednesday.

The $22 million public magnet school on Rope Ferry Road will welcome 466 preschoolers and kindergarten students from New London and Waterford on Aug. 31. The school is designed for very young urban, suburban and special needs students.

Interim director Kathy Suprin said team-building, goal-setting and “putting heads together” will be the focus not only next week, but in weeks to come.

In their new instructional environment, teachers will work with up to 18 students in interconnected classrooms arranged in “pods,” or clusters of three — two preschool classes and one kindergarten group. From offices behind the classrooms, teachers will chart student progress in portfolios and reports to parents.

The design fosters “co-teaching” in which one of the teachers in a cluster has expertise in special needs, while the other two teachers and three or more instructional aides have backgrounds in special and regular education. Together, they share the duty of teaching the entire class, said Doreen Marvin, director of development at LEARN, the regional educational agency that spearheaded the project.

“So often, in a school, the kindergarten teacher is the only kindergarten teacher,” Suprin said in an interview Wednesday. “We’ll have 10 kindergarten teachers in the same building. That will be a first.”

Other firsts for the region include three consecutive years of early childhood education in one setting and a faculty with more than two-thirds of teachers qualified to teach special needs students, said Marvin.

The Friendship School faculty includes two preschool teachers and a speech pathologist from the Waterford school district and four kindergarten teachers and one preschool instructor from New London. Some veteran teachers developed the new curriculum and participated in the hiring of the instructional aides, said Suprin and Marvin.

“We have a great blend of people to teach (students) that they’re not very different from each other,” added Suprin. “We’re making differences invisible. And that’s the time to start, with three-year-olds.”

To be hired by LEARN, teachers had to be state-certified and familiar with the state Department of Education’s “frameworks for early childhood education,” which encourage development of a career ladder in the profession, recognition of accomplishments, and interaction with the communities they serve, according to the DOE Web site.

In addition to meeting state standards, the school plans to seek accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Skills the teachers are expected to have and to foster in one another include devising “developmentally appropriate activities” for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds in science, literacy and math, and principles that cross all subjects, like discovery, Suprin said.

An example would be to get a child to compare the size of building blocks, then build a wall the child could climb over without knocking it down, Suprin said.

Teachers also have to be able to work closely with families, said Marvin, since the parent is the child’s first educator. Parents can visit in adjoining observation rooms, where they can see how their child acts when he or she thinks parents are not around. They’re also welcome in the classroom.

“They have an open invitation to be there any time,” Suprin said.

I liked this article because it says what we all experience. Some links to the No Child Left Behind are on the links column.

Federal School Reform in Sad Shape

Friday, August 12, 2005

By WILLIAM L. BAINBRIDGE GUEST COLUMNIST

As a new school year begins, the political appointees in Washington, D.C., continue to demonstrate a profound and far-reaching lack of answers to the crucial questions surrounding U.S. public education. New data from their own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAPE), heralded as the nation’s education report card, show that the typical 13-year-old could read no better in the last school year reported (2003-04) than the student’s counterpart five years earlier. Stagnant reading scores among middle-school students have caught the attention of educators. School officials are starting to target literacy programs geared toward adolescents after years of focusing mostly on younger children.

The failure rates do not include students who dropped out of school before the tests were given. Under the current administration, high school dropout rates have continued to skyrocket. Heightened public attention to the ways in which dropout data can be manipulated, such as the proven-to-be-fraudulent Houston Independent School District “Miracle,” raise significant public concerns about the reliability of such performance measures.

We can just imagine the impact these non-completers will have on welfare, unemployment and crime rates.

Most parents don’t understand the federal No Child Left Behind law. Those who try may review the rules on their state department of education’s Web sites and read articles about the law. In great confusion, the pubic must once again turn to teachers and administrators to explain the law. The only thing parents can be sure of is that the law will keep changing.

Since President Bush signed this student testing legislation in 2002, with the support of prominent Democrats such as Edward M. Kennedy and George Miller, the U.S. Department of Education has changed the rules nearly every year. The political manipulation includes changes in measuring how much individual students learn in a year, measuring progress with students in special education and revisions in science rules. Even greater adjustments are expected when the law comes up for reauthorization in 2007.

Federal education officials claim they are trying to correct their previous mistakes. However, continually changing the rules makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to measure the productivity impact of the legislation over time.

The law requires states to test students in math and reading/language arts in grades three through eight and once in high school. We are told that by 2014, each student will be expected to pass every test, an unrealistic goal. In the meantime, examination scores must increase steadily for all children and each subgroup of students, including minorities, low-income students, children with disabilities and those who speak English as a second language.

The federal government currently permits up to 1 percent of special education students, those with severe learning disabilities, to take an alternative test. Because of rule modifications, an additional 2 percent of students will apparently also be permitted to take this modified test. The change likely will affect students with moderate disabilities, but federal officials have not yet released the new school-year guidelines. Mounting evidence suggests the rules will continue to change yearly.

A more significant change being debated is a “growth model.” Such a change could affect even more students. The federal law would still require schools to demonstrate that a specific percentage of students passed state exams each year. But a growth model would measure how well schools are teaching based on the improvement of individual students from one year to the next.

Ohioans, for example, could look at how a student performed on the state reading tests and see how much the child improved from the previous year. Those kinds of data give schools credit for increasing student achievement, even if test scores are low. More than 100 Ohio school systems reportedly are implementing growth models, but the integrity of the measurement process over time clouds the picture of understanding just how much progress is being made.

The No Child Left Behind law increasingly involves the federal government in virtually every aspect of local public education. In blue states and red states alike, the law continues to increase counterproductive tension between school systems, states and the federal government. The bottom line is federal reforms are not producing anticipated results because it remains impossible to legislate equal results for all students of diverse socio-economic backgrounds in all places.

This certainly demonstrates good reason to return to the true conservative tradition of local governance of education.

William L. Bainbridge is distinguished research professor at the University of Dayton and is president and CEO of SchoolMatch, a Columbus, Ohio-based educational auditing, research, data firm.

He can be reached at bainbridge@schoolmatch.com .

A grandson was visiting his grandmother one day when he asked, Grandma, do you know how you and God are alike?”

I mentally polished my halo while I asked, “No, how are we alike?”

“You’re both old,” he said.

We ALL felt old this week as the new group filed in one by one. The old kids, who used to look so young, now look like high school kids. “Go fetch me coffee, child,” which used to be a request of someone who came up to nearly my shoulder, is now the job of the kid who last year came up to my belt. “MMMM,” I thought, “Wonder what will happen?”

In the kitchen, when we turn to one of the kids, our eyes aim high. “Where is she?” Then you look down, and there is this remarkably small child with an actual question or request.

It’s the same every year, the only difference is personal and particular jolt as you realize that one that used to need help in the bathroom reaching the sink is helping to tie a shoe or the one who came to fetch the coffee.

Friendship between teacher and student never ceases to be a “senior” thing. I remember inviting three of my teachers to my wedding. “Sister Helen, I’m getting married, do you want to come? Here’s an invitation. There’s one for Sister Barbara and one for Sister Martha as well.”

What she jolted at was not that the invitation was engraved at Tiffani’s, but that the engraving bore the name of the teacher in the next classroom. Needless to say she came and we had a good laugh over it.

Thirty-five years later, I still understand what it means for a teacher to be friendly with the older kids and treat them a little differently. Befriending them is somehow their right as they achieve a certain classroom adn life expertise and they begin to grasp what it means to be a senior child and do all the work and know where everything is and how to do everything.

This year, we have a great group of senior kids. It will be a wonderful year, if we can just get those little ones to shape up. Somebody call the seniors!!!

25 Years of Caring – Via Christi’s on-site day care is rarity in Wichita

BY PHYLLIS JACOBS GRIEKSPOORThe Wichita Eagle

“A snail! A snail! I found a snail!”

It’s not exactly what you expect to hear on a summer morning when you stop by a day-care center.

But it created quite a stir at the Via Christi Child Development Center this week, where some of the “summer rec” students were analyzing pond water under a microscope .

The center, founded 25 years ago out of a need to attract and retain workers during a severe nursing shortage, continues to be a powerful recruiting and retention tool today.

“They have a great program, and it really works well for their employees,” said Teresa Rupp, director of the Child Care Association of Wichita and Sedgwick County.

The center, located on Via Christi Regional Medical Center’s St. Francis Campus, provides child care and early childhood education at subsidized rates for employees of Via Christi Health System.

During the school year, its students range in age from 2 weeks to 6 years old. During the summer and for a week at Christmas, there also are special programs for elementary school children.

This month, the center is celebrating 25 years of continuous operation as an employer-subsidized child care center, something still rare in Wichita.

“I can’t think of another center quite like Via Christi’s,” Rupp said.

There are some other employer-run day cares in Wichita. Cessna Aircraft operates a center for trainees at its 21st Street facility. Wichita State University has a center for students and faculty, and McConnell Air Force Base offers a child development center.

Other businesses offer a pre-tax savings plan for child care expenses and in some cases provide matching funds for the money employees put into those accounts.

“Overall, you have businesses recognizing the need to help but choosing a method short of offering a center,” Rupp said.

Back when the Via Christi center first opened, employer-sponsored day care was a concept getting a lot of attention. But over the next decade, most businesses opted not to run day-care centers.

“There are a number of problems,” Rupp said. “If you’re a very large employer, it’s hard to have enough space for everybody. So you wind up with some employees getting a benefit that others don’t.”

“Then you have the fact that most businesses don’t have experience at running a day care. It’s not what they do, and it’s difficult to do well and to make money.”

Via Christi’s program has endured largely because of a strong commitment from the religious orders that sponsor Via Christi — the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother — said director Beverly Adams.

“We’ve had very strong support from our administration,” she said. “It’s part of the mission.”
With space for about 180 children, the center has a short waiting list, generally for infants, Adams said.

The center caters to the needs of hospital workers. For example it offers a longer day — 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. –to accommodate 12-hour shifts and provides two-day minimum use for a slot. Its rates of between $107 and $162 a week are below today’s Wichita market average for centers.

“We try to make this as friendly and as accessible to our employees as possible,” Adams said.
“We foster a real family atmosphere and a sense of community.”