Room Rules: What’s Reasonable?

Room Rules: What's reasonable?

Excellent question that and it reminds me of the transition I have been making from being the Mother of a child to the Mother of a teen.  Good Heavens, my daughter KNOWS how to create a mess and she knows how to do it in short shrift.  Now, this has not changed but her willingness to do something about it afterward has.

It is as if she uses her mess to get my attention and then show me that she won't do what I say no matter what the punishment.

My older family members such as her grandmother and grandaunt tell me it's normal for teens and that I am being unreasonable but I seem to remember the both of them pulling their hair out when my cousins and I were growing up too.  I also seem to remember that I understood that a plate under my bed for three days was DISGUSTING!

Every single day with my child brings new lessons as to patience, tolerance and understanding of different - all great life skills - she must be a soul mate.  I cannot think of a bigger transition than the one she is dragging me through and yes, on this count I must admit to being dragged :)

TEACH OUR CHILDREN WELL .....

I am rather snobbish about education because I am rather snobbish about who I spend time with - my husband calls me an elitist - chuckles.  It's just that I genuinely believe that time is my most precious resource and I accordingly wish to use it wisely.  I have found that the better educated folk are, the more interesting and informative they are and hence, the more time I am willing to invest in them.

That probably sounds incredibly selfish but hell, if we can't be selfish about how we spend our short time on this planet, if we cannot choose with whom, then what is the point of it all?

On that note, I have striven to be fairly well educated myself - forfend the thought of being a hypocrite after all - :) and am also particularly angst-ridden about ensuring that my daughter gets the best education I can provide for her. 

This got a bit difficult when I changed countries as I obviously had no idea how things worked in the new place.  Enter a Google search and the discovery of what I consider to be an absolutely invaluable resource in this splendid website. 

If you find yourself wondering how to go about deciding on education institutions, I sincerely suggest that you try this site - I have been using it since I got here, still get newsletters and couldn't be happier with the direction I have been steered in - in all my glorious snobbishness!

VACCINATIONS FOR SCHOOL

We've been moving for the past month and are paying double rental (GASP AND HORRORS!! simply because we had to ensure that we had THREE utility bills for proof of residence in order to transfer my incredibly reluctant teen into the new school district. Moving is stressful at the best of times but the financial pressure has been no fun either. We discovered that we had to acquire transcripts and something called a withdrawal form from the old school ourselves (despite an exchange of information permission slip) and so had to wait for same school to re-open at the beginning of August before we could begin the actual process of getting this show on the road.

So finally we manage to snaffle an appointment at the old school as of yesterday and I must admit, despite the 30 or so mile travel need, it was efficiently handled to say the least. Filled with excitement at the prospect of actually getting this sorted for once and for all, we proceeded directly to the district office, copies of everything except recent x-rays of our internal organs in hand, only to be told that my dear teen's vaccinations were not up to date enough for her to go to school - SIGHS!!!!!

In South Africa, we have our vaccinations done when we are babies, we have a clinic card until we are 6 and basically, all is complete by then. Just to enter the States last year was a bit of a medical disaster with said teen having to have SEVEN vaccinations (which she had already had of course) administered all at once, so that the Embassy appointed doctor would approve us as being clear and non-infecting healthwise for us to do our emigration. My rant about how unnecessary I found all of that is best left to another blog, suffice it to say that I regard it as a money-making scheme of the highest degree. The teen got very very very sick just before we left South Africa though, no doubt, because of being injected with all sorts of rubbish to make her "healthy".

Bearing all of that in mind, I am sure you can imagine how utterly offended I was that she was "not up to date" with vaccinations and that this is apparently good enough reason for her to not be allowed to attend school despite the attendance at school apparently being legally obligatory.

Needless to say, she was vaccinated again today and having had some time to calm down (it usually works with me) I believe that the silver lining is that she had a medical examination and any worried mommy moments I might have been having about her health have been attended to as all is in good working order. Still, doctor's appointment, more needles stuck into my child and all this, to get her into school. I'm a touch troubled by the system ....... has Pharma gotten to the government in this regard too? Can it really be that the state of California, which has no clue about worm infestations, truly knows more about vaccinations and the necessity of them than South Africa does? Somehow, I just don't know ............