Why do schools ask us to do so much extra crap?!?

[Anonymous]

Just don't do everything. Pick and choose what you do. Every activity like the "bring in a flower day" will have anywhere from about 25-75% of the class doing it. Your kid will almost never be "the only kid" who didn't do X.

If it is an actual assignment or a class project that they are doing, the teacher will send information home or send out an email to the parents. We do the stuff where there is a class assignment and then we pick and choose through the rest of the stuff. I talk with my kids about the things like "spirit week" where they do something every day. They pick the ones that they want to participate in (usually they'll pick 1 or 2 days out of the week that have a theme they want to follow and skip the rest).

[Anonymous]

I generally agree with you but your examples are weird. Why on earth did you drive 20 minutes to buy a flower? Do you live in a rural desert? And wearing green on St Patrick's day has been a thing for as long as I can remember.

[Anonymous]

My kids (they are much older now) used to celebrate the 100th day of school. Grr… One year I turned it into a weekend craft. A piece of yarn and fruit loops. They each made a necklace and make patterns with the colors, snack all day at school with it. Done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is twin day??

But yeah some of this annoys me too, although DC’s teacher this year is pretty good about sending emails.

National Twins Day is December 18. Just a one day celebration for twins.

There is also the Twins Day festival which is separate from National Twins Day. The Twins Day festival is usually the first full weekend in August (this year it will be August 5-7) and is a 3 day festival in Twinsburg, OH. It's like a huge carnival that has a midway, food, games, and a celebration of twins. People come from all over the country (not just multiples, but many people come just to celebrate and have fun) to attend.
https://twinsdays.org/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is twin day??

But yeah some of this annoys me too, although DC’s teacher this year is pretty good about sending emails.

National Twins Day is December 18. Just a one day celebration for twins.

There is also the Twins Day festival which is separate from National Twins Day. The Twins Day festival is usually the first full weekend in August (this year it will be August 5-7) and is a 3 day festival in Twinsburg, OH. It's like a huge carnival that has a midway, food, games, and a celebration of twins. People come from all over the country (not just multiples, but many people come just to celebrate and have fun) to attend.
https://twinsdays.org/

That’s not what we mean. Twin day means dress like someone else (so a pair dressed alike) for a day. It’s a great way to see visually who has no friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids (they are much older now) used to celebrate the 100th day of school. Grr… One year I turned it into a weekend craft. A piece of yarn and fruit loops. They each made a necklace and make patterns with the colors, snack all day at school with it. Done.

I hated the dress like a 100 year old person for the 100th day of school. So glad my kids have aged out of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a wealthy school district issue. My guess is bored SAHMs drive these things- they like getting the pictures, they like coming up with "fun" things to do at school, they like forcing ridiculous fund raisers and events so they can sponsor over the top assemblies, they like throwing elaborate school parties that require parents to either contribute a lot of money or sign up for something dumb. Social media drives it too. I went to a top public school in the 90s and we didn't do any of this and our mothers weren't making chalk posters for us to hold on the first day of school.


Again, just a guess. High(er) FARMS schools don't do any of that. Likely bc it will be ignored by most parents.

Non wealthy schools. It’s the working parents who control our pta who want to pretend they are doing something without actually doing anything. The sah generally handle any real stuff that has to be done and the others swoop in and take credit.

[Anonymous]

Ours has spirit week maybe twice a year and it's always optional. Once in Kindergarten we were asked to bring in an apple, and another time we were asked to bring in 100 of something. I sent in 2-3 apples for kids who might forget/might not be able to afford it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a wealthy school district issue. My guess is bored SAHMs drive these things- they like getting the pictures, they like coming up with "fun" things to do at school, they like forcing ridiculous fund raisers and events so they can sponsor over the top assemblies, they like throwing elaborate school parties that require parents to either contribute a lot of money or sign up for something dumb. Social media drives it too. I went to a top public school in the 90s and we didn't do any of this and our mothers weren't making chalk posters for us to hold on the first day of school.


Again, just a guess. High(er) FARMS schools don't do any of that. Likely bc it will be ignored by most parents.

I’m a sahm that helps at school a lot while you work and I hate this crap too! Waster of my time and money and to do list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is twin day??

But yeah some of this annoys me too, although DC’s teacher this year is pretty good about sending emails.

National Twins Day is December 18. Just a one day celebration for twins.

There is also the Twins Day festival which is separate from National Twins Day. The Twins Day festival is usually the first full weekend in August (this year it will be August 5-7) and is a 3 day festival in Twinsburg, OH. It's like a huge carnival that has a midway, food, games, and a celebration of twins. People come from all over the country (not just multiples, but many people come just to celebrate and have fun) to attend.
https://twinsdays.org/

That’s not what we mean. Twin day means dress like someone else (so a pair dressed alike) for a day. It’s a great way to see visually who has no friends.

Our school district does this multiple times a year. My dd loved it and her friends would do elaborate outfits together. My sons range from "Who cares" to "I want to do it because we get participation points" The solution we have come up with is to a have a tshirt from the local football team (we don't watch football, but Goodwill always has them available for a few $) My son wears the football shirt for twin days. On any given day at least 10 boys in middle school have on a shirt for the team. Last week when they had twin day ds came home and said at least 50 kids in the school wore one. Turns out lots of kids don't care enough to plan with a classmate but also don't want to be left out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I generally agree with you but your examples are weird. Why on earth did you drive 20 minutes to buy a flower? Do you live in a rural desert? And wearing green on St Patrick's day has been a thing for as long as I can remember.

OP here. I didn’t drive 20 min to buy a flower. I do live about 2 miles from the store that is in the opposite direction of the school. We also live in a busy area but thankfully there was no traffic today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually structured my whole adult life so I would always have time for stuff like this. My parents both worked high powered jobs and I was always acutely aware that there wasn’t time for anything. Like if I broke a glass, it wasn’t that they were mad at me for breaking the glass, but now we were going to be late and I could feel the stress.

Here are some options:
1) don’t wear green. Teach your kid to say “I didn’t have any green clothes but I have green snot today” or something, whatever. You don’t have to do this.
2) find something green like a hat or a Christmas stocking and make that work.
3) pick a flower from your yard
4) pick a flower from your neighbors’ yard.

I mean for goodness sake it’s daffodil season.

It sounds like you are time-poor. It’s easy to get that way but it’s not terrific for kids.

Whether you are working or not working, who wants this added to their day. I remember the last time they told us to bring a flower, we saw several classmates at the same store at like 7:45am. Today we were late so maybe that is why we didn’t see anyone.

Buy a bouquet and have us Venmo it or have the kids draw a flower.

Can’t wait for staff appreciation week where we are asked to contribute for a class gift, have kid draw a picture, bring a flower, bake cookies, on and on and on.

I don’t know why this especially ticked me off today. This stuff usually doesn’t bother me that much. Maybe because it was 2 days in a row. I have boys who always had green shirts. I felt annoyed yesterday about no green clothing and annoyed today about the flower. It isn’t like I have ever bought my boys green shirts specifically for St Patrick’s Day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a wealthy school district issue. My guess is bored SAHMs drive these things- they like getting the pictures, they like coming up with "fun" things to do at school, they like forcing ridiculous fund raisers and events so they can sponsor over the top assemblies, they like throwing elaborate school parties that require parents to either contribute a lot of money or sign up for something dumb. Social media drives it too. I went to a top public school in the 90s and we didn't do any of this and our mothers weren't making chalk posters for us to hold on the first day of school.


Again, just a guess. High(er) FARMS schools don't do any of that. Likely bc it will be ignored by most parents.

I honestly don’t think this is a SAHM thing. From a limited sampling of friends/people on Facebook, it really seems like working moms goes crazy for this stuff. I think it’s just the personality - extroverted people who love to buy things are more likely to be working moms.

[Anonymous]

I hate is pajamas day and Hats day. Call me snobby, but you just don’t dress like this to school and hats indoors are rude. No wonder so many adults think its totally ok to wear pjs to the grocery store…you don’t see this stuff outside US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I generally agree with you but your examples are weird. Why on earth did you drive 20 minutes to buy a flower? Do you live in a rural desert? And wearing green on St Patrick's day has been a thing for as long as I can remember.

Not that pp, but our house is one of the in our neighborhood that actually has bulbs planted. Most people here don't seem to have time for gardening or don't want to. And then you have all the people living in condos and apartments. And you have retail deserts out there too.