Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Papers 
 

Smartmom is mad as hell and she’s not going to take it anymore. You
should not send your kid to school if he’s throwing up or has diarrhea!

Sounds reasonable, huh? But the old Conventional Wisdom has been
turned upside-down, thanks to the insane competition to get into a good
middle school.

Last week, another parent told Smartmom’s friend, Lawyer Mom, that
it’s better to send her fourth-grader to school sick and then pick him
or her up later than risk too many absences on the child’s elementary
school record.

See, fourth grade is the year that matters for middle school
admissions and middle school admissions people look at testscores,
grades, absences and lateness.

And all things being equal, absence and lateness are the deal-breakers.

These middle schools don’t want the kids with the lousy alarm clock,
slacker parents, or compromised immune system. They want the kids whose
parents are stupid enough to send them to school when they’re sick.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Wouldn’t you know it, just days after this disturbing conversation
with her friend, Lawyer Mom’s son woke up with a stomachache,
accompanied by diarrhea, cramps, the works.

“Mommy, I can’t go to school,” came the young man’s voice from the bathroom.

Lawyer Mom’s body pulsed with worry as she heard her friend’s voice
echoing in her head: Send him to school. Send him to school. You can
always get him later after the teacher has taken attendance. Then he
can make his exit. But whatever you do: send him to school.

“Look,” she told her 9-year-old son through the bathroom door.
“You’re not going to die. Go for a couple of hours. If it gets really
bad, I’ll come pick you up.”

O righteous parent who does what is best for her child! Lawyer Mom
knew that, diarrhea or no diarrhea, she was investing in her child’s
future. Harvard, Yale, Upper Carroll Middle School. Visions of Phi Beta
Kappa were dancing in her head.

So what if he was coming down with a stomach virus? The present moment no longer exists: it’s all about the great big future.

Sure enough, the nurse called at 10:30 am. “I threw up,” he told his mother over the phone.

Lawyer Mom ran over the school (she lives a block away) and picked
up her son. She apologized profusely to him. Luckily, he’s an
easy-going guy. He didn’t mind too much that his mother had sacrificed
his health, his comfort, and the health of the other school children
for middle school.

Later, Lawyer Mom emailed her son’s teacher and told her what
happened. The teacher emailed back: “That’s the silliest thing I’ve
ever heard. He doesn’t have excessive absences. You’ll get other kids
sick.”

But what does that teacher know? She’s not the one choosing between
the 90-percent on-time student and the 89-percent on-time student.

Smartmom herself heard the head admissions honcho at High School for
Telecommunication Arts and Technology tell a group of parents point
blank that, because the school had many more applicants than it can
handle, she checks the number of lates that the child got in seventh
grade.

If there are more than 10, she said, she just scratches the name off the list. “Lateness is a big deal around here,” she said.

It’s no wonder parents are in a tizzy about these things.
Tizzies-R-Us. Last week, the New York Times revealed that parents are
holding their children back until they are 6-years-old for kindergarten
in order to give them an edge over their classmates.

What about a 12-year old kindergartner? Now, they’d definitely have
an edge over their classmates. Why not hold the kids until they’re 14
or 15, and let those teachers deal with adolescent angst. And no,
kiddo, you can’t work on your MySpace page during Choice Time.

Perhaps Smartmom is a bit sensitive on the topic because OSFO is not an early riser.

“If you don’t get moving, girlie,” Smartmom told her the other day,
“you’re not going to get into the middle school of your choice.”

“I care more about my sleep than middle school,” OSFO said pulling her blanket over her head.

“Okay,” Smartmom said trying not to go ballistic. “So if you get into a terrible middle school, don’t blame me.”

Smartmom could not believe what she was saying. But she couldn’t
stop herself: “I will not defend you when they ask me why you were five
minutes late more than 10 times.”

The OSFO stormed out of her bed, got dressed, and kept her hair
styling to a quick six, seven, eight (“Would you finish, already?”),
nine minutes.

Thankfully, they got to the schoolyard just in time. The OSFO
wouldn’t even look at her when she said goodbye. “I love you,” Smartmom
whispered but she was gone.

Smartmom felt ashamed of herself and terrible for the things she had
said to her terrific little girl, who, she hoped, wasn’t now completely
traumatized and afraid about middle school like her mother.

And fear is what it’s all about: fear of failing, of not having
enough; of not adequately preparing one’s children for the free market
economy that we live in; fear that they won’t measure up.

Mostly, Smartmom is afraid that she has succumbed to the real parent
trap: trying to do the right thing for your kid without really thinking
deeply about what the right thing is.

Later that day, Smartmom apologized to OSFO. “Good, maybe I won’t
have to hear about middle school first thing in the morning.” OSFO said
still smarting from what Smartmom had said.

Smartmom promised she’d never bring up the topic again. But she knew
she was lying. It was as inevitable as the occasional stomachache, a
bout of diarrhea, or parents behaving badly.