Category: Mothering without a licence

On RESPs and a few rambly thoughts about investing in education

I‘m in one of those transitional stages in parenting right now. For the first time ever, I have all three boys in school full time, and this is also the last year I’ll have them all in the same school. Next year Tristan is off to middle school, and by the time Simon hits middle school Tristan will be in high school. Then Lucas hits high school and – yikes! – Tristan will be off to university or college. How the hell did THAT happen?

walking to school

Framing it in those terms makes me realize how close we really are to having to consider funding three post-secondary educations. Yikes all over again! But thinking about this always makes me wonder – *should* we be paying for our kids’ education? Way back in the day, my parents covered my first half-year of university tuition, an amount I promptly squandered by flunking out and quitting during the Christmas exams. When I went back to school a few years later, I was already working full time for the government, and they paid for my tuition, so in essence I earned my own tuition through work. Beloved got a few parental loans early on but graduated with debt and piled on more when he went back for a college diploma after graduating university. We didn’t finish paying off his student loans until after Simon was born.

So there’s a part of me that thinks since we mostly made our own way and survived, we should expect the same from the kids. If I had an infinite budget, of course I’d pay rather than watch them struggle, but unless I start getting a LOT more blog sponsors in the next few years, it seems unlikely that we’ll have enough put away to get all three of them through an undergraduate degree each. And impossible though it is to imagine, I’ll actually be eligible for (gulp!) retirement the same year Lucas graduates high school.

So even though I do think there’s a point to be made for letting the boys earn their own way, I’ve been doing what I can to minimize the burden. Although I am ridiculously impractical when it comes to financial matters, one fiscally responsible thing we have done as a family was to establish small but regular contributions to a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for each boy. So when Mom Central Canada offered a sponsored opportunity to blog about RBC’s RESP program, I knew it would make great bloggy fodder and wondered why I hadn’t talked about it before.

Do you know about RESPs? They’re pretty awesome, actually. To steal a few words from RBC’s site, an RESP is “a tax-sheltered plan that can help you save for a child’s post-secondary education. An RESP combines flexibility, tax-deferred investment growth and direct government assistance to help you reach your education savings goals for your children.”

So what does that mean? First, it’s tax sheltered – this means that you don’t have to pay tax on the growth of the income within the RESP. So whatever you earn in interest and capital growth is tax-free while it’s in the plan.

The sweet part is the direct government assistance. Through the Canada Education Savings Grant, you get an additional 20% on up to $2,500 of contributions each year, up to a lifetime maximum of $7,200. Hello, free money from the government! And if you don’t take advantage of the full $500 (20% of the $2500 max) each year, the amount can be carried over to the next year’s contributions.

So what that means for us is that twice a month (on each payday for me) the bank automatically transfers $25 into an RESP for each boy. It’s not a huge amount, but it slowly adds up. And the bonus is that for each $25 deposit, we get an additional additional $5 contribution into the RESP from the Canada Education Savings Grant. If I were a more fiscally prudent person, I’d probably be micromanaging the funds within the RESP to ensure maximum performance and returns, but, well, I’m not. Still, over the five or so years we’ve had the RESP, we’ve accumulated more than $1000 of sheltered growth between the three plans above and beyond what we received from the Canada Education Savings Grant.

Aside from regular payday withdrawls, we have also put a few financial gifts into the boys’ RESPs, and I know in some families it’s a rule that part of each allowance goes in to an RESP. We’ve even collected and rolled pocket change and slipped it into the RESPs. There are a lot of little ways you can easily ferret away a few pennies nickels here and there, and dump them into the plan when you have a few piled up. RBC has a plan called the RESP-Matic – click through and it will show you how your contributions can grow over 10, 15 and 21 years.

So what happens when your child is ready to take advantage of the RESP? Per the RBC RESP FAQs (ha, I feel like I’m typing in code with all those acronyms!):

Once the student is enrolled in a qualifying post-secondary education or training program, the accumulated income, grants and bonds within the RESP can be paid out to the student at the discretion of the subscriber. These payments are called Educational Assistance Payments (EAPs). The beneficiary must claim all EAPs as income on his or her tax return in the year that they are received. Usually, this results in little or no tax since students tend to be in the lowest tax bracket and can claim tax credits for the personal amount and education-related expenses.

So, even if you are laughably inexperienced or merely wildly inattentive in the realm of financial matters *coughlikemecough*, it couldn’t be easier to set up an RESP and start saving for your kids’ educations.

What do you think? Do you feel parents have an obligation to fund at least an undergraduate degree or diploma or do you think it builds character to pass that responsibility on to your kids? Do you have any thoughts or advice to share about setting up an RESP?

Disclosure: I am part of the RBC RESP blogger program with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions I express are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or anyone else with whom I may be affiliated.

And you thought the time she enrolled the boys in dance camp was bad…

I was pleased with our choices around summer camp this year. When I was too slow to catch spots in the local city-organized camp in Manotick, I was forced to look for a camp outside the neighbourhood and came across some arts camps I thought would be of interest. Simon chose drama camp and Tristan chose painting camp. The camps were a little more expensive than the general-interest ones, but the boys were enthusiastic about the subjects and we managed to stretch the budget a bit for the sake of camps that hit the sweet spot of engaging content and easy access for pick-up and delivery. And, ahem, availability at the last minute. Procrastination FTW!

Early last week, we got a call saying Tristan’s camp had been cancelled due to low enrolment. I was ticked. IMHO a camp offered by the city should be subsidized well enough that it goes ahead regardless of low enrolment, but apparently the city feels differently. After a bit of scrambling, and a bit of whinging, and some kind offers of assistance from some lovely peeps on Twitter, we decided to enroll Tristan in the drama camp with Simon. If you know the boys, you know this is a bit of a stretch, but there is something to be said for convenience and staving off last-minute panic. Besides, it was only for a week.

That would be summer camp fail #1.

This morning, Beloved was rather disgruntled when he called me from the parking lot of the Nepean Sportsplex. For some reason, I had blindly assumed that the Nepean Creative Arts Centre was the same as the Nepean Visual Arts Centre. Aside from the one word difference in their titles, there is one other key difference between these two facilities: the latter is in the Nepean Sportsplex, which is on Beloved’s way to and from work, and the former is in Bells Corners, 20 minutes west of there. Guess which one houses the boys’ drama camp?

That would be summer camp fail #2.

So about half an hour after that I heard from Beloved again, who was now more agitated than ever after dropping the boys off in Bells Corners 15 minutes late for their first day. Poor Tristan took one look at the room full of his fellow campers and wanted to turn tail and run. In a room full of their fellow campers, Tristan and Simon were the only boys. And, just for maximum discomfort, it looks like all of the girls are younger than they are.

That would be summer camp fail #3.

Sigh. Remember that time I accidentally enrolled the boys in dance camp? I never thought that accidentally enrolling them in dance camp would be one of the BETTER camp choices I’d made. I’m so sorry, boys.

photo of kids at summer camp

Seriously! Who has this much trouble registering their kids in an appropriate summer camp? All it needed to be was convenient (fail), affordable (fail) and not make the boys feel awkward and miserable (fail).

Clearly, someone needs to relieve me of my duties as chief camp organizers. At this rate, next summer I’ll have them enrolled in a fashionista camp in Carleton Place.

On the plus side, all these blog posts will make for an easy-to-follow trail of evidence for the boys’ future therapists. And I can probably use this to coerce them into good behaviour for most of the school year. “If you don’t quit it, I’ll enroll you in summer camp again next year and you never know what I’ll come up with this time!”

And hey, this whole fiasco has inspired a what I think is a great new tagline for the blog. “Parenting by misadventure.” Yep, that about sums it up.

The one with the new treehouse

It was almost three years ago that we first saw this house. I joke now (in that joking sort of way that has more than a nugget of truth in it) that there was a spectacular porch that I adored, an amazing treehouse that enchanted Tristan from first sight, and oh yes, a very nice house in between them. About two years before that, Tristan had confided to his Granny that the dearest wish of his wee heart was a treehouse of his own.

The treehouse was in rough shape when we inherited it. The rope ladder was a little tough for Simon and impossible for then two-year-old Lucas to climb. In fact, I’m pretty Lucas never actually set foot in the treehouse. I was up there a few times, but it didn’t feel terribly safe to me. It was made of plyboard and had begun to cant at an awkward angle. For the first year or so, we encouraged the kids to go up in it only one or two kids at a time, but by last summer it was clearly not safe enough for even one 50 lbs kid, and we banned them from climbing into it entirely when the plyboard floor began to rot through.

Dawn on the first day of spring

It’s a sort of a kid paradise in the backyard, with an enormous play structure, a swinging rope and a tire swing, which took away the sting from a treehouse you could see but not use. But this spring we noticed the playstructure too had drifted away from “weathered” and toward “rotting” in more places than one. Last year we replaced the swing set portion, but it was clear that the rest of it was deteriorating quickly. Beloved and I decided to act on our idle year-old plan of getting a quote from someone to get them fixed up.

A friend of a friend, and conveniently someone from our local school community, came out in June and took a look at the treehouse and playstructure with an eye to rehabilitating one or the other. The prognosis was grim. Neither could be fixed – they’d have to be razed and rebuilt. The playstructure would have probably come in around $5k to $6k to replicate (have you seen the insane prices on these things??) and about a fifth of that to rebuild the treehouse.

If you follow me on any other social media, you might have seen some vaguebooking status updates as Beloved and I debated the merits of trying to do the job ourselves or hire a competent professional. For perhaps the 300th time since we moved into this house of love and ongoing challenges, I wished Beloved or I were handy folk. Alas, no hero stepped forth to rescue us from our treehouse dilemma (hey, sometimes you just gotta ask!) and Beloved and I were left to our own devices. I’m pretty sure we *could* have adapted the plan put together by the contractor and built something that vaguely resembled a treehouse, but the more I thought of my children, and the neighbourhood children, to say nothing of the children I am occasionally paid to photograph, being suspended five feet off the ground on something Beloved and I built? Let’s just say I lost a little bit of sleep over this one. And it seemed like a crappy thing to do, accepting a quote and then filching the plan. But oh how I agonized over it all.

The day we finally decided that we’d rather invest in the treehouse than in some of the other home repair jobs that also desperately need some attention (and money!) around the house, I actually cried a little bit. I didn’t realize until we decided to go ahead with the project how badly I wanted to do this for the boys. There’s not much of a playground culture here in Manotick, and I love the idea of having the kind of yard where neighbourhood kids can play. And Tristan is 11 years old now – his treehouse years will soon be behind him. (Although Beloved said something about future girlfriends and the treehouse which I will judiciously choose to ignore.) I imagined it as a lure away from those infernal screens they all adore – but wouldn’t you know it, the household wifi reaches all the way to the treehouse! Mostly, though, I just wanted a safe place for them to play, to climb and invent and adventure and be boys.

With a little help from Mother Nature (thank you for two dry days in a row!) and our amazing treehouse building husband-and-wife team, this happened before our very eyes:

New treehouse

New treehouse-2

And apparently it’s good for kids of all sizes:

New treehouse-3

We love it. LOVE it! It’s safe and built with clear attention to detail, it’s big enough to support a handful of kids, it’s easy for even wee Lucas to get up and down by himself, and I can conveniently see what shenanigans might be going on through the rails. 😉 We decided to go with independent supports so we didn’t have to rely on the weed maple for structural integrity. I can imagine things like a rod for puppet-theatre curtains on the underside or perhaps a little clubhouse with benches — after all, I’m not averse to building my handy skills on things that are not suspended five feet off the ground! The only downside is that I lost access to a favourite tree limb for posing families during porch portraits but can imagine a whole new world of possibilities for my outdoor “studio” now.

After what seems like endless dithering and angst, I can only wonder why we didn’t do this sooner. Best! Treehouse! Ever!!

Ottawa daycare tapes kindergarten kids to cots (!)

I read this story in the Ottawa Citizen this morning and I cannot stop thinking about it. It’s about an in-school daycare in Hunt Club – a regulated, licensed, let me repeat IN SCHOOL daycare – where two daycare workers were fired after “three or four” kindergarten kids were TAPED TO COTS with masking tape when they didn’t settle down at nap time. “It is unclear how long the children were restrained with the masking tape or exactly where it was applied but the parent who contacted the Citizen said mouths were taped and that it happened on more than one occasion.”

I need to take a deep breath every time I read that. Holy hell, if that were Lucas? You would have heard me bellowing all the way downtown. How on earth does that happen in a licensed daycare in a public school? It would be horrible and totally unacceptable in a private home daycare, no doubt about it, but seriously – in a school? And these people were accredited early childhood educators, according to the story.

I’m just about done my daycare years. In fact, except for a week at the end of this summer, we’re pretty much officially done with daycare. After a long decade laced with wonderful caregivers and horror stories, we’ve finally made it through the other side. Normally, I’d take this opportunity to rant (again) about our collective need for more licensed, regulated daycare spaces but that’s exactly what this was. As if finding decent, affordable child care was not one of the most difficult challenge a modern Canadian parent faces, now we have to worry about this sort of thing?

By the way, I never did get around to blogging the follow-up to my conversation with Lucas’s school about skipping him ahead to Grade 1 or keeping him in senior kindergarten for September. After meeting with his teachers and the principal and reflecting on all your comments (thank you so much!) we decided the best choice for Lucas would be staying the course and keeping him in kindergarten. The reason I mention this now is that the whole idea of the imposed afternoon “quiet time” for naps or resting was my last bone of contention.

Not only do I think Lucas is way beyond needing a nap at this point, but if one were imposed upon him he’d be up half the night. The teachers, who happen to be parents of young children themselves, are sympathetic to this and promised that no naps would be forced on kids who didn’t need them. I have heard of other full-day kindergarten schools, however, who send home “tsk tsk” notes when kindergarteners do not settle down and sleep during the afternoon rest period. Never in my wildest dreams, however, could I imagine something like taping the children to the cots!

So usually I’d end a post with a question to invite your comments like “what do you think” but I’m pretty sure I know what you think on this one. I mean seriously, the question I would really like answered is “how does this happen” and “how do we make sure it never happens again”?

Ask the audience: Internet safety

Im doing a presentation to a group of parents next week on Internet safety. I’ve got my information all pulled together and I’m putting it into a powerpoint slideshow. I’d love your input on either things that worry you or actions you’ve taken at home to make sure your kids can surf safely. We’re mostly talking about elementary school aged kids, and I’m mostly focusing on the junior years (Grades 4 – 6).

To me, there are five major risk areas:
– stumbling across (or searching out) inappropriate content
– phishing, malware and malicious downloads
– inappropriate disclosure of private information
– cyberbullying and stranger danger
– unexpected costs or bills from things like in-app purchases

I’m choosing to mainly focus on privacy and cyberbullying, because these are behavioural issues more than technology issues, and because they are the ones that worry me personally the most. But have I missed any other significant risk kids face online?

I’ve got a set of 10 tips for safe family surfing, which I’ll share after the presentation. (Disclosure: still fine-tuning those!) But would you care to share the steps you take to “cyber-proof” your kids? (Hmmm, I think I just came up with a new title for the presentation. “Cyber-proof your kids!”) As a parent, is there anything you would like more information about?

On the airplane

And just out of curiousity, do you use parental controls on your computer?

Parenting question of the day – split classes and skipping grades

This question inspired by Lucas, my precocious junior kindergartener. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was dancing with glee at the idea of him benefitting from all-day kindergarten. I knew he was more than ready, and I wasn’t sad about not having to pay one last year of daycare for mornings.

Alarm bells started to ring in my head when I found out a few weeks ago that they seem to be doing away with the idea of junior and senior kindergartens for a blended kingergarten group. I was fine with everything else in the program, like what seems like a Montessori-influenced emphasis on play-based learning, and larger class sizes supported by an ECE, and the day split into English and French.

I have real concerns, though, that my already advanced (IMHO, at least) February-born boy will be in a class with some kids who will be only three years old in the fall. He can already read and write and do simple math. Heck, I wanted to enroll him in JK a year early, just because I knew he was ready. Having just shepherded two boys through the primary grades, I’m very confident that he’s academically capable to start Grade 1 in the fall. I was worried about separating him from his peer group, but he is in a JK/SK split right now so in fact he will have some of his current classmates in his grade whether he starts SK or Grade 1 in the fall.

This has churned up all kinds of interesting questions. While I know you don’t have the insight into what’s best for Lucas, I am very curious to know your experience and opinions about skipping grades and split classes. Do they even skip kids ahead any more? It was common enough in the 1970s that I have a few friends who skipped grades. I was never that hard of a worker, although school did come easily enough for me when I bothered to try.

Moreso, though, I’m interested in your thoughts about split classes. I am genuinely worried about Lucas stagnating for a year because the teacher (and ECE, I suppose) will be trying to meet the needs of kids across a giant spectrum of capabilities. I had a really interesting conversation over coffee with a friend who has done a lot more research on this and she said it’s a myth that they put the more capable and advanced kids in the lower end of a split class. She is of the opinion that being in the older group in a split or mixed class teaches kids leadership and compassion and empathy. While I can appreciate that (although I admit, it hadn’t occurred to me) I think I would rather he be learning math and reading skills. It’s not an either-or, I know.

reading

And here’s another question all tangled up in the same quagmire: is it better to challenge a child or let them excel? If I were to ask the school to consider skipping him ahead to Grade 1, I’d be raising the bar for him and he’d be working to play catch-up. If I wait a year, I think even Grade 1 will be easy for him – he picks up SO much just from his older brothers, and from the terrific daycare we have. If he’d been born 40 days earlier, he’d be enrolled in Grade 1 anyway. So is it better to leave him and let his confidence grow so he thinks school is easy and fun rather than challenging him to rise up to what I am confident he can do? What if the easy path doesn’t lead to confidence but boredom?

So mamy questions! The easy path is, of course, to just let the years play out, and have him go ahead with his year of SK in September. But I can’t help wondering if I am doing him a disservice by not taking this chance to give him a boost which I genuinely believe would be in his best interest. I wouldn’t consider skipping a child in an older grade unless there were some truly extenuating circumstances – I saw first hand how kids can react to kids who fail and who skip from a social perspective and it’s wasn’t pretty then. I wouldn’t expect it to be better now. But to skip SK into Grade 1 seems more feasible, especially if I know he’s already well equipped for the challenge.

Lots of issues wrapped up in this one, eh? I know there are a good handful of teachers reading, I would love to hear from your perspective. And parents, what do you think about the “challenge vs confidence” question, or the whole split grade thing? Oh heck, while we’re at it, could you haul out your crystal ball and tell me the right answer? Because I’ve been around and around on this one and the more I think about it the more unsure I get!

What do you do when school rules and your rules don’t agree?

So here’s a question for you: what do you do when you disagree with the unofficial policies of your child’s school?

Today’s question is inspired in part by a note that came home yesterday insisting all students must wear splash or wind pants in the school yard or be kept inside at recess. This is the first I’ve heard of this requirement, and I have neither the resources nor, frankly, the inclination to try to find splash pants for all three of them. Midweek, no less. And spending $20 plus, multiplied by three, for something they’ll wear for a week or two does not appeal to me either. I sent a note back to the school to that effect, and each boy packed a pair of dry pants as a concilliatory gesture and “just in case” measure – but I trust them enough to believe that when they promise to stay out of the mud and puddles, they will do so.

To me, this gets into the grey area between school rules and parenting. I sympathize with the school’s desire to keep the muck and mud outside, but if they’re going to make splash pants mandatory, I’d like more than a day’s notice. An example that slips even further outside the zone of school responsibility, IMHO, was the time last fall when one boy had a piece of candy taken away the day after Halloween. A note came home saying the teachers did not feel that amount of sugar was appropriate for a morning snack. (In my defense, I had ALSO packed a piece of fruit. And I didn’t realize that Beloved had also slipped a piece of candy into each child’s lunch box, in addition to the treat I’d permitted. Regardless, I truly believe that unless I am packing varsol-filled thermoses and asbestos sandwiches, the school has no right to judge or interfere with what I put in their lunch boxes.)

I’m leery to even talk about these examples on the blog because I adore the boys’ school and the staff. I think they’re hard-working and kind and we’re lucky to be part of such a great community. But I’m curious as to how you handle these types of conflict because I am torn. For the most part, I’m happy to follow the rules even when I disagree with them and think it’s important that the kids see me respecting authority. Rules are in place for a good reason – most of the time. However, another part of me wonders if there isn’t value in teaching them to question authority when authority clearly oversteps its bounds (as I believe it has, in these two examples at least.) And finally, a part of me worries that causing trouble will somehow make the kids’ relationship with their teachers and school authorities more difficult than it should be or has to be. I don’t want them to be labled as troublemakers, even if by proxy.

125:365 Puddle jumper

(FWIW, I think the splash pants rule is maybe more acceptable for the littlest kids. I will continue to send Lucas in his ski pants, partly because he goes in the morning when it’s still cool and partly because I don’t think a four-year-old has the same ability to resist a puddle that a nine- or eleven-year-old might have.)

So what do you think? Would you let these things go or speak up? For the candy incident, I let it go. It was a well-intentioned action, even if it left me feeling judged and more than a little annoyed. For the splash pants, I simply can’t comply but I tried to offer up a reasonable compromise. Do you think there is value in talking back when you disagree with unofficial policies and rules like this, or is it better for community harmony to shrug it off and comply?

(Edited to add: in no way is this post intended to reflect poorly on the boys’ school or its administration. They have a difficult role balancing many competing priorities and I have nothing but respect and even affection for them. Even if I disagree with an occasional policy or two, I can’t say enough nice things about how lucky we are to be a part of such a great community and this post was in no way meant to be critical of them. I used these examples simply to illustrate a larger issue that I think many parents face, regardless of which school their children attend.)

Great moments in parenting – the birthday party fail edition

I thought I had it all under control. Clearly, I did not.

Poor Lucas, poster boy for the third child, has reached the ripe old age of five and has never had a birthday party. Knowing this, we started making plans to ensure he actually got one this year in December, even though his birthday is February 8. A good six weeks in advance, we called and booked a party room and worked out a guest list. It was a lock.

Last Friday I was supposed to get the invitations, but I forgot them on my desk at work. Annoyed with myself, I figured two weeks less two days would still be plenty of notice. That Monday afternoon I sat down and wrote out all the invitations, confirmed the guest list with Lucas and stuffed them into his backpack to be distributed the next day at school. That’s when I found the invitation FOR Lucas, from a classmate.

For the same day.

For the same place.

For the very next time slot.

Yeah. Four straight hours of birthday party might be a little much for your average four year old to bear, don’t you think?

Luckily, I recognized the RSVP name as a mom who is also on the school council with me. I felt comfortable enough to call her and cross-check against her invitee list against mine, hoping there wouldn’t be too much duplication. The girls were no problem, he hadn’t wanted to invite any girls (Lucas takes after Simon in this regard; his bestie is a girl) but he had invited every boy in the class. Heartbroken for Lucas, I called to reschedule the party and the soonest time slot I could get was 10 days after his birthday. So much for planning.

Really, that was nothing more than circumstance and bad luck (although I can’t help castigating myself for not getting those invites out earlier!!) but I really can’t blame anyone but myself for what happened with Simon’s party.

Knowing the boys were desperate for their own handheld devices, we gave Tristan and Simon a choice this year – a big party and a little gift or a little party and an iPod Touch. Neither one hesitated to choose the iPod, of course. So we told them they could have three or four friends over in lieu of a party, and we’d have an extended sort of play date with cupcakes and birthday presents. (And then I scored the iPods at half off during a refurb sale after Christmas. Win-win!!)

So I picked up some invitations and wrote out three five (I am such a softie) and Simon sent them off to his friends last week. It was only earlier this week that I realized what I had done, or more specifically what I had NOT done. I hadn’t made a note, mental or otherwise, of what time we had put on the invitations.

“Um, Simon?”

“Yes Mommy?”

“Do you remember what time we put on the invitations for the party on Saturday?”

“Um, no?”

Rats.

I mean, it wasn’t a big deal. We would be home anyway. I was pretty sure I’d said 1:00, or maybe it was 1:30. It might have been 2:00. Probably not as late as 3:00, right? Hmmm. The only challenge would be coordinating the arrival of the grandparents, who wanted to appear in time for cupcakes but not endure two hours of a houseful of kids hepped up on birthday energy. I figured I’d just call them when kids started showing up and tell them to show up in an hour.

But, it was bugging me, so I casually approached one of the moms today at school pick-up.

“Hey, how are ya? Warm out today, eh?” I said, and we chatted briefly about the unseasonable warmth. “So, I um, have a kind of a favour to ask. Do you, um, happen to remember what time I put on the invitation for Simon’s party?” She thought it was hilarious and confirmed that it was, in fact, for 1:30.

I thought THAT was one of my finer parenting moments, until the phone rang earlier this evening.

Ring ring.

Me: “Hello?”

Child’s voice: “Um, hi. Is this Simon’s mom?”

Me: “Yep, that’s me! Did you want to talk to Simon?”

Child: “Um, actually, no. I was calling to talk to you.”

Me, mildly surprised: “Oh, okay then. What’s up?”

Child: “Well, Simon said you forgot what time the party is, and we thought that it might be important that you know, you know? So I checked the invitation, and it says 1:30. Just so, you know, you, um, know. Okay?”

Me, dying: “That is very considerate of you sir. We will look forward to seeing you on Saturday.”

One of my finer moments indeed.

Moral of the story: do not, under any circumstances, hire me as a party planner.

Great idea for teacher gifts – goat and chickens and sheep, oh my!

Instead of teacher gifts at Christmas, each year we have been buying a donation of a backpack of school supplies in each of the boys’ teachers’ names, and enclosing information about the donation in a hand-made card. The teachers seem to genuinely appreciate the notion, and it does support the principles of Catholic education.

Faced with a list of no less than seven teachers this year, I figured it was easier to just send a bigger donation of a goat to a family in need and dedicate it to the whole school. The boys are tickled by the idea of the goat, but there’s a lesson about privilege in there, too, and a conversation about how truly blessed we are. And look at me, I’m even doing this before 10 pm on the penultimate day before the Christmas break, which is when I traditionally get around to this. I’m so pleased with this idea that I thought I’d share it.

Here’s a press release I got from Care Canada with a bit more information:

(OTTAWA, December 3, 2012) – For too many Canadians, the holidays can be a time of stress and frustration.

The spirit of the season seems to get lost searching for a parking spot, slogging through malls and finding that “perfect gift” to be a dud.

This year, CARE is calling on Canadians to skip the mall and give their loved ones a gift that truly keeps on giving. A CARE gift will empower women and girls around the world to be healthy, educated and able to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

“It’s so easy to get caught up in the need to buy material items,” says Kevin McCort, president and CEO of CARE Canada. “A CARE gift is a perfect alternative for those who want to give their loved ones something that helps the world’s poorest communities build better lives for themselves.”

CARE’s new holiday catalogue features more than 40 fun and unique gift ideas that Canadians can give friends, family and coworkers to support CARE’s efforts to fight poverty worldwide. These include:

· Give the gift of a safe birth for a mom and baby in a developing country.

· The gift of a goat will improve a family’s nutrition and access to income.

· Send a girl to school for a year and give her the power to lift her and her community from poverty.

· Help a woman start a business and empower her family and community to thrive.

Why head out in the cold? Canadians can browse these gift ideas and more from home with the online catalogue at www.care.ca/holiday. Each gift comes with a personalized holiday electronic card that shoppers can send to their gift recipient.

Why not give the gift of donation of a chicken or a goat or a pack of school supplies instead of a coffee mug or other bit of kitsch? What do you think of this kind of donation gift? Would you want to receive something like this as a gift, or give it to the person who truly has everything? As a teacher, how do you feel about this type of gift?