Its Tough to be A Parent

A woman named Lenore is participating in a new movement where parents let their kids play by themselves or with others free of parent or even adult supervision. She has set play dates where parents pay $350 to let their children play together free of supervision. These play dates take place in New York City’s Central Park where she argues is “the safest precinct in New York.” Another supporter of this movement expands and explains that unlike the suburbs, New York City is always busy and there are always people around- referring to the fact that in case there were to be a dangerous or harmful situation, witnesses would be everywhere.
Parents who are interviewed in this video give their opinions on the subject; most saying they would never let their child roam unsupervised, let alone pay someone for an experience like that.


My view is that children need freedom. They need to experience the world on their own and learn on their own terms but not all the time and not without an adult close by. Lenore mentions that she let her child play in the park while she sat in a coffee shop nearby. I would be all for letting my child roam around and playing with others without much supervision but I would be worried about sudden emergencies. What if my child somehow broke their leg and obviously couldn’t come find me for help? I would much rather be on a bench nearby than in a coffee shop out of sight. Sure, at a certain age like 12 the child might be independent enough to handle me being at a coffee shop nearby but younger than that would very much depend on the child’s maturity level and if they have a sibling or friend who would know where to find me in case they need assistance.

In the movie Babies, one of the children, Bayar, who lives in from Mongolia, is seldom watched over by his parents or any other adult. Granted the child lives in the middle of nowhere and is unable to walk or crawl part of the film, how much trouble can he get into? His brother, not much older than him, is a toddler and manages to stroll him outside and then walks back into their house. When Bayar learns to walk, he almost gets trampled by a cow. Things like this worry people but it’s a way of life in that area. The parents just cannot be there to supervise their children all the time. Most families in America have access to child care whether its school, daycare, a family member, or friend.


Part of the free roaming movement makes sense to me in the way that a kid has to grow up and learn some things on their own, but the way I interpret this mother’s style, it’s only the complete opposite of a parent who hovers. There needs to be some kind of balance. (492)

Something More

What is the point of learning all of the information we do in school? I understand that in order to get a good job, you need a good education, and in order to specialize in some area you need extensive knowledge of that subject but why? Why do we need jobs? Why should it matter what we learn? Why can’t the knowledge be spaced out and give everyone time to sort everything out? I think that the amount of things we learn should correlate with our age, and our life experiences should progress in correlation to our education experiences.

I think that when everyone is little, they should all learn world languages, although if everyone in the world spoke one language, it would make everything a lot easier. Every child in the United States should learn English, Spanish, Latin, French, and Chinese or some other Asian language. If every child learned these languages while they were young, they could learn them faster, without an accent, and could progress farther into each language as they grow.

I guess that as they grow they could also learn the other subjects like math, history, science, etc. but as soon as they reach high school age or higher the curriculum should change drastically. High school and college are about figuring out who you are and what you are going to do for the rest of your life. If all you do is sit in a classroom and go farther in depth in the same subjects they have been studying for the past 9+ years. They should go on trips, and able to experience everything around the world and curriculum so that they can be happy with their future life decisions. If teenagers and young adults stay in one place their whole life, they can only become something within the place they are. It only makes sense to present them with an entirely new and different experience.

I guess my main point is that there is so much more in life to learn then what you are able to learn in school and if we really want kids to develop into respectable and self-confident adults, we have to focus on what they are going to become and not so much on what facts they need to memorize. (387)

Opportunity-Cost

With graduation coming up, I think that it is important that people actually know the toll that school can take on a person. I found an article online called reasonsus kids need our sleep that helps to explain how lack of sleep, especially in students and younger people, can affect them.

I know im not in many activities, really, but color guard seems to consume my whole entire fall trimester during school, after school, and on weekends. Plus winter guard takes up my Saturday morning sleep in time. And not to mention those early mornings to travel to different cities for competitions and late nights getting back. And theres school there too. I mean, AP Econ isn’t my strongest point and the homework isn’t terrible… until 3rd tri when you have 50 tests to do corrections on and notes on top. Then theres prom. Oh my, what dress am I going to wear? And do I have everything planned? Have I turned in all those forms? And don’t forget planning that grad party. On top of that theres replacing the carpet in my house with hardwood, tearing up the kitchen and putting it back together-no hired help, just my family doing this. Lets no forget my job that’s starting up again because its time for senior pictures and then I need to hang out with friends too, right? Its my senior year! Well, now that im done boring you with my life, here are the facts that im gonna need to remember for college:

Women are more at risk for heart problems if they don’t get enough sleep. Lack of sleep is lack of knowlage. You need that sleep to help your brain keep all that info in. and sleep helps your health. Also, make sure you get enough sleep before your flu vaccine or youll have a difficult time fighting it off.

Not that there arnt more reasons, but these are an important few I thought the article had a good point about.

A Way of Learning

Schools: the primary institutions for educating, learning, and preparing children for their futures, have changed a great deal over the years, both in purpose and the information taught. When school was first instituted, its main goal was to prepare children for work in factories or similar institutions. This intent can still be seen in every school, for example; there is seven to eight hour school day starting at seven or eight depending on schedules, five minute passing times, bells signaling students to move from one place to another, and so on and so forth. As time progressed, people started to complain. Early reformers like Jane Addams wanted to keep the schools with a production base in order to help immigrants and the poor adapt to society’s harsh conditions. People like John Dewey however; thought teaching more than the three R’s (reading, writing, and arithmetic,) would be more beneficial to students in the socially changing economy. He wanted classes to be taught that would help the students learn new skills and actual things they would need when they got out of school.

Today, there has been yet another shift of the way children are being taught and what they are being prepared for. They are not learning skills that will prepare them to work in factories; rather, they are skills that will prepare them to get into college. This would normally be a good thing because it encourages students to go to college and think that they are eligible to. It is so enforced however that everything that students work for is preparing for tests like the ACT, SAT, PLAN, PSAT, etc. and working to get the best grades so that they can get into their college of choice. The grades don’t always come from hard work either; some students will sometimes take easier classes where it is easy to get a good grade versus harder classes that they won’t get as good of a grade. (326)

Re-Opening the Door to Space

 After the moon landing and the so-called "space-age," it seemed like there really weren't any new discoveries in space to be made. I found an article on-line that described the findings of a new planet in space.

The planet has two suns apparently just like something from star wars. I’m not really sure what the star wars version is but that’s how the article compared it. This planet is the first known of its kind and is a bit larger than Neptune in size. They call it PH1. PH1 was discovered by a couple of amateur astronomers.

The alien planet spends about 138 days orbiting once around its suns. The suns or stars themselves orbit around each other once every 20 days. PH1 is really hot and reaches temperatures over 600 degrees. It also has two other stars near it that aren’t even its main suns. Astronomers have been studying this planet and gaining so much information just “by studying light from one of its parent stars.”

I have always been interested in astronomy and think it’s really cool that amateur astronomers were the ones to discover this. I wish I could spend more time looking at stars and planets especially with a telescope that is really powerful. The planet and its suns are really cool too. I want to learn more about why this is the only one known of its kind. Why doesn’t this happen more often that we can tell? It is hard to believe that we can even see stuff like this thousands of light years away. That’s so hard for me to comprehend how far away that is. I really wish we knew more about what is out there. I bet there are tons of planets like PH1 that we don’t know about and many others that are even more surprising than having 4 stars near it. I am really glad that we have the technology we do to know about what is out there even as far as the moon. I don’t even know what I would think if we didn’t scientifically know all this stuff. (358)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

            Ever since I took AP Psychology freshman year, I have found mental disorders to be enticing. I found a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat that is basically an accumulation of many different stories about different people with strange disorders.

            The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a very interesting and different book then I have ever read before. It was written by a neurologist in 1986 and is about his experiences with patients and treatments for them. I have never read a nonfiction novel before, or at least a informational medical one, so it was an entirely new experience reading it. Each chapter is about a new patient or patients each with a different disease or mental disorder. Oliver Sacks wrote his observations of each one and followed it with a postscript that had all of his thoughts on the subject.

            It took me a while to read this book because Sacks uses a lot of very large medical jargon that I didn’t really understand and I found myself having to reread it again and again. The stories of all of his patients and their disorders were very interesting and unique. Some of them though were familiar and frankly a little dry. There are also stories with disorders that I still don’t understand how they work or what they do. This might have been due mostly to the fact that I didn’t understand his terminology while he was describing them.

            Even though Oliver Sacks wrote the disorders in the same way, I found myself liking some more than the others. My favorite chapters in the book were “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, “Witty, Ticcy, Ray,” and “Cupid’s Disease.” These were the most interesting stories I thought because they presented new cases and personalities to me.

            I found the book to be rather challenging to read because of my difficulty in understanding all of the jargon and learned diction. It also started to become a little difficult to keep track of all of his different patients and the diseases and symptoms. I would only recommend this book to someone who might be familiar with the medical jargon and still interested in all of the different mental disorders. (396)

The Perfect Crème Brûlée

When I was eight, my sister made it to the 3v3 soccer nationals that happened to be held in Disney World. My family accompanied her down there and we made a vacation out of it. We spent our days watching her play her games and after she was done, we got to go the different Disney parks and ride all of the rides and see all of the attractions. The very last day, we went to Epcot, where you can walk around a lake and see the different countries represented. In order to get the full experience, we stopped at each of the different countries and bought a dessert; a crème brûlée from France, chocolate from Germany, and flan from Mexico.

Each of these desserts had their own unique taste and every bite left me wanting more. It wasn’t just that these desserts tasted good, because they did, it was that they were an entirely new and exciting experience for me. Each country had its own dessert; a dessert that had made its way to fame in the many years that country had existed. It had entangled itself the country’s history and somewhere along the way it became a representation of inimitable culture and traditions.

Since then I have realized that it is not just countries with these distinctive and delectable desserts, it is also people. People have both good desserts and horrid ones, some are mediocre, and others are forgettable. Whether these desserts taste good or not is entirely up to each individual person.

I believe that it is important to work to be one of these phenomenal and unforgettable desserts because a bland bread pudding is easily forgettable, but an intricately seasoned and cared for crème brûlée can change a person. If someone cares about how others perceive them and change themselves for the better because of it, this world would be a much more delicious place. (325)

Fatherly Love

If anyone has taught me about love it was my father.

My father is not an extraordinary man on the outside; he could walk through a supermarket without extracting more than a glance. I assume he appears to be like any other father; a thinning hairline, emerging pot belly, smile lines beginning to show, and pictures of his kids in his wallet seated in the back pocket of his pants. The extraordinary bits are under his father façade, invisible to the human eye but clear as day to the abstract world.

Ever since I was little, my father has shown me how to love. He used to take me into our living room and set me on the coffee table. He would select the same CD from the rack every time, put it in the stereo, and skip to the one track that played the song “Butterfly Kisses” by Bob Carlisle. When the lyrics started playing, he would take my hands, put them around his neck, and we would sway back and forth to the music and he would sing to me. One time, I told him that I when I grew up, I would play this song at my wedding so we could dance for real and I could be like Belle in Beauty and the Beast. He said “Lexi, you go ahead and play any song that you like, but if you play this one, I will cry my eyes out.”

Believe it or not but this was the first time that I was even aware guys could cry. As I grow older, my father is there every step of the way teaching me more and more about boys and the many things that they are capable of. He comforts me when my relationships get tough and gives the best advice he can when applicable. I don’t know what I would do without my father because he is, and always will be, the first person to teach me how to love. (334)