Stay-at-Home Parents vs Schools and Others
During school days the older three go to school (two in Head Start pre-K), and in the evenings and on the weekends my husband will watch the older three if it is needed. He has not had a chance to learn much about our youngest, because he is working so much. My children have appointments, doctors’ visits for the most part, although there are others. I have home visits through the Head start for the two “twins” as my three and four year old are called, as well as for the baby through the Early Head Start program. There are other appointments, too many to list here, but to give you an idea, my calendar is filled with anywhere from four to eight, sometimes more, appointments each week. Each of these appointments lasts about one to two hours. As my home is too close to the school for buses, I have to make sure I schedule appointments so that they do not interfere with taking the kids to and from school. Some of the other appointments are in relation to my oldest child’s ADHD.
From the time we learned that we might be getting custody of the oldest, I started doing research on ADHD. Something that must be understood about this is that ADHD is not just the lack of concentration, or the hyperactivity; in fact, it is really a misnomer, as the root of the problem seems to be simply in impulse control. The varying degrees of severity are really how much or how little impulse control the child has. They may know what is appropriate and when, and they may know and understand the consequences for doing the wrong things, but they cannot control themselves sometimes. There are many who think that such children are retarded, and often their test results will show this, but to be honest, many of them are quite intelligent, and in some cases just not given enough of a challenge. Let me tell you a little bit more about IQ tests. If you ever receive results from any IQ test that give you simply numbers do not trust it. They will usually give you three numbers; the first will be overall, the second and third will be for math and reading (or English). However, these numbers can be very misleading.
An example of how this can happen is my oldest. He recently had to take two IQ tests. The first was given by the school, and simply showed the numbers, which place him as being “borderline retarded”. The second was a test given him by a psychiatrist, who told us that, while his scores show him to be borderline retarded, the actual answers tell a very different story, boredom and lack of a challenge. Why is this? Well, my stepson answered the harder questions faster, and more often correctly, than he did the easier questions. From what this doctor told us, we gathered that the score from the test was mostly correct answers for the harder (and higher point value) questions. If you ever receive test results that only give numbers, ask for a second opinion, ask for a professionally administered test, and ask for one where the difficulty of each question your child answers will be taken into account. Now that I have given you a little bit of background to my own situation, let us move on to what this paper is really about. How Much Time Is Enough? Interesting title for a section, don’t you think? Now, I really want to you to answer that question. How much time is enough to know someone? Is it 1170 hours for one year of their life, 18-24 hours each year, 6 or fewer hours each year, a combined 520 hours each year? Or is it the combined knowledge from those 4 sources, plus 7046 hours each year of personal knowledge? Not to step on any professionals toes, but I do not think that all of the books in the world can give you a single clue about each and every single individual case you will come across in your whole career, especially not when you spend at most only a short time with them each week, month, or year. You may know what it takes to teach the “average” child.
But I bet you have noticed that not too many of the ones you have taught are “average”, the same goes for the psychiatric field, physicians, and any others. This is the simple fact, the one who has dealt with a problem the most, likely knows the most about it, the one who has spent the most time with a person likely knows the most about them. The figures I mentioned above for time, are in order, school, a counselor, a psychiatrist, and everyone else besides me, who spend time with my stepson. The last number is the amount of time I spend with him. During the school year I get up and get him off to school, I take any phone calls that come in from the school about him, I take him to most of his appointments (or provide the transportation for him), I make and keep track of his appointments, I am home with him from the time he gets home in the afternoon, and all night (this includes the five plus times every night that he gets up, even though he has a prescription that is to help him fall asleep and stay asleep). On the weekends, I am home, except for the approximately two hours it takes me to do the grocery shopping, during which my husband watches the three older kids on his own.
The summer is basically one very long weekend, and once a week I take my two hours to go grocery shopping. That is all of the time I spend with, and away from my children. I am more involved in my children’s lives than most parents are, simply because, I do not get away from them. I do not feel the need to do so. I gave birth to three of them, and if I had not wanted my stepson in my life, he would not be here. My husband and I knew that I would be the one to spend the most time with him, and to put the most effort into discipline, school, doctors and the like, because I already stayed at home with the other two at the time (the youngest was not even conceived yet). There are occasions when my husband actually has the energy to take the kids with him, which he does most weekends (that is a portion of the 520 hours every year, it translates to 10 hours a week on average).
Teachers especially need to see this, and they need to read this particular portion. The amount of time a single teacher spends with any given child in the child’s life will only be approximately 1200 hours AT THE MOST. That is the amount of time any given child will spend in school for a year, barring summer school, detentions, and extracurricular activities. That number is also only if the teacher spends the full school day with the child, if they do not go to lunch, gym, elective classes, sessions with the guidance counselor, bathroom breaks, and any other items I may have missed with the child, then that number becomes smaller. If the child only visits the teacher for one specific class each day, or week, or schedule rotation, the number becomes even less. Those 1200 hours are based on a 180-day school year, at 6.5 hours per day. The number of in-school hours for children varies depending on the school.
However, it will only likely vary by maybe 180 hours a year, or 1 hour each day. Those 1200 hours also do not include time that the teacher has off, while the kids are in school. It does not count time that the teacher is out of the class, for meetings, while the kids are still in the class. Those two take even more from the total. My best estimate of the actual time each teacher spends with a child in the child’s whole lifetime, is approximately 300-500 hours. When you consider that there are an average of 7052 hours in each year, a normal school life for a child is 14 years (including pre-K and kindergarten), that by the time a normal child graduates they are eighteen (give or take a few months), and that the normal life span for a human being is about 70-80 years, how well can any single teacher actually know a child? And of all others besides the parent, they spend the most time with the child in a year, however these others see the child progress form year to year, which the average teacher does not. With all of these factors, can you honestly think that your children’s teachers know more about what is best for your children? Let me answer that. No. You, as the parent, even if you are not one who stays at home, know the most about your child, because you get the information, not only from personal experience, but also from reports sent and/or given you by the teachers, doctors, and others your children deal with. You, as the parent, know how they are most of the time, as well as holding most of the information about the child. You know more about what they like and do not like, you know more about how they have changed from year to year, you know more about what they can and cannot do. You are the nexus of information about your child.
Not the teachers, not the school in general, not the doctors. You are the one who can say whether or not these people can even communicate, how often, and how much they are allowed to tell each other. You know more of the information about your children, not just because you spend the most time with them, but also because these people have to tell you everything they know. As parents it is your responsibility to do three things, be there for your child, make sure you know what is going on with your child when you are not there, and make sure that all those who deal with your child understand that YOU are the ultimate authority on your child, not them. Moreover, you have a responsibility to make sure, for your child’s sake, that you do not allow them to say or even think that they know more than you do about your specific individual child. Because they do not.
