Bob CollinsWell, that’s it, then. Summer is over. Now where did I put that snowblower?
The kids are heading back to school on Tuesday, and Slate.com raises the annual question: Should you have meddled in the decision about which teacher they’d get? You did meddle, didn’t you? No, of course not. You left it to your wife. Coward!
I hope I never go down this road. It’s the mommy/daddy version of backroom dealing. And it succumbs to the temptation to try to perfect every aspect of our children’s lives. As my colleague Hanna Rosin put it about her oldest child’s progress through elementary school, “Every year I have thought about lobbying for a particular teacher or to have a particular friend in her class. And every year I have resisted. I never once regretted that. She’s had teachers who were, yes, slightly petty, and yellers, and also teachers who favor her. What happened to her? Nothing. She learned that–gasp!–adults are flawed, too.”
