Posts Tagged ‘preschool graduation brawl’

Seriously, I don’t make these things up. Mothers at a Los Angeles preschool came to blows over the “graduation gown.”

I thought eighth grade graduation was the stupidest thing I had ever heard of. Then I heard about elementary school graduation. Then I heard about preschool graduation. Honestly, folks…these kids aren’t “graduating” from anything.

The only graduations that matter are high school and college. All the other ones are simply for your vanity. Right of passage? What do mean? It’s the law that your kids have to go to school!

Sure, your preschooler looks adorable in their little gown. There’s the ceremony that a third of the parents are swooning orgasmically over while shoving people out of their way to get videos or pictures. There’s the third of the parents who are actually proud that their kid is “graduating” from preschool. There’s the third of us that are annoyed that we have to make such a big deal out of such a little thing.

I’ve said it before…I guess I’ll say it again. We are making our kids think they are wonderful and omnipotent when we celebrate these meaningless milestones. What are we teaching them by dressing them up, parading them across a stage, and telling them that they’ve actually done something?

Because they haven’t! FYI, everyone graduates preschool, elementary school, and middle school/junior high. Again, that pesky law thing that says kids need to be educated. (I have no idea how home schoolers handle these transitions, so I’m not commenting on them.) Plus in this age of No Child Left Behind, no one fails any more.

You want kids to think they’ve accomplished something? Start holding back the kids who don’t deserve to move on to the next level. That’ll be a wake-up call for the rest of them who think they can coast on by doing barely the minimum and getting praise like they just solved the riddle of black holes.

I was speaking to a middle school principal and told her that I thought eight grade graduation was the stupidest thing. She agreed, but said that when she tried to do away with it the school board and parents went crazy. She was just glad she had gotten rid of the giant prom-like eighth grade dance where kids were being delivered by limo. WTF?!

If we, as parents, don’t teach kids that there are genuine accomplishments to be made, when will they learn this lesson? If our kids think every single thing they do is wonderful, how do you teach that some things aren’t wonderful? How do we communicate when they do something exceptional?

Sure, we are treating kids better than when “spare the rod, spoil the child” was the norm. But we aren’t doing them any favors. We aren’t teaching them what life is really like.

As for the moms fighting in the video: I’ll bet their children are known to every other parent in the class because they are the annoying, rude, bullying children. We reap what we sow. The apple doesn’t fall from the tree. Ah, heck, I’ll just say it: we know who your kids are because they act like a diva, just like you. And divas aren’t even amusing among celebrities any more.