I really don’t like to be critical of teachers, especially when I think my kids go to a great school. But, I received an introduction letter from my son’s Grade 1 French teacher and I just have to point a few things out.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The letter is intended to tell parents what our child will be learning, how they will be learning and how we can assist them with their learning.

Perfect.

The first problem though is the length of the letter – it’s a full page, front and back, single spaced, probably about 2,000 words (think four times the length of this blog). Unless you’re sharing the entire course material with parents, this is entirely too long.

We’re told “the program uses the Accelerative Integrated Method for teaching French.”

What a relief that is! I thought they might use some lesser method that’s slow and not integrated.

The third paragraph is as follows:

“The motivating activities address the needs of a variety of language learners and their learning styles, including kinesthetic, linguistic, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal which, in turn, helps students develop confidence and competence in French as they progress through each story unit."

I think they may be trying to say that this learning program will appeal to all the kids in the class, but it’s possible that this 41-word sentence actually isn’t saying much of anything. Either way, I’m certain I’ll see more of this gobbledegook come report card time.

The fifth paragraph begins, “In addition, as opportunities present themselves, we will introduce and learn other basic vocabulary...”

As opportunities present themselves? What else would you be doing? I guess that’s a drawback of the Accelerative Integrated Method.

The tenth paragraph (yes, the tenth) tells us what our child will need to do this year to do well in the class. This might be the most important piece of information in the letter and it barely made it onto the first page!

The children should “use class time wisely, stay focused and complete all class work in a reasonable time.” Hmm, not sure I see my son excelling in the world of “independent study.”

The top of the second page is the “How can you help?” section. I suspect many parents will see it when they grow weary from reading and turn the page over in the act of throwing it down on the table in frustration.

Apparently we are to explore French websites with our child. A suggestion or two about specific sites would have been helpful here.

I’m told my child “has a folder (chemise) that contains work in progress.”

What else would it contain? It’s a chemise!

“The chemise remains at school.”

You obviously don’t know my son.

I’m told my child “will also have a duo tang (cahier) that will be filled with the vocabulary for the unit, a script of the play, song sheets, puppets and additional vocabulary that may be introduced during other activities in class.”

A cahier filled with vocabulary concerns me and is it more than a little odd that this is the very first mention of puppets?

I’m not a teacher and I thought a chemise was a shirt, but I know that this letter would have been far better if it was one page max, had included a quick introduction of the teaching style and course content, followed by tips for success and what we as parents can do to help our child.

And really, in two pages you couldn’t mention that some kids will be forced to pee in their pants when they don’t know how to ask to go to the bathroom in French?

I received a question the other day from my youngest brother. He’s 10 years younger than me (technically, we’re 11 calendar years apart, but since his birthday is January and mine is December, I feel like a fraud adding that extra year) and asked if there was one movie that defined my generation. One never knows the reason behind these random questions from him or when they might be coming, and I was stumped to provide an answer.

So, I did something I’ve never done before and posted the question on my Facebook page, hoping it might spark some conversation. Boy, did it ever.

I guess this is the way social media is intended to be used and I’m just now figuring this all out.

I had a lot of fun reading people’s replies to the question, and going down memory lane with all of them. Many of the respondents (strange thing to call friends, I know) came from my hometown and had seen these movies at the only theatre we had at the time. The movies were the place to be and the place to be seen. We were all at the mercy of seeing popular movies several times when they were “held over for a second or third or fourth smash week” and we couldn’t think of anything else to do.

Friends from other places were watching the same movies (presumably when they had greater choices) and it seemed their experiences were similar to ours. I suppose I would have expected that to be the case, but it was fun to confirm it.

I got the sense that the question stirred a lot of memories in the people who replied and perhaps those who didn’t respond, but read along. I’d be interested to hear more of your stories about your favourite movies from your teenage years, and hope that you’ll want to share.

Looking forward to keeping the conversation going!

Oh, and If this goes well, I promise we can have the discussion about 80s music sometime.

As hard as it is to believe, today is the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001.

While TV, print and digital media have recently bombarded us with stories of that fateful day, I’ve done my best to avoid their coverage. Instead, I’ve spent some moments on my own thinking about my experiences of that day. It’s the usual stuff-where I was, how I heard and how I reacted when the news reached me. I’ve also thought about how much the world has changed in ten short years. How much I’ve changed.

Ten years ago today I was working in Halifax, Nova Scotia as a regional manager for a car rental company. My wife was about three months pregnant with our first child and my thoughts were split between overwhelming joy and secret terror at the prospects of being a dad.

I had chosen to spend my day at our largest and busiest branch. The day was like any other-customers and employees coming and going constantly, phones ringing off the hook. In a word, it was crazy.

Our branches didn’t have televisions or internet or radios. Cell phones didn’t send automatic updates on catastrophic world events like the one we were about to live through. Instead, while our employees were out picking up customers, they heard on car radios that a plane had crashed into a tower and brought the news back to the office. Our customers too were hearing the news and sharing it with us each time they arrived.

Sometime after the initial reports, someone said they had heard a plane had just crashed into a tower. We assumed they were telling us what we had known for a while, but then the awful realization set in that this wasn’t old news. There were two planes. Planes crashed in other parts of the US and we learned that these were coordinated terrorist attacks. Towers collapsed. We were in the middle of an earth shattering series of events that none of us would ever forget.

At the time, I thought myself a good manager. I thought my role was to acknowledge the horrible events that had overtaken the day, but keep the team focused on running the business. I was aware that this was going to be more difficult than any challenge we had faced before as a team, but somehow we had to quickly put it out of our minds and do what we did on any other day.

My wife was frantically calling me on my cell phone with every update as she sat glued to our TV set at home. Like anyone else, my mind was racing, but I thought that if I showed even the slightest hint of emotion that our business would implode. So, I did my best to put it out of my mind and asked the team to focus on doing their jobs. I could tell I wasn’t giving my people what they wanted that day, but I believed that good leadership could make you extremely unpopular at times.

Looking back, I don’t think it was wrong of me to try to balance out the delirium in the office by remaining calm and asking that others did the same. But, it’s clear to me now that I expected others to manage their shock and their pain exactly as I did, by putting it out of their mind and focus only on the business. That wasn’t fair of me under the circumstances and I’ve regretted it ever since.

I wish I had put less emphasis on the business and more on the people I managed. I wish I had given them an opportunity to react in whatever way they felt necessary before asking them to carry on with the business of renting cars.

I wish I realized then that the business of renting cars should never be made to seem more important than the emotions of those employees who faithfully ran the business every single day, especially in a crisis such as this.

I realize that now.

I shared these thoughts with my wife earlier tonight and she asked me if I feel differently about the way I acted that day because I’m a dad or simply because I’m older. I thought about the question for a minute, then answered that fatherhood has given me more patience and compassion. Then, I added that being older has shown me that there are a lot more important things in life than running a business or being someone’s boss.

I can’t say September 11th is solely responsible for these lessons, but I know that it played a part.

Day 2 of school and it seems the routine doesn’t work...for me.

My wife worked tonight so I was on my own to pick the kids up, get them home, feed them, and get them through their homework.

My daughter didn’t have any homework, so after dinner she went to her room to work on her song. Careful inspection of my son’s school bag revealed that he did have some work to do, so we sat at the kitchen table and got started.

Our task tonight was to complete two pages of exercises that focused on writing the letters “S” and “A” and using them to write some simple words. How hard could this be?

My son hadn’t been seated for two seconds before he complained that his pencil wasn’t sharp enough. Perhaps it wasn’t, but I’ve written with duller pencils and this seemed to have “excuse” written all over it. Rather than fight him on the issue, I tried to find a pencil sharpener, but none could be found.

I wasn’t ready to admit defeat just two minutes into “Operation Homework”, so I decided I could sharpen a pencil using a large kitchen knife. While this is certainly possible, no kid ever gets over the strange look of a pencil “whittled” by his father in this fashion and the confusion alone was paralysing to my son.

Somehow I found a sharp pencil and we were free to try our hand at writing small S x 15. There seemed to be no regard for spacing or keeping the letter between the top and bottom lines provided on the page and any attempts at coaching on my part were met with, “Daddy, this is hard!” Endless starting and stopping and complaining made for a tedious session and we weren’t nearly finished.

I remember going through this with my daughter when she was first learning to write, then again when she was learning to read, each time resembling the character on Sesame Street who smashes his face on the piano keyboard saying “I’ll never get it, never, never, never!”

After an exhausting 20 minutes, we were ready to copy “Sammy”, “Snake”, and “See.” Each letter beyond “S” required a negotiation to complete and I had lost my patience. I chose to ignore the gigantic “M’s” that used up most of the available space and hoped we had time to get to the second letter.

At that moment, my daughter came downstairs to tell us that my son should turn on the TV because there was a really cool show on about reptiles. I did my best to tell my son that reptiles had nothing on the letter “A” - that “Amanda”, “Ant” and “Apple” were what the cool kids were doing right now, but knew I didn’t stand a chance.

It was nearly time for bed anyway and we had used up all of our time.

Putting him to bed was no easier. Instead of putting on his PJs and brushing his teeth like I asked, he came down the stairs and asked, “Do you think there’s something wrong with this frog, Daddy?” (Answer: there’s a giant marble that you’ve stuffed into his mouth)

And just when I think he might finally be settling into bed? I can hear him in his room.

He’s singing “Moves Like Jagger.”

As a parent, one of the most difficult things I deal with is watching my child get hurt emotionally, knowing that I can’t do much about it.

Today was the first day of school for both kids and unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to talk to either of them about their day until just before bedtime.

My daughter is very excited about being in Grade 4 and nothing about today seemed to slow her down. My son didn’t say much about his first day of Grade 1 other than the full day of school (his first ever) was very long and tiring. His eyes backed up his story of being exhausted, but only after he went to bed did I learn that perhaps it was more than just the hours in the classroom that had taken a toll on him.

My daughter reported that at recess, she noticed that my son wanted to play with an older boy named Aidan that he knows from the baby sitter’s house, but that Aidan wanted nothing to do with my son. My son persisted and Aidan continued to ignore him and run away, leaving my son heartbroken and without a friend to play with for the entire recess.

It hurt to hear this story, remembering similar things that happened to me when I was his age. I hoped they wouldn’t happen to my caring little boy-a boy who wouldn’t be mean to anyone, but such is life.

The story hurt a little more because I remembered a conversation I had with my son a week ago as we drove somewhere in the car.

“Daddy, I don’t think I have a BFF,” he started.

I hate the term “BFF” and a big part of the reason is that kids as young as six feel that if they don’t declare this friendship they will be left without the one thing that every kid wants-a friend.

I had erroneously assumed that BFFs were more of a girl thing, but obviously need to worry about the concept with my son as well.

“Daddy,” he continued, “I think Aidan is my BFF. I’ve never asked him though if I’m his BFF, but I think I am.”

I told my son that since Aidan is a couple of years older than him that he might have other friends and maybe even a BFF (using the term made me cringe). I told him that it was far more important to be a good kid and have lots of friends than to have a BFF at six.

“That’s ok, Daddy, Aidan is my BFF so I should let him know.”

We’ve gone through similar situations with my daughter and will take the same approach with my son: teach him that sometimes kids hurt our feelings for no reason and that the best thing you can do is find other kids who will be better friends.

There’s a real chance that I’m taking this harder than my son, but I felt the need to go into his room again before he fell asleep to give him an extra hug and tell him that I love him.

I wonder if he’ll remember this in the morning and have more questions about why it happened.

I wonder too if today at recess, he was just trying to tell Aidan that he was my son’s BFF.

This weekend, we were at the Paris Fair for my nine-year-old daughter to compete in the Youth Talent Competition, for children aged 12 and under.

She’s a singer and decided to sing Part of Your World from The Little Mermaid. She was a little late in picking her song and developed a case of the sniffles a week before the competition, so I was even more nervous than usual about how things were going to go.

The first performer was a girl who required a team of three to set up what looked like a 15-foot swing set with two long strands of fabric hanging down from the middle. I learned this was called “a silk act” and based on previous experience, I expected her to do very well. Last year at this same show, a girl performed an acrobatic routine, climbing on and through a large circle that spun on a base. I had absolutely no idea what I was watching or whether it was the best acrobatic spinning circle routine in history, but she took top prize at the fair so I am led to believe it was extraordinary. The silk act was similarly confusing to me, but the audience erupted as though they had never before been more impressed by silk and the judges likely gave it a perfect score.

I have learned to pay attention only to the other vocal acts because I don’t know how to compare my daughter to acrobats, dancers, lion tamers, or anyone riding a motorcycle in a giant sphere. I have concluded that judges will award top prize in the show to the biggest act imaginable, leaving my daughter and the other singers to fight for the spoils, but that is beyond my control. On that note, those children wishing to read poetry in talent shows need not bother.

The first singer was a 12-year old girl, wearing a similar dress to the one my daughter was wearing, who was also singing Part of Your World! This happens at nearly every show, and you always hope to avoid being the second person singing a song that might now bore the judges. What can you do?

There were two dancers in the competition and although I don’t know good dancing from bad, I’ve decided that tap dancing is more impressive to me than other types. There was a girl who did a routine with a baton and I don’t think you need much experience to know that dropping the thing all over the stage is going to produce a poor score. Poor kid!

There were two pianists-one great and one who played for about 30 seconds. A man in his 40’s, obviously not part of the talent show, walked across the stage between acts and thought he was clever for playing a bit of Chopsticks on the piano and I hoped it might explode on him like it does in the cartoons.

In all, there were 10 singers and, as often happens, my daughter was the youngest and smallest of them all. But, she absolutely nailed her song and I think she may have been the crowd favourite.

She has learned so much in four years of competing about stage presence, audience rapport and turning her song into three minutes of musical theatre.

My daughter placed first in the vocal category and second overall and will compete next weekend at the Western Fair in London. I’m so proud of her and all that she’s accomplished. Let’s have fun in London!

Oh, and who placed first overall?

The silk act.

Naturally.

If you’d like to see my daughter’s performance, click here to see the video.

As a parent, you know that certain conversations with your kids are coming. You don’t know when, but you anticipate and prepare.

In your planning sessions (conducted years in advance and entirely in your head), the child brings up a contentious issue, the parent acts as though the subject has taken them completely by surprise, but miraculously provides the perfect answer/guidance/acceptance/refusal with Shakespearean eloquence. The child is awed by the response and asks only that the conversation can continue long enough to thank you for your wisdom.

I wish that my years of planning had helped me tonight with my conversation with my daughter about getting her ears pierced.

The chat started exactly as I envisioned: “Daddy, can I get my ears pierced?”

The answer I had rehearsed was, “Hmm, I’m not sure about that. Why do you want to get your ears pierced?”

The answer that came out was, “No,” surprising even me.

My daughter asked, “Why not?” and I answered, “Because I don’t want you to have any more holes in your ears.”

The truth is, I really don’t know how I feel about my daughter, at nine years old, getting her ears pierced but found myself playing a game of “Say the first thing that enters your mind.”

My daughter then countered with, “But everyone has their ears pierced, Daddy!”

Knowing this to be untrue, but still not in control of brain or my words, I provided the examples of her close friend and my mother. A total deviation from the script to be sure, but I was pleased that I had come up with one relevant example and only one ridiculous example, right there on the spot. If pressed, I was going to mention the members of the Blue Man Group and I’m thankful it didn’t come to that.

My daughter rolled her eyes and said, “It doesn’t cost anything!”

I said that it must cost something and she said that it didn’t, but quickly added, “If it does cost something, I’ve got gift cards!”

I knew I had an argument that buying goods and services with gift cards (that had been purchased for cash), was not in any way obtaining services for free, but stopped myself when I realized I was playing right into her hands. How had I let things get this far? I had lost all control.

“Mommy says the two of you will have a conversation about this,” she added.

Great!

A conspiracy...

I hadn’t planned for that.