Your Comments: In the comments on a post from last week about protectiveness, reader NorwayMom and I are having a chat about field trips -- one my son went on successfully without his usual aide accompaniment, and one her son went on successfully with an aide. An aide falling through at field-trip time is the sort of thing that can be a real problem for a student with special needs, and all in all I'd have liked my son to have had that support. But two things pleased me a lot about how the school handled the oversight: 1) I was called promptly and told about it, rather than them just sending him and hoping I'd never find out; and 2) I was the one to make the decision on whether he went or not -- the teacher wasn't refusing to have him along without a buffer. She was, in fact, enthusiastic for him to go, and confident there would be enough supervision. There have been times when neither of those would have been true, and I know many parents have horror stories about kids either put in unsafe situations or refused participation because of a school's aide error. For that reason, I'm always a little leary of field trips, and recommend that parents ask questions like the ones in my article "Before You Send Your Child on a Field Trip." When the school knows you're vigilant, they're more likely to be transparent in the future.
And speaking of protectiveness, new comments on last year's post about Dump Your Kids on the Public Day "Take Our Kids to the Park ... and Leave Them There Day" led me to check and see, and ... yes, it was observed again this year. I feel exactly the same way about the idea now as I did then, and the most recent commenter is similarly skeptical. Writes Sue: "Go to the playground and tell me the names of the kids you see unattended. It's not Trump's grandkids or President Obama's children, is it? Oh yeah, they're supervised with nannies or supervised at boarding school. See any unattended children of celebrities? Again, they're supervised. Celebrity or not -- my children deserve no less!"
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