Maddie and Mom: Attention Parents! Stop Doing Your Kids School Projects!

To The Parents

As the mom of a 4th grade student, throughout the years I have seen parents helping far too much with their kid's school projects. I know we all want our kids to do well in school, but sometimes it takes getting a D or a C to learn how to develop the skills to produce A+ work.

In the past I probably have been guilty of over stepping in some of my daughter's school projects as well, but this year I am taking a stand. With project after project and my busy work schedule, my daughter is on her own. I don't have time to work on school projects and have limited time to even offer any guidance.

I understand that my daughter will probably be producing C work this year, but hopefully as she learns and gains more independence I will be raising a self-reliant individual who will grow to be a strong, responsible adult. After all, our role as parents is to raise our children to not need us as adults.

To the parents that just can't help themselves in overstepping and taking over school projects....YOU ARE NOT HELPING and I can't stand it when my daughter who turns in average 4th grader work is compared to a student that is turning in work produced by a 30-40 year old adult! STOP IT! Do you really want to raise your kids to still be living with you when they are 30?

To The Schools

There is one project in particular that I dread every year. The mandatory SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT! When I was growing up these science fair projects were optional. The kids that had an interest in science opted to do them. I will admit, I never had to do a science fair project until my daughter was in 3rd grade.

So this is what the school does: Send home a packet about 10 pages long with everything that needs to get done by a certain due date. Keep in mind that everyone from Middle School to Elementary School (it's a K-8 school) gets the exact same packet. Can someone please explain to me how a 3rd grader is supposed to decipher the same directions and terminology given to an 8th grader? This is part of the reason why parents get involved too much. We have to decipher these directions as well and then teach our kids everything that the school doesn't.

It would be really helpful if the schools could actually teach the kids how to do what is asked for the science fair projects. I end up having to try to explain what an abstract is and figure out how to make a graph out of her data. This is not being taught in our schools. It is being taught by parents, which makes it a lot harder to not over step in our kid's projects.

This is a problem!

Every week my daughter has test after test. Weather you are a Common Core fan or not.....our teachers are not given enough time to actually teach meaningful science and all the processes involved in creating a science fair project. Teachers are now bogged down in testing. Meaningful learning is lost and most kids are hating school.

I just hope for my daughter's sake and for my sanity as a parent something will change and things will get better.

END RANT!