Parenting,Teaching, and The Bravermans

Parenthood.  (You know my favorite TV show.)  I can relate to the show on so many levels.  Because I have parents.  And I have parented precocious preschoolers and special needs elementary schoolers and awkward middle schoolers and promising high schoolers and young adults of the married and unmarried varieties.  And I have brothers and sisters who have over the years watched and judged my parenting and said to themselves, "MY kids will never..."  right up until they had their own kids. 
I have just about all the ingredients to write my own show. 
Tonight's episode would be about parent-teacher conferences. 
It will be titled "So You're The Goober's Mom".
I spend the first part of the day working, talking to and texting my co-parent about the evening plans.  I debate with myself whether I need to make the effort to go to parent-teacher conferences at all this year.    I would be happy if my co-parent attended Parent-Teachers this year by himself.  (I think that was the deal.  I handled the early years and he gets the teen years.)  At the end of the day, my co-parent doesn't know that parent teacher conferences are this week.  My co-parent ends up in a cabin on the mountain dreaming of elk.  I end up at parent-teacher conferences by myself.  I move down the A-wing with a schedule and a report card in my hand.  Until tonight I do not know what the Goob's teachers look like. The Goob's teachers can not guess whose parent I am.  I suppose if you met the Goob as a high school freshman you would expect his parents to be tall thin blondes.  Ha. Guess again. 
So in 30 minutes I introduce myself to the guidance counselor, the principal, and 5 of the Goob's teachers.  Some of them are not as old or as young or as scary as the Goob led me to believe.   Each of them gently tells me the Goob is a unique person.  And they try to decide if that is in any way related to my parenting.  I try convince them that my co-parent is a tall thin blonde who is extremely talkative and whose native language is sarcasm.  I try to convince them that the Goob got his superior intelligence from me.  I have less than five minutes to make my case before we parents and teachers pass judgment on each other. 
There is no easy way to judge effective parenting.  No report card with percentages to tell how well you are doing.  By the time you figure out one stage (or one child) you have moved on to the next.  Thus my fascination with the Bravermans from TV Land, where all problems are resolved at the end of the hour long episode, and they have that great backyard with the party lights where everyone has dinner together. 
A blog bonus:  The best parenting advice I ever received:  Hug your kids at least twice every day.  I learned that at a seminar in an elementary school auditorium.  The speaker was a policeman.  The subject was how to keep your kids off drugs.