How to Handle School Snafus: A Go Parents! Guide
Carmella Van Vleet
Nomad Press, 2004
ISBN 0-9722026-8-4
$14.95 - 397 words

It might not be on the first day of school, but eventually, every parent will have a school snafu. Part of the new era of child-centered parenting, means that parents are involved in every part of their child's life. Only a generation (or two) ago, parents sent their kids to school without a backward glance. Raise your hand if you walked to school by yourself by the time you finished kindergarten. Parents never helped with homework and they only talked to the teacher if there was a big problem. Mostly they waited for report cards and parent-teacher conferences to know how things were going.

Now, we worry about friendships, bullying, stress, and homework. And that's just in kindergarten. The days of ignorant bliss are over. Though our parents rarely knew, we too agonized over friends, ran from bullies and tried to wear cool clothes. With all this new terrain, we need a guidebook to help us get around the new language, issues and solutions.

In this graphically interesting paperback, former elementary school teacher and successful author Van Vleet, covers everything from the big issues like bullying to the seemingly small ones such as what to do with all the art your kid brings home (decide when it first comes home if it's a "keeper") or how to handle a child who is afraid of automatic flushing toilets (put a post-it over the red eye). Some of her answers are obvious (such as making your kid clean out their backpack when it's stuffed to overflowing) to any real-life parent but sometimes what we need is to be reminded of what we already know.

Van Vleet organized her book into seven major sections but inside each section are multiple topics with insider tips and many sidebars. The chapter on academic issues includes short discussions on test anxiety, cheating, failing, learning disabilities, motivating an underachiever, being held back, gifted children, your special-needs child, and siblings. Tips include not paying kids for good grades, using tape recorders at IEP (parent-teacher) meeting, different kinds of giftedness, and types of disabilities and defining plagiarism. The layout and use of shaded boxes and bold headings make it easier to find things since no index is provided.

No book can solve every school snafu but this book provides an accessible, friendly and practical approach to the most common problems for elementary school situations.

Copyright © 2005 Anna Stewart. All rights reserved worldwide.