Parental Thread

[Traum]

Bernstein bears... I dunno why I read that as "Epstein bears" at first, and then I thought to myself -- WTF?! Epstein bears and children's books? What kind of fxxked up shxt is this?!

And then I read it properly after the double take...

I'll see myself out now...

[supafamous]

My favourite Berenstain Bear book:

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by xxxrsxxx

My kid just started kindergarten, she know's her letters but now starting to learn phonics. I'm hoping to help her in starting to read. Did you teach your kids how to read? I've heard about a book called "teach your kid to read in 100 easy lessons", has anyone use this or any recommendations?

We're having to teach our kid (grade 1) despite years of reading to her regularly. We're trying to get in a couple books each day that we get her to read otherwise she just doesn't have an interest in reading books on her own.

She's also in French immersion and I realise I need to pick up some French so that I can read kids books to her as well. I thought I would remember enough of it from high school but oh no, it's truly is a foreign language to me now.

[EvoFire]

Bonjour.

Comment ca va (did I even spell it right)

And pizza toppings. That's all I remember.

(I can actually read some ok but cannot grammar or speak it, French French isn't as annoying as Quebecois)

We thought about throwing our son into the French Immersion lottery, but realize we couldn't help him with school work so we decided not to.

[underscore]

If you're looking at Berenstain Bears books avoid the ones with the "Living Lights" logo on the top right corner. Those are weird Christian-esque ones written by the son of the original authors.

[supafamous]

Thinking of vacations to take in the next few years with the kid and was looking for your experiences and thoughts on where to go. Kid is 6.5 now and a pretty decent traveller and we are not an outdoorsy family (like we don't ski or we ain't going snorkelling or fishing). We won't travel to the US right now. Other notes:

- Japan is high on our list but I wonder if we should wait till she's a bit older so we can stay out later.
- We had a great time on our road trip to Calgary and plan on doing a longer one there with longer stops along the way next year.
- I heard Mexico City is quite nice to visit.
- Big fan of Northern Europe. I'd love to see London, Scotland or Amsterdam again or see Ireland, Denmark, Belgium etc for the first time. Wife loves the monarchy.
- Am curious about places like Costa Rica (or Central America).
- Would love to visit Hong Kong for the first time in 20+ years.
- Had a great time visiting Australia (Sydney) 2 years ago and would definitely go again. Maybe New Zealand instead or should we go see more of Australia?

[EvoFire]

Squeeze in a Zipair trip to Japan before he turns 7. Their 6 year old fare is 6 inclusive and can be as low as $150. I would recommend spending as long as you can in Japan, do parts of the legs on the Shinkansen, and rent a car to hit the more off the path towns. When we went to Takayama, I very much regretted taking the train and not renting a car.

Europe is great. We were planning to go in Spring but we KEEP getting side tracked by Asia trips because we have to see people or do things.

We just booked our flights to Shanghai for March. We were originally going to fly direct there and back, but it was quite pricy with China Eastern. We've ended up booking 3 separate one way trips. Vancouver to Tokyo via Zip Air and staying a week, Tokyo to Shanghai via China Eastern, coming back direct with AC (ugh, but their flight time is better than CE). This was all cheaper than flying direct with CE.

[Gumby]

Australia and Europe I find pretty far... tough for those that don't like flying.

Japan (Tokyo just 10 hrs away, 9 hrs return) with young kids is great. Just be warned that elevators/escalators are rare in train stations...

Originally Posted by EvoFire

We just booked our flights to Shanghai for March. We were originally going to fly direct there and back, but it was quite pricy with China Eastern. We've ended up booking 3 separate one way trips. Vancouver to Tokyo via Zip Air and staying a week, Tokyo to Shanghai via China Eastern, coming back direct with AC (ugh, but their flight time is better than CE). This was all cheaper than flying direct with CE.

Lol I am also going to Asia in March, including Shanghai.

If you have school-aged kids and they're doing OK in school, I wouldn't hesitate to take them out of school for ~2 weeks to travel during off peak periods. If you can book the vacation around stat holidays and/or Pro-D days then you don't miss that much after all.

[bcrdukes]

Pardon me, but is everyone on here Shanghainese or something?

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

Pardon me, but is everyone on here Shanghainese or something?

You're not?

My dad's side of the family is Shanghainese - they're from the Zhejiang region. 20+ years ago we visited that area. My daughter, like me, has an abiding love of soup dumplings too.

[bcrdukes]

I'm Russian.

[EvoFire]

I thought we established the whole Shanghainese thing already. My wife is Shanghainese

[bcrdukes]

Shanghainese > you

[Badhobz]

youre all a bunch of bloody guangdong bastards. fuck you and your fake ass shanghainese.

fuck you badhobz you fake ass shanghainese. how dare you like corollas and ghetto trash and you swear more in cantonese than in shanghainese. disgrace.

[6793026]

Originally Posted by supafamous

Thinking of vacations to take in the next few years with the kid and was looking for your experiences and thoughts on where to go. Kid is 6.5 now and a pretty decent traveller and we are not an outdoorsy family (like we don't ski or we ain't going snorkelling or fishing). We won't travel to the US right now. Other notes:

- Japan is high on our list but I wonder if we should wait till she's a bit older so we can stay out later.
- We had a great time on our road trip to Calgary and plan on doing a longer one there with longer stops along the way next year.
- I heard Mexico City is quite nice to visit.
- Big fan of Northern Europe. I'd love to see London, Scotland or Amsterdam again or see Ireland, Denmark, Belgium etc for the first time. Wife loves the monarchy.
- Am curious about places like Costa Rica (or Central America).
- Would love to visit Hong Kong for the first time in 20+ years.
- Had a great time visiting Australia (Sydney) 2 years ago and would definitely go again. Maybe New Zealand instead or should we go see more of Australia?

Costa rica is meh. if you're not outdoorsy then you shoudl pass. I've been th Aruba, Guatemala, Trinidad / Tobago, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, Mexico... you must like the heat, you must really sitting at a beach, NOT being in a resort, or enjoy scuba diving to truly like these places. I mean yes, you can go hiking but it's all the same hike.

New Zealand woudl be ideal if you are really open to camping and road trip in a RV.

Hong Kong if that's your thing, 20+ years is a lot. It'll be huge memories showing your kids where you grew up (i'm guessing). It's great cause you can still get by with plenty of english.

Japan will forever be Japan. It's something your kids will go and go back often. Go where your roots / family ties are and do family things. Heck I'm old and cherished every bit of the family things looking back.

[EvoFire]

boom

[supafamous]

Does anyone send their kids to private school? Curious as to why you did it and how you have found it?

I know a few people who aren't rich (though well off) who send their kids to private schools at considerable expense (one of them pays $32k/yr for their 6 year old).

Private school was never a consideration for my kid - I didn't even bother looking at the cost and the stereotypes just struck me as something that I didn't want my kid to be around. OTOH, as one of the parents pointed out they feel their kids get more support and attention from the teachers (like the teachers know all the kids).

I don't have 32k lying around for private school and I have trouble fathoming that private school could be THAT much better (that's about half a million bucks from K-12) but it definitely got my attention that my friend (HHI ~$400-500k) felt it was a necessary thing to do for both his kids and that it would push back retirement a lot for them (while they're also saving for a larger house).

[radeonboy]

My opinion is that private school is worth it if the tuition (+ related extracurricular costs) is not a burden on the parents. If the goal is to get the child into a prestigious university, my high-achieving friends from public schools still got into prestigious US universities just like those I knew in private school.

In both cases, the parents were very involved in the child's education. This meant extracurriculars (sports, music, volunteering etc.) and tutoring after school hours, scaled by how much each parent can afford.

[westopher]

I think it’s worth considering depending where you are. We looked at the Waldorf and considered it if it was a couple grand cheaper because it would just come in line with our childcare costs currently, but since our daughter has friends from our townhouse complex going to the school close to us, as well as the cost in addition to our current situation, then after school care stacked on top of that, we couldn’t justify it. Will be nice to have like 15k a year more to use for various things too. It’s certainly enough to make a pretty substantial difference in terms of activities and vacations.

[Traum]

I used to tutor math for high school kids. By some stroke of luck, there was a 2 or 3 year run when I worked with a few kids from different private schools. I forgot exactly which ones, but they were the better ones, including at least one kid from West Point Grey Academy.

They were of course all good kids from good, supportive families, so I'm sure they would still have thrived had they went to public schools. But what struck me the most were the additional opportunities that were there to open their eyes to a bigger, wider world outside of just the academics. There were out-of-country trips -- can't remember whether it was to Spain or France -- where they students were only allowed to speak the foreign language while they were on the school organized portions of the trip. I think band had a US or European tour of some sort. Every grade seems to have a "big marquee event" within a school year, plus other events over the course of the school year as well. And the parents had to be really involved. In hindsight, I think all of these events and stuff outside of just school and socializing probably helped opened their eyes, grew their awareness, and helped them mature by at least a year or 2, if not more.

Imagine being fresh out of highschool, but instead of just having a highschool student's attitude towards your next phase in life, if you already have the mindset and maturity of a 1st or 2nd year student when you pursue post secondary studies, that would obivously put you ahead of the others by quite a bit.

Unfortunately, I don't have the $25 - $30k that I'd need each year to put my kid in private school. And I obviously don't have the additional money to send them on to these additional trips and activities either. I also wouldn't have the time (nor the desire or patience) to participate in the PTA as if it was my 2nd job as well.

So no, I can't put my kid into a (good) private school, and I sure as heck isn't gonna put him into a crappy one -- from first hand experience, I seem to think St. Francis Xavier is pretty chaotic.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Traum

I used to tutor math for high school kids. By some stroke of luck, there was a 2 or 3 year run when I worked with a few kids from different private schools. I forgot exactly which ones, but they were the better ones, including at least one kid from West Point Grey Academy.

They were of course all good kids from good, supportive families, so I'm sure they would still have thrived had they went to public schools. But what struck me the most were the additional opportunities that were there to open their eyes to a bigger, wider world outside of just the academics. There were out-of-country trips -- can't remember whether it was to Spain or France -- where they students were only allowed to speak the foreign language while they were on the school organized portions of the trip. I think band had a US or European tour of some sort. Every grade seems to have a "big marquee event" within a school year, plus other events over the course of the school year as well. And the parents had to be really involved. In hindsight, I think all of these events and stuff outside of just school and socializing probably helped opened their eyes, grew their awareness, and helped them mature by at least a year or 2, if not more.

Imagine being fresh out of highschool, but instead of just having a highschool student's attitude towards your next phase in life, if you already have the mindset and maturity of a 1st or 2nd year student when you pursue post secondary studies, that would obivously put you ahead of the others by quite a bit.

Unfortunately, I don't have the $25 - $30k that I'd need each year to put my kid in private school. And I obviously don't have the additional money to send them on to these additional trips and activities either. I also wouldn't have the time (nor the desire or patience) to participate in the PTA as if it was my 2nd job as well.

So no, I can't put my kid into a (good) private school, and I sure as heck isn't gonna put him into a crappy one -- from first hand experience, I seem to think St. Francis Xavier is pretty chaotic.

That all comes at a significant cost though, not just monetary but also time.

The base tuition fees aside, you need to volunteer with the school, you need be there for all these events, you have to donate to the cause, for the big school trips, a lot of parents join and go on the trip together. You also have to keep up with the joneses.

The other side is just being surrounded by kids and their parents who ARE really invested in their future and edumacaton. Even in public school, the difference I'm seeing between Champlain Heights and Oppenheimer has been big. Champlain Height is by no means a bad school and there's a lot of things they do right. But the level of involvement from the parents at Oppenheimer is just different. The PAC does more than just trying to fundraise monies, they bring in after school programs in arts, science, and other things.

The kid that sits next to your kid, his dad just picked up a new 911 Turbo S for his winter beater. How dare you only drive a X5 year round.

[Traum]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

That all comes at a significant cost though, not just monetary but also time.

The base tuition fees aside, you need to volunteer with the school, you need be there for all these events, you have to donate to the cause, for the big school trips, a lot of parents join and go on the trip together. You also have to keep up with the joneses.

Money and time -- you are absolutely right about that. I remember one of the private school kid's mom telling me how her involvement at the PTA is like a full time job. Fortunately for her, she only works casual part time at her husband's business. For a family where both parents need to work, I really don't know how they can pull that kind of responsibility off. And like you said -- they also volunteer / work as chaperone at the school events, including trips.

Another story I remember was -- in one case, the (private) school wanted to refurnish their computer lab with new equipment, so they were gonna do a fund-rasing event of some sort. But when one of the parents learned about this, he just donated some $40 - $50k to make it happen. So equipment-wise, private schools will have significantly better resources than almost anything public schools has to offer.

I've heard of west side schools in VSB (Churchill and Hamber) being able to tap the PTA to do similar fund rasing efforts to furnish the school as well. But when an east side school (Brittania, Templeton) only has 1 class set of microscopes to go around for the whole school, or 2 class sets of math textbooks to get loaned out to students during class time, there are going to be some resource problems.

Another worrisome issue that has lingered in my mind is -- I've been quiet concerned about how poorly-equipped our public schools are against air quality warning and heat warning days. While every public school is supposed to have at least 1 cooling center in the school (usually the library?), individual classrooms are almost always not at all equipped with air purifiers and/or air conditioners. Over the years, there had been a handful of times when we decided to keep our kid at home instead of sending him to school bcos of the air quality or heat warning. At least with air conditioning, I can't imagine how it would be an issue for private schools.

[bcrdukes]

I went to Britannia. Look how I turned out (poor, dumb, and broke dick.)

Let me be the example your children should NOT become!

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Traum

Money and time -- you are absolutely right about that. I remember one of the private school kid's mom telling me how her involvement at the PTA is like a full time job. Fortunately for her, she only works casual part time at her husband's business. For a family where both parents need to work, I really don't know how they can pull that kind of responsibility off. And like you said -- they also volunteer / work as chaperone at the school events, including trips.

Another story I remember was -- in one case, the (private) school wanted to refurnish their computer lab with new equipment, so they were gonna do a fund-rasing event of some sort. But when one of the parents learned about this, he just donated some $40 - $50k to make it happen. So equipment-wise, private schools will have significantly better resources than almost anything public schools has to offer.

I've heard of west side schools in VSB (Churchill and Hamber) being able to tap the PTA to do similar fund rasing efforts to furnish the school as well. But when an east side school (Brittania, Templeton) only has 1 class set of microscopes to go around for the whole school, or 2 class sets of math textbooks to get loaned out to students during class time, there are going to be some resource problems.

Another worrisome issue that has lingered in my mind is -- I've been quiet concerned about how poorly-equipped our public schools are against air quality warning and heat warning days. While every public school is supposed to have at least 1 cooling center in the school (usually the library?), individual classrooms are almost always not at all equipped with air purifiers and/or air conditioners. Over the years, there had been a handful of times when we decided to keep our kid at home instead of sending him to school bcos of the air quality or heat warning. At least with air conditioning, I can't imagine how it would be an issue for private schools.

For the majority of the heat and air quality issues, chances are it's August and the kids are out of school anyways. There's probably a select few days in Sept that there's an issue. To rectify the problem is going to be a mid 8 figure project minimum, if not into the early 9s, there's simply no budget for that, and nor is there enough public will.

Some teachers have portable air conditioners that I've seen, not sure if on their own dime or not, or the school or PAC/PTA pulled some money for south or west facing rooms.

[CivicBlues]

Pssh kids today are pussies and it's their parent's fault entirely. Waahh my kid is too hot. Waah my kid's desk only has 3 USB C charging ports and can't charge all their devices at once. Wahh my kid needs to breathe clean air. A little adversity never hurt anyone.

Back in the day we had to sit in portables with no heating in our winter jackets huffing gas fumes from the generator they had to bring in to power the one overhead projector the teacher used!