Paula Poundstone Re: Projects, Report Cards

I remember waking my mother on a school morning, just before I went to the bus stop, saying, "Mom, it's the school play today, and I'm supposed to be a carrot. Can you get up and make my costume?"

I know my mother used to hope that someday I would experience some of the frustration she had in raising me. I've been paid back in spades. "Mom, my science project is due today and I need to buy a poster board and I need your spleen and we're out of staples."

"Toshia, it's really hard to get you a poster board at the last minute."

"She just told us today."

I found Toshia's report card in her pants pocket when I was putting the laundry pile in the washing machine, because not only was she not going to show it to me, she was going to ruin a whole load of laundry with it. She had turned a D-minus into a D-plus by putting a vertical line through the minus sign. I wasn't so much upset with her as I was fascinated. "Exactly how different was my reaction going to be to a D-minus?" I showed her how to make a D into a B and asked that, in the future, she aim higher and have a little self-respect.

(from There's Nothing in this Book that I Meant to Say.)

Paula Poundstone Re: Homework

I hate homework. Sometimes I think it's worse for the family than drugs and alcohol could ever hope to be. I didn't do my own homework. If my kids aren't smart enough to get out of theirs, why should I do it? I get mad at them for not hiding it better.

(from There's Nothing in this Book that I Meant to Say.)

Paula Poundstone Re: Experts

I've never found a job harder than parenting, partly because there are so many self-appointed experts. Even when something goes right, I'm sure I did it wrong. One day seven-year-old Thomas E had a huge tantrum while we walked to school, and eleven-year-old Alley looked at me and said, "He didn't get that way by himself."

I don't think I've ever met someone who didn't know how to raise my kids. My daughter once happened to have a stomping tantrum as we walked by a guy passed out on the sidewalk, who stirred enough to mumble, "Try a positive-reinforcement sticker chart."

(From There's Nothing in this Book That I Meant to Say.)