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When school bells rang last Friday dismissing Portland Public Schools students for the summer, thousands of children trashed their workbooks and ran into the ecstasy of June, July and August.
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For those of us with school-age children, it marked something else: The official passing of the buck from teacher back to parent. Tag, we’re it.
Summer is the time of year when we are confronted with the little personalities we have brought into this world and we must ask ourselves just how much of their company can we bear. For many practitioners of the “gentle parenting” movement (and the people within earshot), the answer seems to be, not a lot.
To kick off our parenting issue, education reporter Joanna Hou and I took a closer look at gentle parenting, which has been the dominant trend for the past decade, and its discontents.
One escape valve that families rely on in the summer is the neighborhood pool. But even that option is shaping up to be fraught this year. Until Tuesday, the Oregon Health Authority’s pool rules required that all swimmers under age 14 must have an adult supervisor age 18 or older with them. Would that make our pools safer, or just seriously cramp every middle schooler’s style? Click here to find out.
And for when you just need a change of scenery with your little cherubs, point the car west on US 26 until you reach Seaside, the Coney Island of Oregon. For Oregon Summer magazine, we hit the beach and the boardwalk to review all of the major tourist attractions in Seaside on a scale from one to five starfish (coming Friday). The Tilt-A-Whirl still rules.
The sweet sound of school bells will ring again, parents. Aug. 26 is 77 days from now. But who’s counting?
