I should have known. I should have remembered. I should have freaking known.

The week between Christmas and New Years Eve is the worst week to be a parent. The kids have a week off, they're suffering a Christmas hangover, and I'm trying to dig myself out from under the pile of boxes I've been trying (in vain) to recycle while I try to get some work done.

This week would've been so much easier if I'd simply prepared for it. If I'd had half a brain, I'd have simply done it. Mental note: next year, follow these steps.

This weekend some friends were at our house and I overheard a conversation between two 30-somethings and my daughter, age 5. It went a little like this: Them: "How's kindergarten?" My daughter: "Hard." Naturally we all turned and looked at my 5-year-old and recounted how awesome kindergarten was, for us. She later explained that kindergarten is way harder than pre-school because she has a schedule and she has to do things like math, writing, and other things -- on a schedule. Clearly it was the schedule that was getting to her, but it reminded me that my own kindergarten experience was much, much different. I was eating paste and trying to learn how to tie my shoes. Maybe learning the pledge of allegiance, unless that came in first grade.

Then I had a conversation with a 15-year-old in our neighborhood, who goes to a school that it's quite possible my own kids will attend, and now I'm totally freaking out.

Do you remember fifth grade? For me, it's one of those school years I remember in minute detail ... it was the year I was obsessed with maintaining my long string of gold stars on the class Spelling chart but also the year I barely survived the disappointed look on my beloved teacher's face when I got my first "C." I roller skated everywhere, wore lots of rainbow things, and had horrifying boy crushes that only lived locked inside my Dear Diary. Fifth grade was totally intense. A year of so many new expectations and feelings.

Well, because I always love to keep a steady stream of anxiety pumping through my body, I decided to go back to fifth grade for a day to see if it's still the same as I remembered it. Pen and notebook in hand, I was in my desk by the first school bell and I stayed all day long through lessons and recesses and lunch and even math.

You won't believe all the stuff that hasn't changed one bit!

Ready to SucceedMy most vivid memory from kindergarten involves me throwing up on my Valentine's Day art project. While that may not be a universal experience, I'm guessing most of you who grew up in the '70s and '80s have halcyon and occasionally terrifying memories of that first year of school as well. You know, that year where everybody is still struggling with dressing themselves and remembering to ask when they need to go potty. But those days are long gone my friends.

Something has changed inside the kindergarten classroom, and it's not just the lack of chalk boards.

When Go The F--k to Sleep finally hit shelves this summer, I think we all knew it would be a runaway hit.  It made us all feel a wee bit better about the things we've thought but not said about parenting. But now I'm starting to understand why some things are better left unsaid.

Because sometimes, kids find out about it.

If you've ever worried that your child's school isn't as technologically advanced as other fancy schools you've heard about around the country, you may be doing so unnecessarily. In fact, your school's lack of smart boards and personal computers for every student just may be in line with one of the most elite education approaches there is.

An article in The New York Times Sunday highlighted the Waldorf School in Silicon Valley. There in the land of Google, Apple, and other technology giants, many of the leaders of those companies send their children to this school that uses no technology at all -- there's not a single computer used. Instead the children learn by doing -- math through knitting, fractions by cutting up cake and quesadillas. And just when your school finally raised enough money for new laptop carts ...

Mildred RussTeachers are so important in our children's lives. We send our precious babies off into their care each day trusting that they will teach and nurture them. Most of them do so with love and devotion, but sometimes they don't, and that's terrifying. A recent incident in which a teacher choked a 6-year old student at recess is enough to make all parents question the people in charge of our children at school.

According to WAFB, Mildred Russ, a veteran teacher in Baker, Louisiana, totally lost any sense of right or wrong when trying to discipline little Kiya Rogers during recess. Witnesses told police the 65-year-old teacher took the girl's own sweater and wrapped it around her neck, and every time she tried to move, she pulled it tighter. Then she dragged her across the playground to the office, right out of her shoes.

And it gets worse.

Do you dress to the nines to drop your kid off at school? Do you slip on your Prada jacket over your $400 jeans and teeter along in your Christian Louboutin pumps (making sure all the other moms see a flash of those tell-tale red soles) before handing over your son or daughter's backpack and kissing him or her goodbye?

Yeah, me neither.

I just got back from dropping off my kid at school, and you know what I wore? The same not-terribly-clean pair of jeans I wore yesterday (no time to do laundry) and a T-shirt that has to be at least 10 years old under a hoodie, topped off by the fleece my husband had left lying on the chair closest to the front door. Oh, and a pair of slip-on sneakers I snagged last season on sale for $10.
 
Is my crappy drop-off fashion sense unusual?