Readers of Parenting School Years know that Mom Congress has been beating the drum to fix No Child Left Behind and it's over-reliance on standardized tests. So when I saw the op-ed in the New York Times today written by Todd Farley, a testing-industry insider, I just had to share it. You should have the pleasure of reading his piece in its entirety, but just so you know what you're in for, here's a little excerpt:

"A couple of years ago I supervised a statewide reading assessment test. My colleague and I were relaxing at a pool because we believed we’d already finished scoring all of the tens of thousands of student responses. Then a call from the home office informed us that a couple of dozen unscored tests had been discovered. Because our company’s deadline for returning the tests was that day, my colleague and I had to score them even though we were already well into happy hour."

Farley had the courage to reveal a part of the system most of us would never see. Now it's our turn to do something about it. How has the stress and pressure of testing affected your child and school? Share your story here, and if you haven't already, sign Parenting's petition to fix NCLB once and for all.

Parenting's Christina Vercelletto appeared on the Today Show this morning to dish about our favorite mom-tested gear that adjusts to fit different stages of your kid's life, therefore giving you a ton of bang for your buck. Check out the clip below, then click through to our slideshow to see them all!

Ok, this isn’t going to sound important to you, but it’s life-changing/earth-shattering to me: Alex can now get all the knots out of her own hair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah: There are 6-year-olds who can get the knots out of their own hair. But like her older sister, Alex has reached this milestone at age 12. They both have long, thick, heavy straight hair that’s prone to serious knots -- particularly Alex, who spends many of her waking hours running/cartwheeling/rolling on the floor with the dog, etc.

I can’t tell you how many hours of the past 10-plus-years I’ve spent sitting behind first one, and then the other, of my girls, working out the knots with a combination of a brush, my fingers, and detangling spray, listening to her whine and complain that YOU’RE KILLING ME JUST STOP MOM STOP! If I’d had all those hours free, I could have cured cancer! (Ok, not that -- but I could have organized all the closets in the house and then some.)

The other night, she came to me with a gleeful look, handed me her brush, and said, “Brush my hair! Go ahead!” And it glided through, smooth as silk. She was SO proud of herself.

This isn’t one of those milestones that I feel bittersweet about reaching. This is how I feel: “Yay! I’m free!”

Up til very recently, Alex was the sort of kid who would pull on whatever sweats or jeans were on the top of the stack in her drawer, add a T-shirt, and be done with it.

Yesterday, she took longer than usual getting dressed and came down with a very cool outfit—an ivory eyelet Old Navy dress from last summer, over black leggings and long-sleeved black T, with three or four long necklaces and hoop earrings. She’d clearly given it a lot of thought, and she looked great, hip and stylish. My first thought: Wow! Wish I had your eye! My second: Who are you and what have you done with my kid???

Nice that she’s putting more thought into what she’s wearing, but this morning I remembered the annoying flip side of that. She was taking a REALLY long time upstairs, so long that I wasn’t sure I’d get her to school and myself to the train on time. And then she uttered the dreaded five words: “I have nothing to wear.”

Now it begins.

Alex has plenty of clothes, of course—stuff that we’ve gotten her, that she’s gotten herself with birthday gift cards, and tons that’s been passed down from her big sister and older cousins. Plus the things she borrows from her sister’s closet (well, Kate doesn’t actually use her closet—she uses the floor). But now Alex is in that hypersensitive, under-confident tween stage in which she needs to measure up to some ideal she’s carrying around in her head. And none of the clothes she owns, I’m sure, will measure up.

When Kate went through this stage, I remember my annoyance (“Nothing to wear?! Look at all these things! Don’t you know how lucky you are? There are plenty of kids with no clothes at all blah blah blah…Don’t you appreciate blah blah blah…” ). This time, I want to keep my eye on the bigger picture, remember what’s really behind what she’s saying, and cut her some slack. (Yeah, I can hear you saying: Good luck with that. I’ll let you know how I do.)

(And, note to self: I should probably stop saying, “Damn, I have nothing to wear” when I look in my closet. At least when she’s around.)

In the car this morning on the way to drop off Alex, my 12-year-old, at school, she was (as usual) quickly brushing her lovely long, thick hair, since we had (as usual) run out of time at home. As we pulled up to the school, she tossed the brush on the floor and gathered her stuff. “Do you want to bring that brush with you?” I asked, just in case she hadn’t noticed that it had hit the floor rather than her bag.
She glared at me. “Are you saying my hair is messy? Are you saying it doesn’t look good? Nice. Thanks a lot.”
WTF!? This is when I realized we’ve entered new territory: the Tween Land o’ Landmines, where anything and everything you say can be misconstrued as offensive, and/or judged just plain stupid. Yikes!
This will be my second time crossing this territory; Kate, at 16, is for the most part on the other side. (And we survived!) Ah well—time to don the flak jacket once again.
I wonder: Do moms of tween boys have to deal with this as well? Please, share!