I Need to Be Room Parent!

 

As I round the corner at the store, I am surprised to see aisles filled with school supplies. 

Is it that time already?!

My kids are too old to worry about Back to School time. 

But when they were little....it was VERY important to me. 

In fact - I would try to be the first parent at Back To School Night so I could sign up as Room Parent. 

Was I in to planning class parties? Field trips? Decorating the teacher's door for Teacher Appreciation Week? 

Not really...

As a mom to three kids with asthma, I was always worried. Their asthma was hard to control, even Asthma Specialist was puzzled. My two youngest kids ended up in the hospital 12 times (2 ICU's)

So I was always on edge. I couldn't just send them off to school each day and relax. 

I wouldn't go too far from home. I would try to run quick errands, but would sometimes get calls from the school that one of my kids was having an attack. I would have to leave my grocery store in the middle of the aisle and get to the school as fast as I could 

Some of you reading this may be thinking, why didn't the school nurse just take care of things?

My state has a horrible school nurse/student ratio. It wasn't uncommon for our school nurses to manage students at 5-7 schools. She could be responsible for over 7,000 students. 

In fact, School Nurse was usually at our elementary school one day a week, for 2 hours. 

I would tell the kids that School Nurse was there on Thursdays from 9am - 11am. So if they were going to have an asthma attack, make sure and plan it during those two hours!

Of course they knew I was joking and they knew there was no way to prevent every asthma attack. As a long time asthma sufferer, I know that asthma attacks can come out of nowhere 

Room Parent  

As room parent, I could keep an eye on the classrooms and make sure they were allergy & asthma friendly. My kids have environmental allergies and food allergies, so we had to be careful to avoid allergy and asthma triggers. 

I also went on every field trip 

Going to the zoo? To see all of the animals? Yeah, I'm signing myself up first before I ask for help from other moms. 

The state fair? Which would involve large barns with animals and time to pet them? And lots of straw in the pens? Yep, I'll be going on that one too

Other parents with kids with medical problems 

I became really good friends with another mom whose daughter had Type 1 diabetes. She and I would help on every class party and field trip. We would drag along large bags with medical equipment for our kids 

Other moms would come on field trips and would just carry their car keys. How would that be? They can go on a field trip without hauling around medical equipment?

 My kids had large classes - usually 35 kids. So the teachers always had their hands full without having to worry about kids with medical problems. 

I wanted my kids to love school, make great friends and have fun. 

I was there in the background if they needed me, but I really tried to stay out of the way and not help unless they needed me 

Who else is nervous sending kids off to school? 😟