I’m taking a break from blogging–I’m sure all my Russian spammer friends (based on the comments I get to moderate) will be bummed. Thanks for stopping by.

A year ago, I mourned the loss of summer to enrichment, tutoring and daycamps in my Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog. Dual forces converged to create this situation–the academic pressure to always be ahead of the pack and the economic necessity of parents working longer hours in less flexible jobs. You know, to pay for all the enrichment, lessons and tutoring (I tease).

But the pressure to always be working is hard to resist, even when it comes to my kid. And the fact that my kid tends to forget stuff that doesn’t engage him… well, maybe I should prepare a few summer lesson plans, just in case.

On the other hand, perhaps I should declare an unschooling summer, more impressive-sounding than “we’re not doing anything this summer.” Because really, that’s what my kid wants–a few months to do nothing. In reality, that means skateboarding, tracking weather, building stuff from random wood scraps. The kind of activities that produce new knowledge and great summer memories, but whose benefits aren’t measured by standardized tests.

How’s your summer shaping up?

Does ordinary equal boring? According to my five year-old, no.

Trying to help her get over an extreme case of bedtime giggles last night, I suggested she think about something boring in her life. Surely she had some boring moments she could reflect on.

Was preschool ever boring, I asked?

No.

How about home? After all, we don’t fill every minute of our kids’ lives with enrichment or entertainment.

No, my daughter answered. In fact, she said this, almost sounding like she was complaining: “There’s nothing in my life that is boring.”

Since she didn’t have any boring thoughts to fall back on, my daughter got to sit up with me and watch The Daily Show, followed by a very boring home improvement show that finally did the trick.

I believe that book reports are a true test of parental ambition. Sure it’s supposed to be the student’s book report, but then we’ve also overheard teachers dissing those slacker parents who aren’t actively involved in their kid’s school work. “You can always tell,” they’ll sigh, with a hint of disdain for the clumsy project before them.

And what parent can’t resist helping? A dab of glue there, a few facts thrown in here… nothing over-the-top, like the suspiciously polished display created by the kid with a scrapbook-obsessed professional marketing mom.

Yet I found myself nagging DJ about his book report.  A lot. Not just to start it, but to do it right. To dig deeper into the book’s meaning. And finally, to finish the damn thing. In the end, it felt as much like it was my book report as it was his, at least in terms of emotional investment.

I wondered if I should step back. Let him fail if necessary. After all, he’s in 5th grade and it was just a book report, not a freakin’ entrance exam. But then what would that say about me, as a parent?

Have you ever sat back and allowed your kid to fail? In hindsight, was it the right thing to do?

A friend of mine, one of those friends who has cats not kids, recently said to me: “You know what? You’ve become a martyr mom.”

She wasn’t being mean at all. She and I had recently gotten back in touch, and she was merely reflecting on who I used to be, before the never-ending obsessions about school, activities, enrichment and all that other kid-stuff took over. And she was right.

That’s the cruel irony with me — even as I defend my kid’s right to be just ordinary, not some high-achieving wunderkind, I fall so easily into the perfect-mommy-trap myself.

I don’t demand perfection yet I want my kid’s life to be perfect, giving him access to every possible opportunity out there. I dont’ pressure him to max out his potential, yet I beat myself up at the notion that I may be shortchanging that potential.

So I’ve decided to refocus some of my attention on myself, allowing myself to become more of an ordinary mom, perhaps even a slacker mom. Like the mom I met not so long ago at a school open house who couldn’t tell me much about her daughter’s classroom beyond this: “I drop her off in the morning, pick her up in the afternoon, and she seems happy. That’s good enough for me.”