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My recent column concerning the amount of homework required of kids has generated a lot of comments. I usually feel like I am writing in a vacuum, as I don't often hear comments either good or bad.

After writing that column, it seemed that everywhere I turned, in newspapers and even in another new book entitled, "The Case Against Homework" by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, that others were addressing the same concerns that I had raised. Last week, the Lawrence Journal World had a front-page story on the same subject that explored the issue in the Lawrence school system and questioned some of the teachers, as well.

I realized after a few days of writing the article that I had not really examined what was bothering me. And that is overzealous parents who obsess over ACT scores and send their little ones to pre-schools to get a step up on other kids when they enter kindergarten. (By the way, did you know that kindergarten means "children's garden," and doesn't that just convey an idyllic time spent pasting and drawing and taking naps and having recess?) But that's not where I'm going again this time.

Instead, I started wondering why this upsets me so much, and one day as I was making potato salad (insights often seem to occur as I'm peeling potatoes) the thought struck that perhaps my antagonism stems from the realization I was not a challenging parent. "Ah-ha," you say, and you would be right -- my motives were not pure. No, they ran more along the lines of "If it gets your goat, you've got a goat to get." Well, now I'm embarrassed, but after a little more mulling of the subject I tried to decide if I didn't challenge my own kids out of laziness, exhaustion or perhaps because I believed that kids make their own dreams and if they're lucky they follow them. I would like to believe the latter, but honestly all of those reasons are probably valid.

Besides, why do parents want their children to go to prestigious schools anyway? These colleges for the most part are on the East or West coasts so that the chance that the children and the grandchildren will end up living a thousand miles from Kansas is greatly increased. Does this make sense? Why does it always seem that in order to fulfill your dreams you have to go to another state or another country? Is this just so you can come home for school reunions and impress the poor dudes who never left home but instead stayed close to home and family?

I know a woman whose dream for her daughter was to become a famous ballerina and to traverse the globe living the life of the rich and the famous. Well, she did just that -- she achieved fame and now she lives in another country, no husband and no children, and for my friend no grandchildren.

There is much written about our mobile society that has left many hungry for roots and community, and so we develop groups and huddle together to share our stories. At a recent seminar I attended for nurses and social workers, a hospice nurse said of her patients that in the end "all they care about is their own healing or death and their family." Roots go deep, and it's hard to transplant a tree to another place -- let alone a person.

Terry Tempest Williams in her book, "Refuge" speaks about staying in one place and growing up with the walls that "bind." She talks about how much more difficult it is to stay where you grow up and to find your own destiny within the narrow confines of family and place. She says there is nowhere to run away from yourself and your roots, and therefore you must accept them and in the acceptance you find your self. In the same vein, I was once told by a priest that the rich jet off when troubles come -- heading off the pain that often leads to growth and the ever-elusive self acceptance.

Well, as usual this column has come a long way from its beginning, but that's how it is when first you start to reflect on your own weaknesses. I would like to think that even though I was not a pushy mother that my own children have found at least a piece of their dreams. They make me proud. What more can you ask?