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Valentine's Day was always one of my favorite days at Central School on Second Street in Elkins.
The teacher would give us a list with the names of all our classmates, and my family made each child a heart-shaped sugar cookie with red icing.
The night before Valentine's Day our eldest sister, Betsy, would stay up late using a cake decorating tube to write the names of every child in our classes as well as the teacher. Betsy must have labeled more than 100 cookies a year when my two brothers and I were in the elementary grades.
When I was a parent of elementary students, I tried to keep the heart-shaped cookie tradition going, but my cookie making and cake decorating efforts did not last long. It was so much easier to buy a plastic bag of 25 or 30 paper Valentines, and let my children write the names themselves.
I took my turns as "Room Mother" and brought red heart candies for the class parties as long as the law would allow. At some point teachers had to tell parents that the sugar had to be limited -- even for school parties.
Now my grandchildren get their Valentine mementos online. They still take time to personalize their own Valentines, and the parties continue.
When I think about all the social changes that have come about since I was a child in the 1950s, I realize that teachers have been working to keep normal routines and annual traditions going for children in a world that is becoming ever more complex.
One thing that does not change is that every child needs to love and be loved. They need to be supported at home and to be accepted at school. When two parents are together at home, most of the social customs are appropriately observed. Nobody has time to write names on cookies like my sister did, but most kids have something to offer their classmates on Valentine's Day.
These days, teachers find themselves in awkward situations where children do not have what they need to be able to participate in social activities.