I experienced my first real dose of senioritis today. No, it wasn’t my son cutting a class (although he’s been known to do that this year), nor was it him joyriding, being huffy and non-communicative, or staying out past curfew.
No, it happened when I was looking at his high school website, actually looking up something for my daughter who will be attending the school next year, when a page for seniors caught my eye. It held several links to important information for seniors – about prom, about finals, and about graduation.
And that’s when it really hit me. He’s graduating. This year.
And I started to cry.
Later, reading the health section of the Washington Post, there was an article about how we, as a society, should be thinking about how to better combat senioritis and create a more productive last term of high school for our American seniors. Aftrer eading that, I started to cry again.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have spent most of this year, my oldest child’s final year in high school and at home, pretty much in the mindset of “don’t let the door hit you as you leave.” My friends who have gone through this have told me that this is natural – our seniors’ behavior in their last full year living at home often is so atrocious, so mean-spirited and icky, that we want them to leave.
But it’s really only their way of getting ready to leave. They need to push away, to create space between themselves and their parents, and their friends. They need to know that it’s ok to leave it behind – that they’re ready to launch.
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