Sharing Saturday
Ever have one of those days when the juju seems off? I recently had such a day, when my middle school daughter, who was supposed to have done some homework with a friend, found out that the friend wound up doing it with someone else. She tried to shrug it off as if it didn't matter, but it was clear that it did. It was all I could do not to cry for her.
I didn't want this incident to color my whole day, but I'm afraid it did. Even though my daughter pretended not to care that a friend let her down, I felt a little tattered and not up to par for the day. Of course, I didn't let my daughter see any of this, because it's not my disappointment, not my grade. But I couldn't help feeling her pain.
As anyone who knows me will attest, I wear my heart on my sleeve. This particular character trait sometimes makes it challenging for me and I can take mishaps, setbacks and mistakes quite personally. It's hard for me to regain equilibrium when something has upset my personal balance.
I find that it's exceptionally challenging to move back into orbit when it's one of my children on the receiving end of a misunderstanding or a disappointment. Although I am far from being a parent who lives vicariously through her children, I do take a deep interest in their lives and am much a part of the everyday rhythms. I know when they've gotten a bad grade, I know when they've had a substitute teacher that they didn't like. And I know when a friend has hurt them.
So far, my daughter's transition to middle school has been relatively smooth, given how 11-year-old tween girls are really tinder-boxes in the making. It seems that middle school was designed with the organized, happy student in mind.
Check. My daughter loves her classes and loves her teachers. She comes home every day and does her homework without being asked. She practices her instrument for 30 minutes. She has many friends, most of whom have traveled with her from elementary school and with whom she has strong bonds.
But these friendships are already shifting and changing. The kids are starting to try on new skins, to figure out who they want to be in this new school setting. Many of my daughter's good friends are very busy, with schedules that rival an adult's, and no longer have time to play except with the friends who are traveling in the same direction. New allegiances are forming, and kids are reassigning themselves to different groups. Murmurs of crushes abound. Parents have whispered to me that they have heard secrets that they're not allowed to share. Yup, we're in middle school.
I knew that this would happen, but it's actually all coming home to roost so much more quickly than I expected, so fast that it's making my head spin.
I fully realize that I have not returned to middle school, and that these are not my battles to wage or secrets to share. I know who I am, and I know who my friends are. I rely on them for support and wisdom and guidance as I navigate the spiky shoals of my kids' childhoods and now adolescences. A group of my friends and I with children all around the same ages now try to get together every 6 weeks or so. We mask these get-togethers as times to see a movie, go kayaking, eat a meal. But we all know their true purpose – we need to share our stories and assure each other that we're doing a good job. Or at least as good a job as we can. These get-togethers substitute for therapy sessions, times to cry in private so that we're not crying in front of our kids when something hasn't gone right or someone has done something cruel.
As parents we need to be strong. We need to be wise. We need to get out of the way and let our children figure it out for themselves and not let our children's struggles become our own. And we need to be here when they fall down and need a little boost getting back up.
We need to support our kids and help them understand that they have the inner resources to figure out who they are, who their friends are, what their interests are and what is going to make them happy. Our job is to prepare them for launch, but with a safety net.
Yet there are days when I have a primitive desire to turn the clock back to when my children were babies. When they needed only me, and there were no sports, no friends, no homework.
And no one could yet break their hearts.
Photo by Jessica Higgins via Flickr
I musy say you are one great mom. Middle school is an important phase where they come across the transition and they are moulded, help her and guide her and she'll come to be a strong individual.
Posted by: Middle School | Monday, January 10, 2011 at 03:37 AM