Tag: high school

Mean Girls

Last week, a young woman who was a student at the high school where all of my children graduated from, took her own life. While, of course, suicide has a lot of complicating factors, it was well known by the student population that this popular, talented young woman was being bullied by, and ostracized from her friend group. Something about a boy . . . .

“The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies.” – Unknown

We teach the younger generations not by what we say and lecture about, but more so by what we do in our own lives and how we behave on an every day basis.

“The life you lead is the lesson you teach.” – Marie Humphrey

So many lives have been forever hurt by this awful tragedy. Not only will this young woman’s family and true friends have to live with this horrific loss forever, but the girls who bullied her will have to live with this taint on own their lives forevermore. Where did these girls learn bullying? Where did they learn gossiping and ganging up? Where do “Mean Girls” come from?

We help the world when we heal ourselves. It doesn’t feel good to be a mean girl at any stage in life, and it doesn’t feel good to be a target of mean girls during any stage of our lives. Meanness comes from a feeling of insecurity and lack. Happy, contented people are not mean people. Meanness is wearing your wounds like a tattoo, for the world to see. Kind, secure, confident women raise kind, secure, confident women. May we all aim to be these healthy, highest forms of womankind.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Open Arms, Open Heart

Tonight is Open House night at my daughter’s high school. This will probably be about the 20th Open House that I have attended, in the capacity as a parent. I’m not even really sure the actual number, as they all start running into each other, in my mind. Usually my husband and I have had to “tag team” these events, going to different of our children’s classes and coming back together to compare notes. (I have to admit that he has always been more earnest in his note taking than I have been.) Sometimes we haven’t even been at the same school. It will be strange to be able to go to the same classrooms together and greet the teachers, as a team.

My daughter is a sophomore, so her classes are still likely to be pretty full with parents during this Open House. Senior classes tend to be pretty sparse. One year, my eldest son’s senior English class only had one parent attending. It was me. This poor young, earnest, first year teacher had prepared probably the best PowerPoint presentation I had ever seen produced at an Open House event. I half expected fireworks to be let off at the end of it. When he asked if there were any questions at the end of it, I wanted to ask, “Should we cry now?” It was definitely an awkward situation.

I had my eldest child when I was 25. It has been good for my ego over the years to be “the young mom” when I visited with his teachers and friends and coaches. My son is a big man with a full beard who looks older than his age, so one time, when I was donning a baseball cap and big sunglasses, someone once even confused us as husband and wife. It was definitely another awkward moment for me. I think it was a traumatic, nauseating, possibly “in need of therapy”, moment for him.

But now, as I enter the last three years of Open Houses to go, I’m definitely not one of the young moms. I’ve been around the block a few times. I have the worry lines on my forehead to prove it. But with the lines, also comes the sage wisdom that everything is going to be okay. My daughter will find her path, just as her brothers before her have, and her father and I have, before our precious children even came into being. Her earnest, kind, dedicated teachers will do their best to impart their knowledge to broaden her mind’s understanding of this world and to keep her thirsting for more learning. Her tennis coaches will coax the best of her physical prowess out of her, which will give her the best prize of all – confidence in her strength and her abilities to overcome challenges. Her art teachers will encourage her to expand her amazing creativity and her unique expressions of the world’s wonder. Her friends will be her mutual cheerleaders, supporters, experience-sharers, and perhaps, among the best teachers that she will have in many regards, as she morphs into her womanhood. The administrators at her high school will keep her life structured, ordered and hopefully safe, for the next three years. So knowing all of this, I greet tonight’s Open House with open arms and an open heart of gratitude for this warm, connected community that is helping me to launch my final little ship, of the fleet of ships, that makes up our family.

Baby Goes to High School

My youngest child, my only daughter started high school today.  She showed the same kind of nervous excitement she had when she started kindergarten and then middle school.  She has always been full of energy and excitement.  When I would drop her off at her elementary school, she would literally skip into the school.  Today her older brother drove her to school.  I doubt that they will be skipping into the doors, but I could tell that there was a kick in her step.

She got up very early.  Her hairstyle was the prettiest of all of the different styles she has been practicing for the last couple of weeks.  Her outfit had been laid out for days.  I wish I could have laid out a magic invisible shield for her to wear, too.  The shield would protect her innocent little girl’s heart from the inevitable growing pains that come along with the high school years.  Hopefully, our love for her will serve as that shield.  That and her protective big brother, the senior who has been through the ropes, will be her strength when her confidence gets clouded from peer pressure and academic stress.

My daughter has to worry about all of the things I did when I was in high school, but nowadays it seems taken up a notch.  Bullying has a whole new realm with so many different social media options.  The academic pressures are ridiculous.  My two older sons graduated from high school with a year’s worth of college credits under their belts and that was the “norm”; nothing outstanding.  And then there is the fear of violence.  My teacher friend just underwent two intense days of school shooter training, required to be taken by everyone in the district, even substitute teachers.  Dating has to be even more confusing in a day and age when exposure to every walk of life is just a click of a button away.  The sports competitions are intense.  I can’t believe how many of my kids’ friends have sustained serious sports related injuries requiring surgeries before they have even graduated from high school.

It is not my nature to be negative, nor is it my daughter’s.  The trick is to balance hope with practicality, I guess.  Today, I try to put a cloak of faith around everyone I care about with an extra prayer that they use the good sense and the intuition that they were blessed with to make wise decisions.  The first day of school for all of us mothers is a day of Let Go and Let God, and also, where is that extra box of tissues?