Well friends, I’m back!
I hope summer has treated you well so far. I’m still enjoying the hot temps and the chill schedule, but alas, those pesky school notices have begun arriving in my mail box reminding me that bedtimes will need re-enforcing soon enough. Fortunately our schedule will keep us busy with activities for one more week, but I feel it coming around the corner.
The need for structure. The craving for routine.
Admitting it to myself feels humbling, maybe it’s just maturity. In my own perfect world it would be summer year around. But reality has shown me time and time again how every season has their time and place. Before long too much of a good thing stops being good. Now I’ve come to appreciate the give and take. The pull and release. It’s good for nature. It’s good for our bodies. It’s good for our souls.
In our family, the balance will change this school year. We will have more kids in middle school (3) than in elementary school (2). As a parent, I’ve feared the middle school stage more than any other stage.
Why?
Because when I think about my own childhood, middle school was awful. I was insecure and awkward. I tried way too hard to be cool, worried way too much about what people thought of me, and realized the limits of my own skills. I’m sure there were some good moments weaved in, but my mind has no desire to go back and visit those memories.
Filipe’s memories from elementary school are right up there with mine from middle school. That was the year he moved from Brazil to New Jersey. At the age of eleven he was trying to learn a new language and navigate a new culture all while school bullies made fun of him and slashed his bicycle tires. After that year, it couldn’t get much worse for him.
As parents, our own childhood experiences influence how we prepare our kids for what they might experience. While that’s often good, I’ve noticed a danger. If I’m not careful, I will project my own experiences onto my kids and foster insecurities they don’t have.
Without meaning to:
- I will expect my daughter to have the same needs for friendships I had at her age and make her feel like hers aren’t good enough.
- I will think my son has the same fears that I had and make him scared of something he isn’t yet afraid of.
- I will assume my daughter wrestles with the same insecurities I did, and without meaning to, make her feel ashamed or embarrassed about something she hasn’t even thought of.
We all have insecurities and struggles to navigate through. No matter how much we warn or prepare our kids, they will have some struggles of their own to face. As parents, our job is to be there to help them through their struggles, not keep them facing them.
But we all experience insecurities and struggles in our own ways and in our own timing. My middle school experience could be my son’s high school experience or my daughters fifth grade experience. Or they could have drastically different ones that I’m unaware of because I never faced. I don’t want to assume that because I struggled in middle school, they will too, or that because I excelled in sports, they should to.
As my kids start school, I’m working hard at being mindful not to project my experiences onto them, but allow them their own. They are growing up in a different time, in a different way. So much of what they are facing, we didn’t face. My experiences can be used to tell my story, theirs will tell their own one day.