Back to School Worries

09/08/2009

It’s day two of my life as a parent of a high schooler and I am flunking out.  I just don’t have a clue as to how I’m supposed to go about this.  I have no idea how much, if any, input I should have.  On one hand, I don’t feel as though I should be leading O through the day-to-day steps of school.  Even though it’s a new experience, a new school, he should pretty much have the routine down.  I kind of feel like its sink or swim – now or never.  He’s in high school, time to cut him loose to make his own decisions and deal with the consequences.  On the other hand, I can’t I stop worrying about the fact that he’s totally disorganized and way too nonchalant.  Should I step in and help him out?  Isn’t that still my job?

It was easy in elementary school.  The kids are far too young to be self sufficient.  The parents are in charge and hands on.  The teachers instruct us to sit down and help them with their homework, to be involved.  Although I’m sure I didn’t have homework in elementary school, it felt natural and normal to do so with my kids.  God knows, it could be time consuming and frustrating beyond all belief, but we were part of the process and our input was expected and welcomed, if not always taken or appreciated. 

The move to Middle School was a little trickier, but easy enough to navigate.  Our Middle School operates on a system of providing little information to parents directly but expects instead that our maturing students will take responsibility for keeping us informed (as if!) or for getting things done on their own, without parental assistance (a total pipe dream).  At Parent Night, the administration urged us to “step back and stop enabling” our kids.  “Let them take the “F” for missing homework”, they said.  “They need to be responsible.”  I tried this for a while when O started Middle School, but it wasn’t working out at all, at least not for me.  He was so disorganized and never seemed to have what he needed to have at the time he needed to have it.  I was so frustrated I was ready to scream!  But I was having no luck convincing him that staying organized was vital and would serve him well throughout his life.  He would just glare at me and stuff his paper into the wrong folder, mocking me and my suggestions of color coding and, dare I say it, getting things ready the night before instead of when he’s running out the door in the morning.  Bless her, MJ - in spite of her ability to strew her things throughout every room in the house simply by walking through them - is organized and much more proactive in keeping on track.  She must have heard all of the suggestions I’d been giving to O all these years.  Nice to know that someone was listening!

But now we’re dealing with High School and I’m sure that I should be taking a huge step back.  College is only 4 years away!  O really needs to become self sufficient, I truly believe this.  So why can’t I stop following him around with his supplies list, trying to ensure he has everything he needs? I know that one of the teachers is giving a quiz on supplies – points off for every item missing from your list.  That’s an easy 100.  I keep asking him to double check that he has everything for that specific class, but he’s not worried at all.  Who wouldn’t want an easy “A”?

I tried not to worry all summer that he wasn’t doing his summer reading.  My God, he only had two books to read.  Do I even need to tell you when he finished the second book?  Last night – when we got home from NH, he hunkered down under the foosball table and polished it off.  I cannot understand why anyone would wait until literally the last minute.  We spent 10 days in Vermont on vacation recently.  It’s the perfect spot for reading!  The rest of us read multiple books.  We looked like a traveling library, carting our reading material in and out of the cottage.  We even had to go out to the bookstore to replenish our supply.  I’m not sure O read at all that week.  But I bit my tongue and enjoyed my books.   And hey, in the end, he got his reading done.  “At least it will be fresh in my mind” he said when he told me that he had finally finished.  He said that was his strategy all along.  He never seemed even mildly concerned that maybe he wasn’t going to be able to pull it off.  He wasn’t even a little embarrassed this morning when I handed him his schedule with his locker number and home room information that he had inadvertently left out when packing his backpack last night.  He seems to have it all under control.  Guess it’s time to step back and follow his lead.  I don’t think it will be easy, but no part of parenting is.  I definitely need a tutor.