My Facebook wall is filled with nostalgic posts this morning. “Last day of middle school. I’m sad,” types of things. While I get where these parents are coming from, I’m having to resist dancing a jig on the front walk of school today. I won’t miss middle school and I’m certainly not sad.
Years ago, I was that parent. The one that mourned every milestone. When you have an only child, you only have one chance at everything and I have to confess, I did get a little weepy the first time Rosie told me a school party was lame. I remember thinking that I’d have a lot of trouble emotionally with this growing up thing but then life changed- we were diagnosed with chronic migraines and my perspective shifted. Every success we had took us one step closer to our end goal- raising a happy and healthy child that could go off into the world and make it her own.
We didn’t have a normal middle school experience (and honestly, I’m jealous of those parents that put their kids on the bus every day at 7:00 knowing that they wouldn’t hear from them again until after 3:30). Rosie’s migraines got worse and we couldn’t find a combination of drugs that controlled them. In three years, I called school sick over 100 times (I stopped counting after a while). At first, it was uncomfortable but in the third year, I no longer felt ill at ease making the call. It was normal.
When you miss that much school, you have to figure out how to make up the work. That was the stressful part. Middle school was an endless cycle of “hurry up and get that lesson done so we can move onto the next.” It’s easy to get good grades when you’re at school- you learn the information live in class, have time to complete projects there too but when you’re not there you have to learn on your own. That’s challenging.
Also challenging? Dealing with teachers all the time. Kids that are at school only have to deal with teachers during the day and they may only ask a couple of questions a week. My child had to learn at thirteen, how to communicate with her teachers on an ongoing basis to find out her work and ask questions. It was hard at first. She’s introverted and it made her uncomfortable. We were lucky to have a good team of teachers to work with, but we didn’t have that all three years.
The biggest middle school struggle? Dealing with the kids. The middle school years are tough socially for a lot of teens but they don’t have chronic illness to worry about. Rosie had to deal with all the regular teen issues- bullying, navigating social media, becoming comfortable in her skin and she also had a whole host of issues that the other kids didn’t have to tackle. She’s sick. She had to worry about doctor’s appointments, staying caught up in school and attempting to explain why migraines weren’t just a headache over and over. She had to put up with lots of “why aren’t you here?” and feeling left out. She had to deal with mean girls on days when she thought her head would explode and she felt like hell. She also had to deal with the fear of the unknown.
One month into middle school, Rosie had a sports injury so bad that she was off pointe for two years. We weren’t really sure she’d dance again. The next fall, we had a Cancer scare and Rosie’s migraines increased in severity. The past year, we were in and out of the emergency room, had a couple of hospital stays and she started spitting up blood. And, the entire time, my daughter was walking around with POTS and no one knew. Try succeeding in middle school with all of that. Yet, she did.
Tuesday night, my daughter got the President’s Award for Academic Achievement for having above a 3.5 for the past three years. Had we not pulled her out of school in the fall, she would’ve also had awards for Language Arts and Science. I’ve never been so proud of my teen in her life.
In the past three years, she’s overcome so many obstacles. She’s hung in there and hasn’t given up. She’s tough. I don’t know how many kids that could go through all the things she has that would finish middle school on time, let alone get incredible grades. It was hard, but she did.
So, I can’t wax nostalgic about middle school. I hated all three years. And, I’m also not sad that my child’s growing up. She’s become a confident, delightful young woman who stands up for her beliefs. I’m proud of the person she’s become and I have no doubts that she’ll be successful in high school because she’s learned how to navigate the system with an illness and succeed. I’m enjoying watching my child mature and I don’t want to look back. Time to move on.
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