Image source: Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels
Today, my Facebook feed is inundated with pictures of friends’ kids, all staring back at us from their front porches, their hair freshly brushed and their backpacks perched on their shoulders. Kindergartners, elementary school kids, and high schoolers, all smiling bravely in the face of the unknown. The yearly ritual of sending off our kids to school after a summer of adventures (and misadventures) has kicked off, and we’re all ready to be just a little bit more weary over the coming months.
This year, I made sure to ask my daughter for permission to post her back-to-school picture. I wanted to make sure that I was engaged in thoughtful “sharenting,” as written about in this recent CNN article. Law professor, Stacey Steinberg is quoted as saying, “A big part of my research really focuses on a child’s privacy and a child being able to enter adulthood free to create their own digital footprint.” How much should I share about my daughter, including in this blog post, and what should I allow her to have control over?
I’ve decided to focus on how these life milestones affect me and on how I approach them. This is not about sharing stories focused on my daughter, leaning toward dramatic embellishment to increase engagement. This is more of a reflection of how I’m transitioning through these developmental markers and what I’ve learned as the years have passed.
One of the big things that I’ve noticed over the years is the increasing independence that I’m witnessing in my daughter. I still remember our first days of kindergarten, how nervous I was to see this tiny little girl with her very big backpack standing on our stairs. She seemed so small; too small to be going to school. I was nervous too as I grabbed her little hand and walked her across our big park to school. Preschool had prepared me for this moment a bit, but I was now in the hands of a giant educational bureaucracy, and the communications were a bit overwhelming.
That amount of communication from school to parent only increased exponentially as the years went by. And as my daughter moved from elementary school to middle school, the rules around absences and tests and homework all became harder and more rigid. Gone were the days of blithely taking our kid along with us on extended vacations outside of the prescribed vacation schedule (and gone were the days of cheaper air and hotel fairs and less crowded destinations). I also learned very quickly that communicating with teachers too often could be seen as badgering. I had my helicopter mom urges cut to the quick when I emailed a fifth-grade teacher about what I thought was a confusing homework assignment. She brusquely told me that my daughter needed to do the reading to understand it and that if she had questions, she should work with the teacher. What I needed to do was to make sure that she was indeed doing the reading and acquiring good study habits, she said. I was stunned and almost angry, but then I thought about it. I had immediately assumed that my daughter had been doing the reading, but had she? This led me to working with her to establish good study habits and to learn to work with her teachers on topics that she found confusing.
Now that she has entered ninth grade, subjects will only become more complicated. Throw onto that social complexities, extracurricular activities, and looming college anxieties, and you’ve got a bubbling brew that could boil over at any moment. I no longer walk my daughter to school. I’m not holding her hand through all of these new experiences and challenges. But, I have learned to breathe in deeply and have trust in my girl. She is strong and independent. She has cultivated a strong group of friends, and she has learned how to embrace challenges and her fears and not be debilitated by them.
It’s an exciting moment, and these yearly photos have marked the supersonic passage of time. The cliches, they are all true. It all truly does go by in the blink of an eye. And I’m glad that I’m taking this time to document where I’m at during this moment so that I can come back to it in a year to see what new adventures await our family.
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