Reality Bites

This Mom's Back-to-School Blues

The honeymoon is over. All the excitement of seeing friends and meeting new teachers has worn off. We are all settling into the routine of dark mornings, hastily discarded bookbags, and late-night homework. In my house, there is a significant amount of reminding my teens to do this or that, trying not to nag but still sounding like a broken record.

As my family settles into the familiar and sometimes uncomfortable rhythms of the school year, I find myself falling into an unfortunate mental routine: school as a scoreboard.

I was discussing some personal concerns with my son that were distracting him from his schoolwork. Suddenly, I heard myself saying, “It is your junior year and…” Those of you with high schoolers can finish my sentence. Those of you with younger children, the lure is that junior year is the buckle-down year - all hands on deck because if you f— up this year, you are done for.

I wasn’t actually saying this, but my son finished my sentence before me. “Yeah, Ma, junior year is the hardest and most important year.”

And I was sort of saying that, but I was trying to say so much more.

• Yes, colleges are looking for that upward trajectory in course load and grades, just as they are expecting you to grow inside your community and stretch yourself even more.

• Yes, I harbor a strong resentment that junior year becomes outsized, especially when boys your age are physically growing like weeds and still catching up in executive function and emotional regulation.

• And you are doing it so well, and I want to be able to say all that without it sounding like I’m only pointing out your shortcomings.

However, I could not convey all of this in a way that did not feel like an admonition.

I want to be able to listen without ever thinking about his grades before his emotional well-being. But I couldn’t. I felt scared. And I wasn’t expecting to feel scared for him in that moment.

He’s working hard this term to focus on school — and doing that very well, in fact — but there’s no joy in learning. There’s no spark. The people he cares about, some of his peers, are struggling, and therefore, he is struggling as well. Our country is struggling, and he is all too aware of what that means for people he knows.

I want to raise a son who cares about others and himself, who asks big questions about where he ends and others begin. I want him to be able to share that struggle with me. I want to help him learn to balance his needs with the needs of others. However, this is a significant undertaking that requires time. And there is no freaking time in our crazy world that feels like it purposely places everything in this single year of a teen’s life.

When I feel jaded, exhausted, and anxious, I am angry that we place such a strong emphasis on grades over character. And I am angry that I can’t just sit in the pocket of this difficult moment without asking all the what-ifs that clutter out my best parenting skills.

Even though I want to believe school—and life—aren’t scoreboards, ironically, I find myself keeping score the moment. I was angrier than I wanted to be, my anxiety drowning out my compassion. I was not proud of my parenting.

For his part, my son listened as he reached the point of admitting that he wants to do better in all areas of his life, but feels unsure about how to overcome the moment of inertia he is experiencing.

I feel overwhelming empathy for my students and their parents; despite all the work I do, I still get tangled in the cultural script that tells me success is measured by a scoreboard

I wish I had an easy answer this week—a short message of optimism. But today I am living with the hard truth that fear is the quiet soundtrack of parenting teens, and it hums a little too loudly beneath what we hope to be our calm conversations.

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Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash