My one and only offspring has now entered the next chapter of her life, Middle School! I've been kind of dredding this transition. I've worked myself into a tizzy about how this is going to play out. I'm imagining that our lives are going to turn upside down. I'm imagining that my usually sweet, generally compliant, wildly opinionated daughter will turn into a foaming at the mouth, sourly infected zombie teen who I no longer recognize. I guess I thought this transformation would occur the minute she walked through the doors of her new school like a virulent infection. Tomorrow is day three of middle school and infection doesn't seem to have set in....yet. Perhaps I'm just being impatient and hopeful. I may wake up in a month to a rotten mouthed, chore allergic, noncompliant seventh grader.
I sound so negative! I'm not really all that negative, generally. But, parenting has become an interesting new challenge the older she gets. I've learned a lot lately about the mistakes that I've made in my parenting regimen. Some of those mistakes are haunting me, some I'm trying to overturn. Looking back, I would have changed a few things. Going forward, I'm changing some other things. And, well, let's be honest, kids don't necessarily like it when parents make parenting and disciplinary changes. Especially when those changes don't translate into getting their way more.
Anyway, middle school has started and we're surviving so far. Two days down, uh.... 178 to go. Don't worry, I'm not dellusional enough to believe that this really is just the beginning of years of new challenges, not just a school year. Let's start with one day at a time, shall we?
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