It’s 10am on a Thursday and I am moping in bed drinking some green tea.
I think the most painful thing in life is to see your kids sad. I can handle being sad for myself but I seriously cannot handle my kids being sad. I’m hoping that just writing freely without a plan will help. My daughter got in trouble at school and the punishment was too big for the crime. I can’t complain about the punishment because she was wrong. I think the reason I feel sad isn’t because of what she did or how the school reacted, I think I am sad because they don’t want her to succeed. I don’t think they want her to fail per se but instead they don’t care either way. In some way, I feel they are watching and waiting for her to fail. It’s not their job to take my rough around the edges daughter and make her great. She’ll never be that sweet, nerdy girl who talks to her teacher after class. She’ll never be an easy child that always makes the right decisions. But in the end, I would choose her over any “perfect” child. When she lets people in to her world she is silly and fun. She is daring and smart. I think she has higher chance of greatness than other kids who fit the mold of a normal kid. It’s just hard right now. It’s just hard while she figures out who she is.
Going through this makes me reflect on my high school years. You would never know it by talking to me now but I was not an easy child. My daughter is just like me. I won’t tell her this until she gets a little older because I can’t give her false hope that even difficult children and can turn in to successful, “normal” adults. Even though I wasn’t an easy child, I had a couple of teachers that saw my potential. My junior English teacher and my math teacher. Just like my daughter, I wasn’t the sweet rule-following type but my English teacher recommended me for Academic Decathlon the beginning of my junior year. It was a ton or work and not really something I was interested in but I did it because she thought I would be good at it. I am terrible at grammar and writing but I got 1st place in the essay contest that year because of her. My math teacher did the same thing for me. I missed most of pre-calculus because I was a foreign exchange student. When I came back for my senior year, the school told me I needed to take pre-calculus. That teacher stood up for me and said I could skip right to calculus and I would be fine. She was right, my name was always on the wall for the highest test scores. She also helped me get 2nd place in Math in Academic Decathlon my senior year without even taking pre-calc. She saw my potential, she believed in me and I wouldn’t let her down.
I guess through writing this I see what is hurting me. Others don’t see the potential in my daughter that I see. That hurts. I thought maybe her cheer coach/PE teacher did because like my daughter, she isn’t warm and fuzzy. Unfortunately, I think I am wrong. You can’t ask someone to see another person’s potential. It’s hard for busy teachers to reach teenagers that are hard on the outside but good on the inside. You just have to hope that God’s plan for your daughter includes a teacher, a coach, an adult outside your family that wants to see your daughter succeed. People rise when they know they are believed in.
P.S. When I am sad I always remember my favorite quote (which I found as a teenager):
Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t’ know how to laugh either. – Golda Meir
It’s so true. I feel sadness so deep but I also feel amazing joy. I will take the sad so I can feel the joy any day.
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