My Daughter is Officially Starting High School

It seems like just yesterday I brought her home from the hospital, and yet, somehow, she’s headed off to high school. Four years filled with times she’ll remember forever and some she’ll want to swiftly forget.

It all became real the morning she was dropped off for a half day of freshman orientation. As she entered the passenger side of my car at pickup, I was informed she’d joined a couple of clubs. One of them was the club responsible for homecoming activities, and my inner teenager threw on her class of ’95 shirt ready to paint a banner.

“Are there parent helpers needed?” I asked, not even trying to play it cool.

“No, Mom, they don’t. This is my high school experience. Not yours.”

Right. That’s the thing about navigating your kids through times that are so etched in your brain. Your experiences will not be theirs. What you loved, they might hate. Where you struggled, they might thrive. The most defining moments in that period of your life might simply be a blip on their radar screen. It’s a delicate balance of teaching them through your experiences and mistakes, and letting them have their own experiences and mistakes.

When I look back on my high school years, I’m reminded of the famous line in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

I experienced some of my greatest highs — love, friendship, fun. With those highs, came some pretty deep lows — heartbreak, rejection, sadness.

Remembering all the ups and downs of those glorious and terrifying times, there are a few things I wish I’d known that I hope to pass along to the daughter who made me a mother almost 15 years ago.

The firsts are truly magical. They aren’t better than the second or third. Actually, hindsight shows us the thrill of them was newness and the unknown. On the flip side, I hope she’s cautious of the firsts she’s unprepared to handle. Something about going to high school makes you feel emotionally ready to handle anything. I have many firsts I wouldn’t trade and a few I’d like to take back.

I hope she explores it all, and takes advantage of the opportunities this world has to offer even if that means taking a few chances. In addition to football games and dances or clubs and student government, I want her to look for things that seem so far off her radar she can’t imagine it’s for her and then give them a shot.

Mistakes are part of life, but the key is to learn from them. If I sat her down and listed all the mistakes I made throughout my high school years, she’d likely blush. I don’t regret most of them, but I do wish I’d learned from those mistakes a little earlier and stopped repeating them. This, I fear, is the hardest of all the things because it’s so much easier to see looking back than it is in the midst of the hormones and big emotions.

I’m sure there are more, but right now, I’ll start with those and continue to move from excitement to terrified when I think about my daughter and this new chapter in her life. Before I know it, she’ll be picking up her graduation cap and gown and heading off on her next adventure. My mom heart is not ready. All I can do is trust in the foundation we’ve given her, give her room to grow into her own person, and be there to help guide her along the way.

Christie Pettus
Christie Pettus is a full time working wife and mother living her suburban cul de sac dream in Orange Park, Fl. She is Mom to two awesome teenagers, McKenzie and Ethan, who have come to accept that certain parts of their lives will be blogged about, so they should act accordingly. As graduates of the University of Florida, she and her husband Ryan can be found rooting on their alma mater every chance they get including the more obscure sports. LaCrosse anyone? When she’s not judging her kids' questionable teenage choices, she can be found hiding in a room buried in a good book or writing, editing, and dreaming about being a full-time author.

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