We are now a week into January, along with the completely reasonable laments about how unbelievable it is that Christmas and somehow 2022 are over. What I find most unbelievable is that the first quarter of the school year has ended. I still haven’t completely come to terms with the fact that my daughter is already in 6th grade and it’s 25% over.
Maybe it’s just me but I think this is a pretty big year, an age of change. Even in the tiny little country school that I attended this is the year where it became obvious that some kids were more popular than others. It’s the year that boyfriends and girlfriends started becoming a thing. It’s the year that I got my glasses and my braces, making neither of the above things applicable to me.
It was also a year of increased responsibility. There was changing of classes, extra homework, deodorant that needed to be remembered.
These kids have all of that and more. Besides having to keep track of what days they have to be where and what is due when, the age of the Internet and social media is placing emotional burdens on them that I’m not sure how I would have handled. It’s easy to say that this can be avoided by keeping them off of the Internet but anybody that says that probably doesn’t actually have kids. I don’t know how else to say it except the drama seems a lot more dramatic and that’s not even considering the global pandemic and all that came along with that.
For the most part my daughter and her friends seem OK, to an almost surprising degree. There’s been some shifting in who’s better friends with who but for the most part the core remains intact, something that I’m grateful for. I made it through those years, and many after, because I had that. It was important enough that when I started typing out this nonsense it was the subject of my second post ever.
I’m proud of these girls, of the people that they are becoming. I think that we really lucked out with the tribe that has developed and I hope that it continues.
I’m proud of my kid, of the person that she is becoming. I know that in general girls mature faster than boys and that nowadays everyone matures faster than they did in my day, which kind of sucks, but I still think that she has her shit a lot more together than I did at her age. There is a self confidence there that shows cracks from time to time but remains strong I think. She seems OK with who she is and that is a lot more than a lot of people of any age can say.
I don’t know how she will one day look back on this year. She’s going to be getting braces of her own soon so that will be memorable. I haven’t heard anything yet but I’m assuming her first school dance will be this year. There’s a monthly visitor that should be making their first appearance soon.
This is a big year for her but that’s the thing about this age. For the foreseeable future every year is going to be a big one. There’s a roller coaster coming that nobody is ever prepared for. Even having ridden it before with her older sister I know that I’m not.
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This post was previously published on Thirsty Daddy and republished on Medium.
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