The end of elementary school

And the beginning of teenagedom

Today is our daughter’s last day of fifth grade. Her last day of elementary school. It’s weird and strange and exciting and scary. She’s always been in elementary school, it’s all we’ve ever known.

Elementary school, whether it ends in fourth or fifth grade, feels like the last vestige of your kid’s membership in “childhood.“ There’s still a playground, there’s still snack time, there are still days where you can bring a stuffie to school. But in the next school year, just a few months away, all of that goes away and in its place is the on ramp to teenagerdom. And with it, all the things that secretly terrify me – cliques, crushes, dances, and, well, everything else. And how our daughter, a nonverbal kiddo who requires physical assistance for most aspects of life, will navigate it all.

I suppose it’s a bit naïve to act as if these things aren’t already part of her life, that it will all suddenly appear on the horizon in late August like Captain Jack Sparrow standing on the bow of the Black Pearl, inviting her aboard to participate in all manner of questionable activities.¹ It’s just easier to hide under the blanket of elementary school and pretend that it doesn’t yet exist.

What’s waiting for our daughter in middle school? Pirates???

I touch on this in the 6/16/21 poem. We want our kids to grow up and we want them to stay small. To be strong and solid, independent and free, and to find their best friends in us and find everything they need right here at home.

For the record, my wife is not quite as worried. And I am grateful for that. I hope that she is, as usual, right, and that our kiddo will find the map she needs to survive and thrive in the vibrant mess of middle school.

1. Yes, he’s incredibly charming, but would you really want your daughter to go hang out with him? It is, I suppose, comforting to remember that we attempted to show our daughter the first movie –> uninterested.