Adorable Child and her friends frequently tell Polimom stories about incidents and interactions in their middle-school (and high-school) worlds. Sometimes the stories are funny… but far more often — and ever-more frequently — they’re not.
I can’t remember ever sharing such tales with my parents (or my friends’ parents), so I have no idea what they’d have done. Would they have tried to help the kids who have started drinking, or smoking, or toking? Would they have called the parents of the boys who are “scooping” (groping) girls breasts? Would they have confronted the boys who “pantsed” the girl on the street? Would they have notified the school about the pervasive sexual bullying that’s manifesting in “tea-bagging” (you don’t want to know, trust me) of younger or smaller boys?
Did kids even do such things in those days? Not that I remember.
All this was so much easier last year, when AC was only a 6th grader. The stories were about older kids… other kids.
Somebody else’s friends.
I have to tell you — it’s hardhardhard to be a teen, but parenting one ain’t no picnic, either. There’s a very fine line that can’t be crossed if one wants to keep those channels of communication open.
I really need that manual. Anybody have a copy to share?