The Coming Of Age Plague

My oldest child has always enjoyed playing with dolls, dressing up in costumes and having tea parties. I have a feeling that things are about to change. She will enter the fourth grade next month. From what the teachers at school tell me, this is the year when playground games end and drama begins. Tether ball tournaments turn into gossip sessions. Swinging on the monkey bars is replaced with rounds of “My friend likes you. Do you want to go out with her?” Innocence is abandoned at the roadside as the kids head for the bright lights of the highway to adolescence.

I am scared shitless. I watch my daughter frolic around our back yard, her wavy hair dancing carelessly in the wind as she chases her siblings in a game of freeze tag. She is still too young to have to trade her dress ups for make up. It hurts me to think that she will have to choose between the backstabbing, spit swapping practices of the popular kids and being called uncool if she shuns these premature rights of passage. It hurts me because I know that she will choose the latter and be forced to fall prey to the vicious cycle that is social segregation. Those who do not conform to the standards set by the cool kids, will be labeled and black balled. It is fine by me, that she will not choose the path of the self destructive, but I know that she will be bothered that it has to be so. Luckily, she will be in the GATE program this year and grouped with other kids who are capable of higher thinking. Hopefully, she will make friends who do not care to concern themselves with such bull shit.

I think what scares me the most, is that I see so much of myself in her. I see her having to struggle with the same issues that I did, growing up. I was smart and placed in the honors classes. I was very social and wanted to be friends with everyone. I was raised with strict morals, but was not hard on the eyes. I was the cheerleader, but also the honors student. I was popular, but enjoyed hanging out with my peers who were not. I wanted to date, but also save myself for marriage. High school did not leave much room to fit into more than one category. The pressure to have sex, drink, do drugs and snub the unpopular was tremendous. I see my daughter facing the same challenges as she gets older and I hope to God that she is strong enough to reject the labels and shatter the mold that people will try to pour her into.