On Getting Through Junior Year

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Editor,

And we are not even half-way through it.

Junior year is your average nightmare.

Kids and parents are flipped out over grades, sports recruiters, college applications and the insane cost of higher education.
Then you add in ACTs and SATs. None of this is easy to watch and experience as parents because it is much harder on the kids, who are now young adults, than it is on us.

So I end up saying to my children what was said to me.

Be proud that you can apply to these schools; be proud of all you have done. Enjoy some of it.
 And then they say to me what I said to my parents. 
You don’t get it! I want to get in, not just be proud that I applied.

I understand, but you are not going to get in everywhere. Life is like that; it just is.

Neither one of my children has an easy time being fatalistic. Nor do I. I have just gotten better at it, but it took a lot of work.

No teenager has an easy time being fatalistic; no teenager has an easy time, period.

There is no generation gap. 
Try to remember what it was like when you were 16, no matter how you did 16. Texting in class is not allowed; we were not allowed to pass notes.
 Snapchat is the closest thing to a phone call and a face-to-face from far away. Instagram is the marketing that all teenagers do as they figure out who they are.
 And the bang-em-up, shoot-em videos, well, I hate them, but I am not a guy. 
I never played with GI Joes or made guns out of sticks.

And the kids are getting hang out time on the weekends with friends and with their teams. I am not looking up the grammar on hang out because I do not care, even if I once knew it.

My children are learning slowly how to leave the nest.
 And so far, all in, they are doing pretty well. 
I hope that your kids are doing the same, because it is no easy ride for anyone.

Lisa Aslanian, Laguna Beach

 

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