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help!
2005-05-19 - 9:36 a.m. Very odd. It's not quite raining, but it's very muggy. Close, perhaps. Quite unusual. It feels like Providence in June. From what I remember, anyway. Too much drama has left us all exhausted, I think. It has to do with high school. What should we do? Am I making a huge deal out of nothing? Here's the situation: She skipped school, and then lied about it for three weeks. There was some minor exploratory drug use. She hasn't been working very hard, and is getting a b (I hope!) in honors geometry and a c in Latin. It seems to me that she's developing bad bad bad work habits -- doing latin homework in math class; writing rough drafts of research papers the night before they're due. Part of this is just growing up, I know. You don't like it, but your kids are going to have sex and experiment (but just a tiny bit, please!) with drugs. It has to be done. She remains intellectually curious, occasionally. She discusses comparing the Odyssey with O Brother Where are Thou, and how it's actually more fun because the book is NOT like the movie. She finds a portrait of Lucretia in a museum and knows who she is. While writing the paper on the death penalty (which to my mind should have been started earlier and researched with notecards, but on the other hand she took herself to the library, looked for books all by herself and actually read them) she talks on and on and on about it -- she's done some thinking. We are able to discuss her current dilemma in terms of Catcher in the Rye. I'm kind of at a loss. I know the crimes I've listed above are not huge, but they're the kind of thing that can become huge, I think. Is it the school? Is it the combination of lots of pressure with the fact that there are lots of kids doing absolutely nothing? Is it the conflict between Spanish class, in which she has learned not one thing all year, and Latin class, where if you don't work pretty hard you will get a c? Is it actually good that she is experimenting and exploring, or is it the beginning of the end? Would she be better off in a smaller stricter school where I will be able to keep tabs on her? In a funny way, it is perhaps her independence that's doing her in. Better to be less independent in a school where no one notices when you've fallen off the ledge. Maybe for an independent sort it's better to have a school with guiderails so you'll be noticed as you're rolling down the cliff. I have absolutely no idea.
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