Life has recently kept me from my keyboard, and I've missed writing, but life has also been so very good recently! Lily is functioning, beautifully, mostly normally, and that allows our family to function normally. I am so damn grateful. Truly, gushingly, tears of joyfully, grateful.
Lily is managing school. Since our last set-to about attending (see Drama Drama Drama) she has been ready to go each morning with little or no drama. She's not always happy about it, but she's doing it. And . . . she's connecting socially with other students! Not just the group of girls she thinks she wants to be friends with, but other kids in her classes who, it turns out, are actually nice.
If you haven't yet been through this kind of social torture, adolescent girls band together and either let you know you're really cool, or let you know they're only letting you hang out with them as a favor to you. Not in so many words, but by cell phone manipulation. You call and they answer, you're in. You call and get their voicemail, don't expect a call back in this decade.
Lily thinks she wants to be in with these mean girls. And it ticks me off that they're callous. But meanwhile, Lily is becoming closer to kids you wouldn't find in the cool kid lineup. I love it. These are not the kids you'll find partying on the beach Saturday night. They're kids who have quirks not so different from Lily, or at least quite different from the average popular kid. So, they're more accepting of Lily if she says something a bit off, if she misses the social cues that fuel the in-crowd.
So being a mean mom has allowed me to give Lily the gift of normalcy. She can be aggravated, bugged, repulsed, or just embarrassed by my mere presence. She can be at school where a shared experience makes allies of unlikely souls, banded together by totally having to put up with their uncool parents and the oppressive regime of high school. They are a motley group of survivors in modern society.
Thank you Spirit, Lord, Universe, for the blessing of a kid who is not cool. Viva la difference!
Awesome!!! What great news for you all!
ReplyDeleteSo happy for you guys! I'm dreading the middle and high school years for the kind of "mean girls" and "cool crowd" behavior you describe. Nice to know it doesn't have to be that way. I always think of Bug's current group of friends as "the Quirky Kids' Club." But she so wants to be accepted that she can sometimes be easily manipulated by kids who aren't so nice and trustworthy. For now, she comes to me to talk about these situations. But I worry that will change when she hits her teens!
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