I have junior in high school. Maturation and growth has definitely been delayed over the last 2 years and replaced with apathy and lacking motivation. I don’t blame her. She was educated this way by professionals who taught her and her generation that they are not important. Her high school experience has been horrible and she is fully in survival mode. There are moments where I do see improvement. But for the most part she is wishing away her senior year for college.
My wife teaches college and she is also frustrated with students who are poorly prepared by high school. But she is even more frustrated and ready to quit as she sees administration LIKING what they see with their newly found powers of control.
I am seeing my ladies suffer in High School and suffer with increasing dissolution of the evaporated college experience.
The only good news is that they are both highly motivated voters and perhaps even more driven to seek the removal of current administration and politicians.
How do I help my daughter get her spark back? My wife is livid with the damage caused by misguided school leaders who openly admit to placing the intentions of the elderly over our children. My wife is a big girl and she can handle her own fights. My daughter is struggling with the lack of socialization and maturation that 2 years of people control has caused.
My teenagers are facing similar issues. I think that the damage that this has done to kids in High school and those just starting school is going to be profound and a long time in revealing themselves fully. Solutions, besides a time machine?
Get her involved in activities and not necessarily those associated with her school. Is she athletic? Is she brainy? What are her interests?
She can do most athletic stuff at local gyms or YMCAs, that is unless she is particularly predisposed towards a school sports team AND it’s a good program.
If she is more chess club and soccer team there are probably some good after school options. Does she read a lot? Maybe a book club.
Right now you are seeing a vacuum. Normally that vacuum would be filled with education and homework, but it’s not. So you need to figure out how best to fill it. But it has to be a LOT of what she is interested in otherwise it’s just one more thing she will dislike about her life. But if you don’t figure out something to fill that hole, something else will certainly come along eventually. Probably in the form of a bad boyfriend with bad idea habits.
Also try not to make this a crisis, treat it more like father / daughter time. If you can find shared interests even better.
My father had about zero interest in the martial arts but he tried to take classes with me when I was in middle school (until it became apparent that it was simply too much work) and then he simply made sure he took me to classes twice a week. But he also threw in “hey…how about we go shooting once a week also?” and that worked out just fine.
So once a week we were at the indoor range shooting handguns. After a couple years I was competent enough that we actual took a Combat Handgun course together at Ayoob’s LFI and I’m pretty sure I was the only high school age participant.
Also completely avoid the politics of this thing. Two voters is meaningless. This is not where you want her focus to be. You want her focus to be on enhancing and enjoying her life, not being taught who to be angry at. That time could be better spent doing just about anything. Don’t make this about your frustration or that will simply be one more problem in her life.
Camping, hunting, fishing, hiking? Our fathers didn’t need school to fill our lives. Get your kids involved in living their lives. Even if it’s just one hour doing whatever after school. Start an airsoft team, restore a car, teach your kids how to do stuff only you know how to do right now.
What do they need to know before they move out on their own?
We still do a lot of that stuff. More the issue is the peer-peer type stuff that is missing, or at least highly impacted. At the same time, the online gaming and social media fills the void in some ways, but in other ways is a crutch to getting back into real activities.
The Boy is learning how to fly and has a pretty cool girlfriend he picked late last year. The lifting cage comes next week. We go to the range and burn a box of 22 on dueling trees at least once a month.
But like I said, and Krazy I think is talking about, after two years of highly formative time spent in one mode, getting the kids back into the a old normal is hard. Wife was hacked that I’m letting him take a long ski weekend with some friends and he’ll miss a day and half of school. I was like “really, after all this you are worried about what amounts to a snow day and change?”.
What gives you hope for the future? Hopefully it’s not just money, owning things, or a nice retirement. As nice as those things are and helpful for day to day living, they aren’t the essence of life. I know what motives me to press on with a life that has hope and joy. I’ve lived most of my life and death is coming sooner rather than latter, we and they must find something beyond the idea that this is all there is, that there is hope.
You are your children’s primary teachers about life. Talk to them plainly and with love about your hopes and why you believe that way, why those principles are enduring and right. Help them look beyond their momentary trials to the big picture beyond just themselves. Impart to them an attitude of thankfulness, and being a help to others…get them out of their pity party.
Start a crew. Probably dozens of parents with exactly the same concerns.
Get your friends to coordinate with their online buddies and go play miniature golf, bowling or paintball or start a baseball team. Talk to parents about who knows what and who might be good volunteer coaches.
It’s gonna take somebody to be the self starters on this stuff. You two guys probably have more initiative than the rest of the village who are waiting around for somebody to come along and solve the problem.
Hell even if it’s just a pizza and a movie night with your kids and 4-6 friends at first. The social void is probably hardest on teens who are trying to learn to form important connections for the first time.
Definitely. While it’s understood these kids basically got robbed of a couple years of their lives, it isn’t what you want the focus to be. Start doing ANYTHING now.
My junior is involved in cross country and track representing her school. It feels superficial. The school supports extracurricular activities while discouraging and squashing all other attempts by her and her peers to socialize and interact. It is a phony attempt by educators to provide these critical pre adult formative skills that are typically separated from classroom education. These effects are profound. My daughter and her graduating class have zero social skills.
As antithetical as it seems, homeschool. Build your experiences. Travel. Go to museums. She can still see her friends but be free from the trappings of that environment.
Social skills have never been built in a classroom where you have to raise your hand to take a leak and talking is discouraged.
Like most people are alluding to, getting them among other like minded individuals will reinforce the well hidden truth that they are not alone and individualism is as strong as ever. They are taught that this is not the way most people are and that if you are, you are alone. That is bs.
If this is allowed to go on another two years, we will have a bunch of people unable to socially interact in society.
Having said that Teenagers are a totally different animal. Keep an eye on them, make sure they don’t get into any trouble and set back and enjoy your ride.
Somewhere around twenty they return to human form.
