Recently, I was listening to some parents of junior high students (yes, I realize it’s now called “middle school.”  But I’m old school.  Without the “school”…), who were bemoaning all the issues that kids these days have to endure.  I smiled, thinking of my dear, sweet two-year-old at home playing with her Play-Doh and chattering to her stuffed animals.  And then, a horrifying realization hit me:

“Remember how much you hated junior high, Kath?  Remember the torment, the teasing, the desperate desire to be beautiful and popular?  Guess  what?  You get to LIVE THROUGH IT ALL OVER AGAIN, via your daughter!”

Ack.

As if I didn’t dislike 70s reruns enough; now I got to see them LIVE!  I was not happy at this prospect.

Yes, I have many years until my daughter is in junior high (yes, I’m going to keep saying “junior high” – try and stop me! Bwahaha!).  But please, Lord, please spare her from all the travails I suffered leading up to those years.  No, I won’t let  her skip a grade, as I did, wrenching her from kids her own age and social maturity level.  Yes, I will encourage her to be a part of a team, whether it’s Girl Scouts or soccer or the debate club.  Yes, I will try to help her develop self-confidence and a positive outlook and the right priorities, so she won’t have her self-esteem battered by Mean Girls.  But I can only do so much.  As my own mother would obviously tell you, after listening to her nerd daughter come home every day and whine “nobody liiiiiiiikes me!”

But I digress.

I think as parents, one of our roles is to armor our children against as much as we can, with shields of self-worth, pride, confidence, and the secure knowledge that they are loved for who they are, no matter what.  I don’t mean delude them into believing everyone thinks the sun rises and sets on them.  I just mean helping them discover who they are, where they want to go, and giving them the encouragement and the tools to get there.  Like, how to jimmy open a locker from the inside, if you’ve been crammed into one, for example.

But I digress.

No, I won’t live through it all over again, because I won’t let my daughter live through it once.  I know what to do to prevent it.  As the saying goes “If you can’t be a role model, be a terrible warning.”  Knowing that I can help my daughter avoid some of the heartbreak I endured in my eleven years of public school makes it infinitely easier to recall the past.  Because I know history, and therefore am not doomed to repeat it.