It’s been a rough week for my 12-year-old daughter and me.
First, I didn’t attend her choir concert. I worked late and she actually preferred to go with friends. But I was ashamed. Good mothers don’t do that sort of thing.
My shame got worse when she arrived home after the performance, wearing a too-grown-up dress that I wouldn’t have allowed. It wasn’t what she’d left the house wearing, a jean skirt and T-shirt embroidered with a little rainbow. Her sweetness must have been left on her friend’s bedroom floor, as she wiggled her way into something beyond her years. I imagined the audience focusing on my daughter’s dress and the poor judgment of her mother, who didn’t even bother to show up.
That was Monday evening. It was Wednesday when the serious sixth- grade trauma began. The Internet website myspace.com has created pre-teen tears, but not because of male predators. Our daughters do just fine creating their own traumas. I’m a little confused on how one navigates through these spaces, but it seems to be an on-screen scrapbook, a colorful self-description – or at least a description of whom they think they should be – using music, pictures and quotes to enhance their image. It is a child’s first résumé, a way of requesting a spot at the popular table.
The kids post bulletins and fling criticism like we wrote notes and flew them in paper airplanes.
My daughter and her friends had gotten into an online war that left Stephanie P. and her parents hurt and embarrassed. I had phone conversations with parents whom I’d never met, as my daughter cried at the kitchen table. Someone had said something about someone, who had said something at the lockers about someone else, making up terrible lies about Stephanie.
Wasn’t it just yesterday that I held my daughter close in her tiny pink outfit, her cheek nestled against mine?
A mother’s shame greeted me again just as it did when I ate broccoli when nursing her. Her infant discomfort had to be all my fault. How could this current upset have happened in the world of a child whose most risky behavior had been eating fast food two times in a week and staying up past midnight? She was now passing devastating rumors instead of cards in Go Fish. Where did my daughter and her friends learn to verbally assault one another? I thought good modeling was the core of good parenting. My parents made my childhood complicated, but they modeled values that blossomed from their soul, full of kindness and integrity.
It’s a different world. As a child, I bicycled freely across town when the biggest challenge was crossing one busy street. Our children’s trek across town exposes them to dangers that used to be in the bad neighborhoods of the inner city. Now, our affluent college town is where our children become dangerous to one another. They have become the fast-moving delivery trucks that made my biking so scary.
It used to be my children would need me to fix a broken toy. Now, my daughter was asking for help with a broken friendship. She and the other guilty girls wanted to send an “I’m sorry” bouquet of flowers to Stephanie. To raise the money, they had a lemonade stand and sold chocolate chip cookies door to door, pulling their dozens of cookies in a red wagon. They were children seeking justice in childlike ways. But their crime had been acted out using grown-up language to spread untruths – like playing dress-up in ugly, dangerous clothing.
So I must accept that this week, I actually ate no broccoli that contributed to discomfort in a number of families. In truth, I did the best I could in a world that is as new to me as it is to my daughter. And once again, I have learned important lessons from my children.
“Mom, don’t be ashamed, then you’ll teach me to be ashamed.
“Mom, don’t lose trust, or then I’ll mistrust myself. And thank you for teaching me how to say ‘I’m sorry’ when I make mistakes.”
I may have missed a choir concert, but I continue to hear the beautiful music of parenting.
Priscilla Dann-Courtney is a clinical psychologist and freelance writer living in Boulder.
