Middle school starts Monday. I would clarify that Addy starts middle school on Monday, but it’s something new for all of us, so we’re all starting. I sent her to the orientation (parents were thankfully not allowed) and I was like “report back because i haven’t been to middle school in 30 years and y’all have cell phones now so…”.
That’s my general outlook on parenting. I can’t relate because we didn’t have cell phones.
The school is one of the ones where they issue every single student a Chromebook. So it put a severe damper on my joy of back to school shopping. I’m obviously a big fan of notebooks and she was like “I’ll just put it on the Notes app.” I was visibly appalled. I was like “Yeah no you are going to have like 6 classes so you need a notebook you can take to each class and write everything down. We used to have small spiral MEAD notebooks but is that not a thing anymore?!” It was Panic! On The Notebook Aisle. Fortunately another mom saw my struggle and handed me a little pocket Moleskine and Addy shrugged and opted for a slightly larger notebook and said defiantly “I’m drawing in this too tho.”
(But Bre, surely you have a bucket of unused Moleskine notebooks in your possession. Yes obviously but we were there to buy new notebooks. Also I need them for myself. I am a dragon and they are my hoard.)
My prep work has always been “this is how you open a lock” and “memorize our phone numbers” and that’s literally all the advice I could give.
I absolutely hated middle school and I was not trying to pass on that viewpoint to my kid but every time it comes up I immediately go “God I hated middle school.” It was probably because I was unaware of just how awkward I was and then suddenly it was thrust in my face every day. My skin was terrible. I didn’t care about fashion. None of these things have changed I just have accepted them. This was before it was cool to be a little off. I assume anyway. I wasn’t cool till high school. And that was just by default. Fortunately Brownlee was cool since he was born so Addy has a good shot of having a decent time.
Plus when we went to get uniforms I saw a kid in an anime shirt and Jordans so she at least has one kid in the school exactly into what she’s into.