We’ve been very lucky in getting the Daughter to school. In kindergarten, she went where the Wife worked. And for grades 1-6. the Daughter attended a school that was built only a couple of years before she entered, located less than a block from our home.
Inevitably, though, we had to deal with what I called junior high but what is now generally referred to as middle school. Among other things, this means taking the bus at a specific time.
By the schedule, that means at 7:32 a.m. a block away. However, the vehicle is occasionally early, she learned to her frustration. Or late.
Still, the dedicated service, provided by the local transit entity CDTA is a whole lot more reliable than the contracted yellow bus company that still provides rides to kids going home late after extracurricular activities such as sports and theater. In fact, the Daughter has found the yellow buses SO undependable that she has mastered taking the CDTA home, even though it involves two buses.
The trick about middle school is having eleven different classes in the eight periods and keeping track of which days are gym days, for instance. Her father dropped off her gym clothes, once.
She also has to deal with homework. Her mother is always suggesting that she put it away the night before, but The Daughter finds this suboptimal. She ends up checking her bag in the morning again to see if the homework is in there.
The result of this is not unlike this Luann comic strip from September 4, 2016. Substitute house key for car key and her ID for her charger and it’s about right. Frankly, this whirling dervish was exhausting. And her father dropped off her homework that she couldn’t find, but he did, once.
But an interesting thing: by Thanksgiving, she started hanging her ID on the front door, putting her homework in her folder, usually, and in general, taking more responsibility.
The Wife was wowed by my patience during the process, but it was my opinion that you can’t tell her what to do, but that she has to, like Dorothy in OZ, learn it herself.
Shes doing great- remember high school is walkable