Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Closed Again; Figuring It Out As We Go

I thought I was so smart this morning when I told Tom that they probably wouldn’t close school even though the roads were pretty crappy. I called him when I got to work to let him know that the state roads I drive to work were bad enough that I drove between 40 and 45 mph all the way to work. “But,” I said, all knowledgeable and crap, “they probably won’t close school. I think they’re standards have changed. If the roads were like this in December, they’d have closed.”

Shows what I know. When I got to my desk and fired up my email, there it was, a message from the school. Closed again. I called him and ate a little crow. Not much, mind you because, duh. But enough that he was satisfied that I now know I don’t know everything.
-------------------------------------

Last week, the mother of one of A’s friends mentioned to me concern about a third friend that her daughter and A have in common.

Apparently, this third friend was seen posting inappropriate things on her twitter account. For the record, this friend is eleven years old. The inappropriate thing she posted was an illustration of one of the One Direction boys performing oral sex on one of the other guys in the band.

Ick!

I asked Alyssa if she’d seen this. She told me she hadn’t. I asked if any of her friends talked about things I could consider inappropriate. She said they didn’t.

I want to believe her. I really do. But each time I tell myself that she’s a great kid and she’d talk to me if something like this were brought to her attention, I hear my husband’s ex-wife saying, “I trust my daughter.”

That same daughter was pregnant less than a year after her mother told me that.

Alyssa is not J. I know this. I am not D, J’s mom. But I also know that sometimes, even as much as we might talk to our kids, we can’t always know everything. Our kids don’t always tell us everything, even when we ask point blank.

So I’m figuring this all out as I go along. I’m talking to her, asking questions, reminding her that she and her friends are still so young, they are still so innocent and have so many years ahead of them to figure out boys and all that boys entail.

I pray I’m doing right by her. I pray I’m keeping the lines of communication open and that she’ll keep talking to me, listening to me, letting me in so I can help her when things get tough.

No comments: