Planning the class schedule for my kids’ next year is always an exercise in anxiety. First there is the simple logistical difficulty of figuring out which classes my kid wants to take, when the school offers them, and how those two things fit together in a way which puts a class in every hour of the school day. The logistics are further made complicated by needing to figure out if the teacher of a class will be a good fit for my kid.
Once I’ve figured out a schedule I think will work, there comes the hunger-games of trying to sign up for classes. The system is turned on at a specific time on a specific day, and the popular classes can fill up in minutes. It is a high-stress afternoon.
Once everything is selected and registered, I will stare at the schedule and second guess the choices. I try not to, but I can’t tell from here what state my kid will be in when school starts in the fall. If they are happy and balanced, the schedule will likely be great. However some classes may trigger their issues. Or they may be struggling on a larger scale. So I stare at the list of classes and I wonder which of them my kid will fail. Which class will be the one we have to drop because it just isn’t working. What adjustment will be necessary to help my kid cope.
Along with that mental circle, I have the counter current of thinking about how maybe my kids only struggle so much because I’m enabling them. Maybe if I were just tougher, they would learn how to step up to classes instead of dropping out of them.
Then just for extra fun, one of my kids wants to take a class that requires an audition. I’ve known about this for months and have been watching school newsletters for any announcements about when/where auditions will be. Finally I called to ask and was told “Oh, they happened two days ago.” Which was news that made my child very upset. But then I got a note from the teacher saying that there is a make up session on Monday. So my kid does get to audition after all. But I have no idea what the chances are of her making the class because all her skills are self-taught and she’ll be up against others who have had lessons for years. So we get to watch her practice all weekend, and try out on Monday. Then we wait to see which flavor of emotional ride she goes on.
All of this for the kid who is already in high school. Then in two weeks I get to repeat the process for my other kid who will be starting in high school next year and whose particular issues manifest at school far more regularly.
Whee.
Tomorrow I need to sit down with my anxieties and carefully disconnect them and let them go.