High School, Round Two

In only 7 more days, Middle Sister will begin her high-school career.

She is different from her older brother in so many ways, and she fiercely wants to be independent. There is nothing she wants less than to hear someone tell her that Teacher X doesn't like athletes who leave her class early to go to games, even though she has Teacher X last period every day. To her, these are intrusions, not helpful hints. She wants to find things out on her own.

That's hard for parents, older brothers, and even friends of older brothers to handle. What we might consider helpful advice is, to her, some kind of hint that she can't handle things on her own.

For the record, I watched her play goalie on the freshman field-hockey team on Saturday. She's new to the sport. She managed 7 saves on 9 attempts, so only 2 goals got through. Middle Sister has a lot of energy and a lot of heart. She's going to do well through sheer determination.

It's going to be hard not to handle Middle Sister's high-school years the same way I handled her older brother's. While she's happy to hijack his old high-school sweatshirts, she's not interested in hand-me-down advice.

This might be Round Two for us in this high school, but it's a whole new era for Middle Sister.