A Trial Run

This summer has been hard for Malia, very hard. Not only is the transition to middle school difficult, but the big school boundary changes a few years ago put Malia in a different middle school from all her friends, and a different one from where all her brothers attended. She has been completely stressed out and anxious all summer. In fact, the anxiety started about halfway through the last school year when they started talking about middle school schedules and doing orientations with the upcoming 7th graders. We submitted a request for a special permit so she could attend the much closer and more familiar school, but it was not approved. At this point, Malia is resigned but not necessarily happy, although some recent social drama involving many of her friends from elementary school is suddenly making going to a different school much more appealing.

Today was 7th grade day at the middle school. Malia rode the bus to school for the very first time and spent half a day walking through an abbreviated school schedule. This particular school is laid out like a checkerboard where every hall and every block in the school looks exactly the same, so navigation is tricky. We walked through the school last week and located each of her classrooms, but finding her way around is still proving problematic. I know she will figure it out over time, but she is not feeling all too confident right now.

Tomorrow she will be dumped out of the frying pan straight into the fire as all the upper grade kids join the newbies for the first official day of school. Hopefully she will make some new friends fairly quickly. She doubts herself, of course, but she is a very sociable, very welcoming person and we have seen her gather new friends around her very quickly on many occasions. I think that with some time to adjust, she will be ok. Now we just have to convince her that she will be ok. 🤞

An Unexpected Perk

There aren’t a lot of pros to having food allergies. Mostly it’s being left out, not being able to eat the foods others enjoy, never being able to eat out, a lot of worrying and anxiety, constant label reading, and eternal vigilance about food safety. All that makes the pro/con list a bit heavy to the negative side.

Today was Matthew’s first day of middle school. Only the 7th graders were in attendance. They had a shortened schedule where they could visit their classes and learn a bit about how the school runs. As part of that, they were assigned their lockers. Our middle school is pretty darn crowded. As such, all the 7th graders are required to share lockers. Right after their school day, I met Matthew and the school nurse in the office for a short meeting. As part of that, the nurse asked about his locker buddy. Matthew, being the smart and responsible kid that he is, had already talked to his locker partner and explained the food thing. Matthew felt like the other student understood and was going to be cool about the whole thing. I expressed approval with that and then started telling Matthew about the not so polite kid Nathan shared a locker with in his first year of middle school. That kid was prone to eating Nathan’s food, especially the granola bars and things he kept on hand for snacks when he after school rehearsals and such. At that moment, I realized and verbalized the fact that if Matthew’s locker partner kept granola bars or stuff in their locker for snacks, that could create a problem for Matthew. The secretary who was conversing with us looked up and stated that Matthew sounded like a kid who needed his own locker. She then proceeded to find an unassigned locker and give him his own.

At long last, and although it in no way makes up for the seemingly endless number of checks in the con list, there is one item in the pro column: private locker.