Letting Go Isn’t Easy—School Makes It Harder

Why parents struggle to trust their teens, and how compulsory schooling helps break that trust in the first place.

I originally posted this as a note—a postscript of sorts, instigated by a commenter to this article—and then realized it was article-length, so here it is again, formatted accordingly.

Just in case anyone decides my latest piece is arguing that parents leave their teenagers to do whatever they want whenever they want, and with whomever they want… Yeah, no, that’s not what I’m saying.

What I will say though—since I’ve been thinking about this all morning already—is that I think the government school (and government-regulated school) problem and the parental hovering and gatekeeping problem are linked. I might be stretching this one, but hear me out…

Most American parents hand their children off at 6 or 7 (and younger if they attend preschool or daycare, but for sure at least by 7) to strangers to be “educated.” They’re not allowed to background check these individuals, the government is supposed to do that for them, so they have to trust another set of strangers in the decision-chain. For some parents, getting their child to school entails putting them on a bus, with a bunch of strangers whose parents and life circumstances they don’t know, to be driven sometimes up to 45 minutes at a stretch by an adult stranger whose driving record someone else gets to check.

By now I’ve lost count of how much blind faith we parents are expected to have when we are forced (in many cases yes, it is literal force) to outsource our parenting for eight hours a day, five days a week, nine months of the year. But it’s a lot.

Overriding your parental instinct to guard your precious offspring in order to do the above is exhausting; it requires emotional and mental effort, and what’s more, it gets in the way of our emotional growth as parents who need to someday let our babies go into the big, bad “real world” where we quite literally can’t protect them. Instead of doing it little by little, day after day, year after year, we have to do a LOT all at once, and yet not at all, because we are trusting SCHOOL to do what we aren’t doing: protect them to an age-appropriate degree.

Enter Drag Queen Story Hour, teachers with borderline personality disorder—coming to school one day dressed as a man, the next in a ballgown with full makeup and stiletto heels—pornographic graphic novels “featured” in the library, erm, “media center,” and “identity” flags all over the walls. Add to that the already staggeringly high (1 in 10) number of students who will experience some form of sexual harassment or assault, and the even higher number who will experience personal violence for the first (and hopefully only) time in their lives in school, and you can kind of understand why parents might struggle to “let go” of their kids when they finally have them back in their care.

Trust Requires Practice—Not Paranoia

Nevertheless, the reality of life is they must let go at some point, and as important as it is to contextualize these fears and frustrations, we can’t stop there. We have to look for solutions, and the solutions have to be things we can do right now, not things we have to lobby and beg our politicians to do FOR us. That’s how we got into this mess.

My suggestion is to make the most of the time outside of school to talk to children about everything—not just “How was school,” but “What did you learn today?” “Which of your friends did you see today, and what did you do together?” Also, “What do you like most about your friend so-and-so?” And if they open up to you—as they’re more likely to do when they’re younger—with a story about how someone was mean, or something happened that frustrated them, don’t be so quick to make them feel better that you miss the opportunity to learn more about what happened, who the people are who were involved, why it happened, and what your child would like to do about it, or would like you to do about it (if applicable).

So instead of “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. People can be mean,” try “Tell me more; what led up to that? Has this happened before? What do you think should happen next?” etc.

One goal of this approach is to get our kids to ask these questions, so they can manage their own emotions and set their own boundaries. The other is to start building the trust bond between ourselves and our children that is more likely to result in them telling us as much as we’d need to know to be able to let go in their teen years with greater ease. We’re going to be far less afraid if, after years of deeper conversations about their relationships when they’re out of our sight, we can reliably predict how they will respond in a wider variety of potentially risky or outright dangerous situations.

It’s not a perfect solution—individuals will be individuals, and some children simply don’t like to open up. It might take some persistence, and patience, and even then there’s always that one kid who’s tough to get to know, even for their own parents. But it’s the best option we’ve got, other than not sending them to school at all, so we can literally be present for these moments, and decisions, when they’re young and impressionable. And it is not just our remit to do a little “managing” of their social lives—it’s our responsibility as well.