I thought I'd take a second today to send Katie a little shout out on the blog. Katie is in the middle of some of the most trying times of young life ... the junior high years. I don't know of anyone who looks back on those awkward years as the best in their life. I know I don't. Everyone is going through these massive growth spurts, dealing with raging hormones, and trying to figure out exactly who they are and how they fit into this crazy world as they move away from the total dependence on their parents they have as young children and toward the independence they will experience as adults. It can be a confusing time, and almost everyone is going through it at once, so it can lead to LOTS of drama. Lots. So many times kids at this age just want to fit in somewhere. Standing out for being different is not something they want to experience, generally.
That's what leads me to be impressed with Katie's choice yesterday so much. She chose to take a stand on something she felt was important, and she was okay with being an odd duck for doing it. Here's the story ...
We have a rule that our kids can't go to dances until they are 14. That is the rule for church dances, and we feel like it applies well for school dances as well. So far, it hasn't really been much of an issue because none of our kids has been all that interested in attending their school dances in junior high. But Katie is a bit more social than our oldest three have been. She likes to be in the crowd and experiencing all the excitement that goes with that. I have expected that she would be our child who tries to push the envelope a bit and see if we'll be swayed to change that rule. I don't think that we would, though. I'm not a big fan of the modern school dances. Maybe it's always been this way, and I am just viewing everything through the lens of parenting, but it seems like these dances are just trouble. Trouble with a Capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Dance. (get it? ... harhar). Anyway, there is just a weird vibe at these school dances. I can't put my finger on what is wrong. It just feels wrong.
Katie has not pushed us to change our rule at all this year even though there have been a few opportunities to do so. At the very first school dance she got the cutest invitation from an 8th grader who is in Advanced Band with her. He was so super sweet about how he asked her, but Katie didn't even ask me if it would be okay for her to go. She had already decided way before that she would not be going to the dance. She only wanted to know how best to handle the situation, so I gave her some options of how to talk to this boy so that he didn't feel bad about being turned down. She showed me who he was later, and he was such a cutie! I'm impressed that she was strong enough to turn him down. I'm sure that when I was her age I would have never been able to do that.
Well, yesterday things potentially got a little more complicated. Katie is playing piano for the 7th grade jazz band, and they are planning a trip to Disney World later this year. These trips cost a ton of money ... $660 per person ... so they have been running fundraisers to help defray the costs so that more of the students can afford to go. They decided to host a dance for the junior high. In theory, Katie had good reason to ask us to change the rule so that she could participate in this fundraiser the whole time ... but she didn't. We didn't have to have a discussion about what would be a good decision. Katie had already made her own choice. She told the band that she would help to set up for the dance after school, then she would come home and return after the dance to help clean up. They thought she was crazy. Why not just stay for the dance? Katie didn't even bat an eye as she told them that she didn't go to dances yet. When she talked about it with me she wasn't upset about being called out for her unusual choice. She just felt right about making it. I was super impressed with her.
Yesterday she stayed after school to decorate. When I came to pick her up she expressed frustration that so many of the other band members just sat around looking at their cell phones. Welcome to our modern world, unfortunately. But she didn't say a word about the dance. She did come home and spent a ton of time getting super gussied up. She did her hair really beautifully and put on her nicest dress. I asked her why, and she explained that everyone else who was cleaning up would have stayed for the dance, so they would all be dressed up. She didn't want to stand out too much by being in casual clothes ... so she might as well spend two hours getting dressed up, even if she wouldn't be dancing. I drove her back to the school about 15 minutes before the dance was over so that she could start cleaning up right away. When I picked her back up about an hour later she told me that as soon as she walked in the door that boy who had asked her to the dance in the fall came right up to her and said, "I guess your parents are letting you come to dances now?" She had to explain that she only just arrived and was there to clean up. I'm sure he thought that she had just been feeding him a line when she told him that last fall, poor guy.
Katie told me that she wasn't all that impressed with the atmosphere of the dance. She said that lots of the girls were wearing really skimpy clothes, the room was too dark, the music was too loud, and there was more PDA than she was comfortable looking at. I don't think that her experience there inspired her to attend another school dance any time soon.
Either way ... what really impressed me about Katie this week is that she made her own decision without being pressed into it by our influence. It was a hard decision to make when everyone else was choosing differently, but she didn't waver about it at all. That takes a certain amount of guts at this age. I'm happy for the strong young woman Katie is turning out to be. She is getting ready to make some important decisions about her future, and I am confident that she will be strong enough to make those choices, even if it leads her to stand alone in those choices. Love her!
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