Today, my youngest daughter starts high school. Time flies, sure, but it seems so long ago she first started school, a tiny girl. She was homeschooled until third grade, on our 100 acres, where I worked at home in our maple sugaring business, and at certain times in the year worked incredibly hard. It was a kind of life that, in retrospect I suppose, made some kind of sense to the adults.
When she was seven, she wanted to go to school. So, I sent her. Since then, she’s pretty much always loved school. Last night, I noticed she had packed so many bags, she appeared to be making a semi-move to the high school, approximately an 11-minute walk from our door.
Like anyone else, I’ve made a zillion — no, a zillion and a half — mistakes as a parent, some just downright terrible. But one thing I did realize at a certain point with my older daughter was that this is her life, and if I wanted her to live her own life with authority and imbued with her own female empowerment, I had to realize her life is different than mine. My own adult ideas, 90% or so of them, might as well go by the wayside. Although I’m not in any way about to vacate the parenting scene, isn’t work out your own philosophy inevitably where the raising children scenario leads?
Derby, Vermont
Stony Soil Vermont 
Hardest lesson ever. And yet, one of the most liberating. Penny is, at this very moment, dropping off Fin for a four-month wilderness semester far away from here. It’s a whole new paradigm
Whoa. That’s a major paradigm parenting shift. We’re definitely still in the Realm of Hardwick here.
This is a big step toward maturity and independence for her. How beautiful that you accept and encourage her need to stretch her wings.
Many thanks — although there’s a great deal of gracelessness involved in this, I’ll readily admit!