A Letter to the Parents Who Dread the First Day of School Photos

Hello, Dear One,

’Tis the season, again. I know how you are bracing yourself for the photos that dance across your feed of Everyone Else’s Children Who Look Happy. They appear thrilled to be headed back to school. You notice their ruddy, sun-kissed faces, their smartly pressed uniforms. Maybe it’s the backpacks full of brand new supplies and so.much.potential that grip you for a moment before you remember this is not your story.

Maybe once upon a time you were in the camp of those who were ecstatic to snap and post photos of your children on the first day of school. The two pocket folders were ready for A papers, the calendar was ripe for new adventures. You felt proud and excited and maybe a touch trepidatious. Would their teacher be kind and inspiring? Who would be their friends in homeroom? What would happen at recess and would your little person be brave and inclusive? Would this be the best year of school ever?

Perhaps you no longer allow yourself to feel this hope, because of how your story unfolded in school years past. You try to put stock in the promise of a clean slate, but all you hear are the calls from the principal or the school counselor or the learning specialist or the math teacher AGAIN, again with the missed assignments or the behavior or the sickness or the mood swings. Your heart is still aching from the bullying or the distracting or the excluding that went down last year. You don’t have to work hard to imagine the dynamics that will replicate themselves— just shuffle the cast and the scenery a bit and you already know the script for Act I.

Or maybe you do have all the hope in the world for this school year, given the only direction to go from rock bottom is up. You’ve already been to the darkest place, to the Upside Down, and you already got that ticket punched. You know what it’s like to watch your kid go undiagnosed or unmedicated or unacknowledged or unprotected. You are far too acquainted with a lack of to not be able to believe in the abundance.

Still, your optimism is guarded. You want to believe, but you are cautious. Your heart has been broken before. You are tired. You’ve had to advocate so fiercely in the past. You think, surely that needle’s got to move. Is this the year when the progress report shows actual progress? You see everyone else’s kids smiling as they board the big yellow school bus and you wonder if yours will ever have a seat on there, or if they will always ride the struggle bus.

Dear one, I want you to know that you are not alone. I have ridden the struggle bus as a parent and as an educator for years. I often feel that I am sitting alone on the bus, looking out a murky window to yards where everyone else is having the time of their lives. It is only when I have raised my hand, though, to let others know that there’s a seat next to me, right here on this busted bench with gum stuck to the bottom of the seat, that I’ve felt such freedom. The journey of shepherding kids through school is so damn hard, especially if your kid’s factory settings are not the default. But it can also be pretty gnarly and hilarious and complicated and enriching. Why would we want to pretend otherwise?

Back to school photos tell the story of A Beginning, but even beginnings, as you know, can be fraught. Everyone else seems to approach the year with ease. To you, the beginning of the school year can feel heavy and anxious-making and downright baffling. How did we get here again?

Except, we are not Here Again, after all. We’re another year wiser, and another year stronger. Our backpacks are a bit more battered, but they are full of lessons and strategies for navigating the difficulties and the red tape. We may again find a seat reserved for us and our kid(s) on the struggle bus, but we’re seasoned students of this struggle. The story of the year ahead may be familiar in theme, but if you thought it would be a solo journey—plot twist—your First Day of School Photo isn’t a selfie. It’s an ussie.

Solidarity,
A Struggle Bus Rider