Down the Rabbit Hole

Age 14, a Beautiful New Chapter Begins

Age 14th – A Beautiful New Chapter Advances

Jaden started high school this year at age 14th. She elected to attend our local town school, and at first, I questioned her motivations for passing up her slot at the beautiful, modern, technical high school she had first applied to.

I worried she was making the decision for the wrong reasons, to remain close to her middle school boyfriend or because she doubted her ability to keep up with the accelerated academics during the abbreviated schedule inn between the trade instruction.
After her 8th grade counselor reached out, I began to understand that her reasons were more closely tied to something else entirely. Sure, she insisted that she was interested in pursuing education and most certainly, a more traditional pathway would give her a better opportunity to move on to college. However, it was the way she talked about wanting to stay in her town that began to convince me this was a decision she was making with both her head and her heart.

She is just starting her second trimester now as a freshman. After these first three months, I can admit with absolutely certainty that our daughter made the right call. She has made us so proud with the way she has put her academics first, finding the balance between taking on a sport and staying on top of her schoolwork. She has managed her time and her commitments with a maturity that has impressed me. Her grades have been outstanding. She has thrived in the independence-inducing environment of high school. I have been repeatedly impressed with her willingness to take on challenges and self-advocate when she needs to.

One of the requirements I insisted on was that she go out for a sport in high school. The benefits of belonging to any team are countless. Even I had not expected that she would find a new passion for volleyball, and not to mention, the kinds of friends that fill my heart with joy. She has been drawn to the natural camaraderie built into the sport, and the team has become a new kind of home for her, a community within a community, which has been wonderful to watch. She has worked hard her freshman season, getting better with every match and defining herself as the best kind of athlete and teammate…loyal, dedicated, encouraging, coachable and determined.

She has battered the siding on the house with her endless practicing, but I have grown to love the sound of her peppering in the driveway and the satisfying “thwack’” when one of her practices serves hits the mark. I have loved the times our house has been filled with girl ballers, enthusiastically playing on their knees in our living room or making sundaes in our kitchen. I will never forget the moment I found them all, 8 or 9 girls, gathered around on her bed, animated and laughing. Jaden looked so happy, like she was exactly where she was supposed to be at this time in her young life. I backed out of the room before I could be overcome by my own happy tears.

My beautiful, reserved daughter has struggled with navigating friendships. She had been hurt and disappointed in the past, and I feared it would leave her guarded. For a while, she had floundered, seemingly lost.
I know she struggled with loneliness. She made choices to be by herself, rather than be someone’s second or third choice, and that had exposed her to feeling isolated and alone for a long time. By the time she graduated from middle school, she had found better footing, and we both had looked at high school with hope for a fresh start. Watching her with her teammates, I see that hope reflected back at me in her smile and in the animated way she talks about school. She smiles a lot now; on the court, on the sidelines, in the stands and in the concession line at football games, in the back of my car sandwiched between her friends.

I labor under no illusions that high school will be a cake walk. It will bring challenges; it will be harder at times than anything she’s done before. I worry all the time about her, but I’ve also learned, she’s stronger than I give her credit for sometimes. She’s growing every day into her own person, building a landscape for herself of things she loves, things she won’t accept or tolerate, things she thinks are worth waiting for, and things she wants for herself and the kind of people she wants in her life.

For me, I am thoroughly enjoying age 14. I love being a volleyball mom, a high school booster, getting to experience her with her friends. I loved the excitement of her first homecoming. I love the way she is discovering herself each day, defining herself and what it means to be a high schooler. I’m excited for her at every moment, and I want her fully live in this time without holding back.
We recently did a stint working concessions at a home football game. It seemed that half the town was in attendance, and I experienced first-hand, the feeling of belonging to a place, not just the town, but the community. I think that was what my daughter had been looking for all along. I believe she feels that she belongs here, and that’s a wonderful thing.

At 14, she is still very much a typical teenager. She prefers to spend time in her room. We have to coerce and drag her to things. She is moody and not always forthcoming in details about what’s going on in her life. She doesn’t like when I nag her, or when her Dad tells her she’s got an attitude. The fleeting moments of voluntary affection are few and far between. However random, the times she launches into conversation, or peppers me with sincere questions or graces me with her undivided attention, are moments to be treasured. They are memories to be savored and squirreled away, a growing body of evidence that we are doing a good job with raising our young human. I love my daughter unconditionally, but I am truly enjoying her at this stage..something that both surprises me and gives me great and remarkable joy.