The Shy and The Strong

I am still baffled at the outcome of my daughter's graduation.

This year, it was a breeze landing that valedictory for Rocio, who was only salutatorian last year. The nursery top spot then was tipped over to her bestfriend because of 2 measly points. The bestfriend, since he was of age, accelerated to preparatory class. Rocio was not allowed to do that because no decent school in the region would accept a 5 year-old first-grader.

Without the bestfriend, Rocio consistently stayed on top of everybody--- perfecting periodical exams and reciting even a bit too much during class. This comes with little surprise as she has always been a show-off, just like Mommy, haha! At 5, she has already amazed crowds for dancing, modeling, and yes--- pageantry. So, with experience being more than her years alive, with her unstoppable (and highly evolved) gab, and with her natural comfort in the spotlight, it was a real fainting spell for me when she suddenly refused to continue her welcome address after barely delivering the opening sentence.

The bestfriend, whose speech I also drafted, read from a folder. That was forgivable. Rocio, who memorized her entire speech but clammed up 3 seconds within blast off, may have wanted to read just like her bestfriend--- something which her teacher Ms. Bugnosen and I (needful to mention am a speech teacher) did not allow because it was beneath her!

I could have swallowed the whole thing as a phase Rocio must go through... although being overnight, it was rather bleak there was no impactful trigger. I was ready to say, "My hubby's side can get awfully shy." It is good that I did not settle for that reason.

Further investigation on my part yielded that the bestfriend was always defended during the few graduation practices by his guardian. This came to a point where the guardian even openly objected to Ms. Bugnosen's strict directives. A witness described this confrontation to me as 'scandalous'.

It could be possible that I really overworked my daughter into understanding, memorizing, and delivering that welcome address, but it is also my nature and her capacity to go as far as we can and then run 5 miles more. This is my style of teaching; I do not patronize losers. It is unfortunate, however, that I now have to rehabilitate my daughter's frame of mind just because of a ward who could not respect the teacher enough or even take on necessary challenges.

Sometimes, we think our parenting is so strong that we could leave our kids in a trustworthy environment and have them come home the way they were when they left. Not all of our expectations materialize, however, and our kids come home as different people. It could be a genetic bomb, it could be trauma from or influence of others, it could even be your kid's way of testing your limit. Whatever it is (and trust me, it's possible we'll never really know for sure), the strength of our parenthood now shifts on how we pull back our kids to the right track.

The weakness of our parenthood would be our tendency to shrug and throw it all to the wind, saying, this is how kids are or kids will be kids. Kids are smarter than we think; it's just that they still need us to find out how to use that smartness to their best advantage.