Reply to Parent in the sunset years of their child’s school career

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[quote=Anonymous]Agree with PP above, this is the natural history of the school parent process.  I remember when we started this stage of life, there were all of these older parents who seemed quite cool and interesting, but they seemed oddly detached and disengaged from an environment that to me seemed generally quite positive to me—filled with interesting and accomplished people of the sort most would be happy to get to know. They seemed a little closed to socializing, rather more negative about some of the drawbacks of the school, etc. etc. I didn’t get it. On the other side, I understand it better now. There is an inherent transactionality to most of the relationships you make in that environment which becomes evident over time; people necessarily become more inward looking as they approach the end game; if the environment is a more competitive one, the zero-sum nature of the college admissions game just kind of inherently sours the vibe in some way, even though most people don’t really want that to happen in my experience. You didn’t do anything wrong, it is the nature of the experience, beyond your or anybody else’s real control. At the end of the day, you and the other parents are mostly just colleagues/co-workers, and now that the job is mostly done, most of the relationships drop away.  If you make one or two real friends from this phase that you have ongoing relationships with, you’re a winner.  But you can never go back to the vibe of helping you children do crafts or dropping them at sleep overs or whatever, when the issues now are “who’s vaping weed” or “Larla wanted to go to college X but Larlo got in instead.” Sic transit gloria mundi. [/quote]

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