that just about destroys you as a parent.

[This may get long and rambling, but I need to rant, so bear with me]

The super short version is she is feeling depressed and unmotivated, and has ever since her wisdom teeth surgery at Thanksgiving. That led to her getting behind in some schoolwork, and she turned in some assignments late. Teacher gave her zeroes on them, giving her an F on the interem report card and an overall C grade year to date. Note she is a straight-A student, so an F or even a C is a world-crushing event.

She has wanted to speak to the school counselor who always says stop by anytime and the door is always open. But the bus drops her off 5 min before class starts and leaves 5 min after her last class ends. With circumstances the way they are, you can't really be on school grounds outside of your scheduled half-day of class. So there has been no way to work through this on her own.

Talking through it with her, she is pretty sure it all comes down to ten months of a teenage girl basically being isolated from friends, peers, and people in general. And there is not a forking thing I can do about it because the schools are still virtually on lockdown and the parents of her friends are militant isolationists during Covid.

I've said many times before on these boards that the people making decisions and policies are governing scared instead of smart. Yes, we need to control the spread of Covid. But we are wrecking the intellectual growth and emotional stability of our children, in addition to destroying people's livelihood and sodomizing the economy. But these are all costs the decision makers aren't paying, so what do they care?

We're so passionate about "saving" things (in this case, it's grandma, but the same applies to lots of other politically charged topics) that we don't care who or what we kill to do it.

I'm thankful my daughter felt comfortable enough to come to me and explain what she is going through so we can try to work through it. But what about kids who aren't comfortable dumping that on their parents? The final numbers won't be in for awhile, but we already know suicides were up in 2020. I don't think that will be my daughter, but it will be someone's daughter. But who gives a shirt as long as we saved grandma, right?

Sorry I probably pushed a lot of buttons and may even deserve a daisy cutter. But when your child is hurting, you hurt with them.


Oh, and we are working on a plan to get her to the school counselor. It will just require some coordinating with my schedule so I can pick her up. The frustration of not being able to just go talk to the counselor without my help was another trigger point in all this.