HEART & SOUL: First day of school leads a list of starts

— And so it begins! Last week I celebrated my 15th first day of school. Amazing to think my kids and I have done this so many times.

To parents of young children: I promise it gets easier. Remembering my daughter's first day of school all those years ago, I recall her shy but excited first steps into the classroom as I stood by the door and fought back tears. She looked back a few times, then bravely sat down at her new desk in that new world. I cried all the way home.

I fought the tears on my son's first day of school, too, but he was so eager he ran ahead of me. I dragged in a few minutes later toting the half-dozen bags of requested school supplies, just in time to hear the worried teacher trying to find out if he even had a parent. I cried all the way home from that one, too.

They've grown up a lot since then. This year, my daughter, now 19 and a sophomore in college, assisted freshmen moving into the dorms on their first day. My son, as usual, took the whole thing in stride. Oh, maybe I detected a bit of apprehension - this is his first year in high school - but it wasn't much and it didn't last.

And me? Well, on my 15th first day of school, there was no knot in the pit of my stomach, and no anxiously watching the clock. It was more like business as usual. We had a good summer and it was time for it to end. Time for us all to get back to work.

At their ages, they're ready for the work, the challenge and the opportunity to have a little more say in what they take and how they spend their time. They understand, or will soon, that this is preparation for the next phase.

The deeper lesson is that school at this age becomes more serious life preparation. And that, I'm coming to believe, is the theme of this phase of parenting. Oh, we're still shepherding them through school, but at this age it's usually from a distance. Yes, we still have to watch their grades and their homework and make sure they eat right. Absolutely, they still need hugs as well as discipline.

But now, in addition to telling them how cute they were in kindergarten on that long ago first day of school, we can share how terrified we were the first time we walked into our new office, or the first time we had an interview, or the first time we had to figure out how to complete an assignment on which we would not only be "graded" for promotion, but on which our job depended.

How do we model for young adults the skills they need to thrive in this phase of their life and the next? To the best of our ability, we show them what work means, what it requires of us, and how to integrate life and work in healthy ways. Along with teaching them that certain skills, habits and character traits are expected, and that without those things life is unnecessarily hard, we're also teaching them something else.

We're teaching them that there will always be first days. First days of high school, first days of college, first days of graduate school, a first job, a marriage, a partnership, a business. For all of us at all ages, life is about first days.

All this starts with that first day of school. That step back - this time with relief - into the world we'll be so glad to say goodbye to in June. All this starts with that first bell, and the goodbye to Mom and to summer.

Write to Jennifer Hansen at Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 515 Enterprise Drive, Suite 106, Lowell, Ark. 72745. E-mail her at:

jhansen@arkansasonline.com

Family, Pages 31, 33 on 08/26/2009

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