Dear Daughter
Well, my dearest lovely girl, today is your last day of primary school, forever, so I wanted to write you this letter as you’ll be starting high school next year.
It was pretty much 7 years, to the day, since you graduated from Kindergarten. You had the best learning experience at that Kindy and we wished you could’ve had those teachers all your school life. They instilled such a love of learning in you but we kind of knew you were destined for good things because you were already so clever.
You loved dinosaurs and everything relating to dinosaurs. You wanted to be a paleontologist at the age of 4. You’ve since changed your mind but it made us realise that you were very clever and knew what you wanted in life.
From the time you were born, I started looking at which school to send you to. I only ever wanted the best for you and send you to a place where I know you’d get a good education and set you off on your learning journey that you’d already started.
The first year was great and you had a wonderful teacher but the second year, you were terribly bullied by one girl and it seemed to fall on deaf ears when I complained to the school. Also, the teachers weren’t extending you, rather giving you very simple work that you already knew. It was then your Dad and I decided to send you to the local public school.
It was going to be tough making new friends but we knew you could handle it. You were put straight into a special academic class and shone. You made a couple friends and made the adjustment easily. Unfortunately, the school didn’t have the funding for another academic class the follwing year but you kept up the good work and always picked up new things easily.
There was bullying at that school too and there was a daily lesson to be learnt. I was always teaching you not to let it worry you, that you’d done nothing wrong. To build up your resilience and just avoid these people. It’s not easy and you’ll still come across bullies in your adult life but again, you can’t do anything about it. There’s two types of people in this world, bullies and those who are bullied. You have a very assertive side to your personality and if you learn how to channel that into confrontations, you’ll never have to worry about bullies and the way they treat you.
The end of Grade 6 for you didn’t go off without a hitch but I have to commend you for the way you handled yourself for being poorly treated by the staff at the school. I wasn’t very happy and you probably saw an angry side of me that you’ve never seen before. You picked yourself up and went onto celebrate your graduation and now your last day of school.
Mummy just wants to tell you that school, both primary and high school, is only a very small part of your life. It will give you a good start into how to follow instructions, how to obey authority and those in charge, how to deal with difficult personalities and how to decide exactly what career you want to pursue. You really are blessed with so many options today compared to when I went to school and because of how clever you are, you’ll have no difficulty in choosing the right career path.
I don’t really care what you want to do with your adult life as long as you are happy doing it. There’s nothing worse than taking on a job that you hate waking up for in the morning. It’s a real drag to turn up every day and you hate it. Find something you’re passionate about. Find something that you’ll feel like you’re not working at. Something that fills your soul, your mind and your heart.
Be diligent at school. Unfortunately your marks do count. Everything is based on a score and if you want to get into University to study for any reason, you’ll need good grades. Take note of the basics. You may think you’ll never need to know what ‘pie’ means or how making custard may never come in handy because you hate custard but learning the basics will help you in the future. I thought I’d never need to refer back to my 4 years of studying German at high school but it does come in handy if you glance at a word or read it somewhere.
Remember too that the girls are going to get meaner and the boys are going to look cuter at high school. Your hormones are already raging and you’ve started to be interested in boys. Don’t waste your teenage years on serious relationships with boys. I know there’s nothing nicer than your heart fluttering when he walks by or shows some interest in you but boys that age are also discovering themselves and will only probably be interested for a short time, until something better catches their eyes. Hopefully you won’t be heartbroken but if you are, just remember, Mum will be here to talk to. Mum has been heartbroken more times than she’d like to remember and I know that you always get through it.
You’ll have some nice teachers and some not so nice teachers. You’ll start to want to take risks. It’s biological. It’s preparing you for the world. Just remember that with every risk there is a consequence. You might be lucky to survive it or escape it but it will catch up with you. Drugs just aren’t worth it. You can get high on life without taking drugs so don’t think you need to fit in with the ‘cool’ bunch to try a cigarette or drugs. You’re much better than that.
Find out what those qualities are that you’d like in a friend and find that friend. You’ll have them for life.
I really can’t believe where the last 7 years have gone but I’ve enjoyed every single one of them, raising you and see you graduate from primary school. You’ve done me, your Dad, your stepdad and stepmum very proud. Harness that fiery temper and conquer the world. We know you can do whatever you set your mind to.
Love,
Mum xx
