I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it’s my fault that my daughter is not prepared to deal with failure. She has spent the past six years living a fairly sheltered life from the real world. She was home schooled by someone that was never home. Her first exposure to education outside her self imposed cloister was attending a local junior “college”. It was her idea to become a dental assistant, school got tough and she wanted to quit but those people who loved her the most told her to keep at it.
Now she has finished and she has had her first real world interview. The first real school of hard knocks, something she really wasn’t prepared for. The interview pointed out some short coming of the program she completed. One has turned out to be a rather serious issue that I would like her to address with the school. She was told by one of her instructors that the certification testing was no longer needed, just the registration. While that mis-information was a relief to her, it turns out it was very incorrect.
So now she feels like the whole world is against her, that it’s out to screw her, and that she just wants to crawl into a hole. I have repeatedly tried to tell her life isn’t fair, life isn’t easy. I’ve tried to use myself as the example, but I guess until she experienced it for herself she would not understand.
I think we all want to blame someone for all this, I want to blame myself for not being able to get her to understand how hard life really is. I want to blame her father for basically handing everything she wanted over to her. I want to blame the school for not properly preparing her. I think the only one of these that should be held accountable is the school.
But now she’s angry, now she feels like everyone has pushed her into something she didn’t want to do. So I’ve spent the last six years trying to get her to figure out what she wants to do? She does need to remember, she came up with the dental assistant idea?
She’s going to be 21 very soon, she has not had a real job yet. She was working as casual labor where her uncle used to work, but they had a falling out over the work she was doing there, so that job ended abruptly. She tried a part-time job at a video store but she found herself stressed out over the hours, the work and school.
I cry for you sweetie, because I feel I failed you.
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