As You Celebrate Your High School Senior, Remember How Much YOU Did To Get Them There

It’s all about THEM!

THEY are graduating high school!

THEY have been working hard for four years!

THEY have been waking at dawn, doing school for 6 hours, doing sports and drama and service and a hundred other things, all just to fill up resumes and scholarship applications and to, of course, make the best of their high school years!

Middle age mom
The one person who should also be congratulated when their teen graduates.

And now the next few months will continue to be all about THEM, while we plan their graduation parties and all the other end of year events we’re going to need to be at. And then we will spend a summer where it will be all about THEM again, as we prepare them for the next chapter of their life, whatever that may be.

Who Helped Your High School Senior?

But WHO is behind the THEM?

Who is the support staff behind the high school senior?

Who is the forever unnoticed, always under-appreciated, glaringly glossed over, perpetually overlooked, and frequently disregarded human who fed, clothed, loved, raised, taught, and a did all the things, all in the name of getting THEM to HERE?

YOU.

The MOM!!

It took YOU (and roughly 14,000 cups of coffee) to get THEM here, so why do we only celebrate THEM?

What about the thankless endless lists of things YOU THE MOM did to get THEM here?

Or did you forget? Well, allow me to remind you.

8 Things Moms Do to Help Their Kids

  1. Teacher conferences. Teacher gifts. Teacher luncheons. Teacher notes. Teacher phone calls. Permission slips. Field trip forms. Clinic forms. ALL. THE. FORMS. So. Many. Forms. What allows a kid to graduate high school? About 1,879 signed forms.
  2. Car rides. Car pools. Car trips. You’ve been a glorified Uber for 18 years, at the ready whenever they’ve needed to get from point A to point B. You went from having sippy cups thrown at you from the backseat, to having disrespectful and frustrating back talk thrown at you from the passenger seat. What allows a kid to graduate high school? About 200,000 city miles.
  3. Appointments. Doctors appointments. Dentist appointments. Speech therapy. Orthodontist.  Eye doctor. The allergist. Your appointment books needs a vacation. A big one. YUUUGE ONE.
  4. The extracurriculars. OMG THE EXTRACURRICULARS. This is the never-ending list of all the crap you wanted your kids to do and play, until it hit that all the crap you wanted your kids to do and play would take up your entire life, including evenings, sunrises, and weekends from now until you drop them off at college. It’s OK if you don’t “miss this one day.” Two words -RECORDER CONCERT.
  5. Birthday parties. That one speaks for itself folks. But let’s estimate around 300 goody bags and leave it at that.
  6. Breakfast. Lunch. Snack. Dinner. Repeat until your eyes are bleeding out as much as your wallet. Waffles. Goldfish. Apple slices. String Cheese. You’ve likely bought and prepared a literal TON of food to keep their bodies running.  You’ve also likely bought the same amount of toilet paper.
  7. Emergencies. Vomit. Bee stings. Stitches. Crutches. Casts. Skinned knees. Sprained everything. Bruised foreheads. Bruised egos. 7,568 Headaches (yours, not theirs) Did you know you’d end up being a first class first aid provider?
  8. Tests. Spelling. Math. History. Vocabulary. FREAKIN’ SCIENCE PROJECTS! The failed tests. The aced tests. The small tests. The big tests. The bigger tests. THE tests. The  PSAT. The SAT. The ACT. OHMYGAWD ARE THE TESTS OVER YET?!? About 40 dozen #2 pencils, in case you’re wondering.

Ready to celebrate now Moms? Because you should be. Because when you watch that senior stroll across the graduation stage and accept their diploma, there’s one person you should be more proud of than them.

And that person is YOU!

Now enjoy this time, OK? Because soon enough you’re going to be helping THEM from hours away because they’re at college.

And that my friends, is a whole new type of HEADACHE.

You Might Also Enjoy Reading:

Time to Throw a Graduation Party for Moms

Best High School Graduation Songs

Grad Gifts for Your Teen’s Friends 

About Grown and Flown

Mary Dell Harrington and Lisa (Endlich) Heffernan are the co-founders of Grown and Flown the #1 site for parents of teens, college students and young adults, reaching millions of parents every month. They are writers (Lisa is a New York Times bestselling author), moms, wives and friends. They started the Grown and Flown Parents Facebook Group and are co-authors of Grown and Flown: How to Support Your Teen, Stay Close as a Family, and Raise Independent Adults (Flatiron Books) now in paperback.

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