New school year = New friends!

Well, we made it through the first week of school, and are officially in the middle of a three-day weekend!

For the second year, I have three children three different schools (four in four, if you count my toddler in Moms Day Out), all with different experiences. Luckily, they are all enjoying school so far this year.

It occurred to me this week, that while it is so important it is for kids to have a good school experience, so much is beyond our control. Personality types of teachers, who our kids choose as friends, kids "being kids" and teasing, bullying, and picking other kids as friends over ours can all be heartbreaking for our children, and yet so hard, if impossible for us to control.

Sure, we can change our kids' classes, transfer them to a different school, or decide to home school, but kids need to learn how to deal with different people and experiences at some point in their lives.

Yet, it is surprising to me how some kids make it through school relatively unscathed, while others have horrible experiences for all or part of their school careers.

So much of it depends on experiences and friends they make outside of school, which carries over into the school environment, but, as I have observed, a lot of it is the child's personality.

My two teenagers are pretty "mainstream" kids. I have been blessed with the fact that they are "pleasers," and attempt to keep their teachers happy and their parents proud.

My 2nd grader may be a little more of a challenge. He does have some "pleaser" qualities, and wouldn't dream of misbehaving (on purpose), but his personality, imagination, and to some extent, possibly his intelligence, could possibly cause some difficulty for him.

I've written previous posts about Jacob- he is my animated, precocious little guy. While he makes adults giggle with his antics, I think his personality may cause him some difficulty in making friends.

Is he "weird" or "mean?" No. Not in any way. But, he thinks differently, acts differently, and plays differently than others his age. And that makes him hard to relate to other kids.

We've struggled with this for the past year or so, and I think I've finally found something that's helped. I've gotten him involved in theater- where other kids have similar energy levels and imaginations.

Having friends in theater has made not having many friends in school much easier for Jacob. He goes to school to learn and play with the one or two kids he's befriended, but goes to acting class and play practice to "have fun."

It's very different for my older two kids. For my daughter, school and marching band IS her social life, with some trips to the mall and sleepovers with her friends sprinkled in.

For my son, his social life is with his friends from school, but they mostly socialize online. Skype, video games, and Facebook are the majority of his social interface. It has taken me a while to be "accepting" of this, but, after talking to the parents of his friends (who, thankfully are friends of mine), we have decided that video socializing is the new method of play. These boys are all smart, socially adept, good kids. They are all involved in different activities in school and after school, so online play is the only thing they really have in common.

There's more to school than learning in the classroom. I believe that success in school is a combination of academic success and socialization in one form or another. I've realized that that socialization can come in different forms- in school, in extra-curricular activities, or on-line, as long as they're socializing in one form or another (but not too much :) ).