First Day of School: It's Tough on Parents, Too

New shoes and backpacks have been purchased; haircuts have been administered; alarm clocks have been set. It's time to go back to school. For many, however, first-day-of-school jitters began last week when the class placements were sent out. I'm not talking about the kids' jitters. They're doing just fine.

Placement Anxiety Disorder (PAD) is a term my friend and I coined for stuff parents worry about when confronted with the reality that another schoolyear is about to begin. Is this teacher a good fit for my child? Will the class jell? Was he or she placed with a friend? I've been detecting PAD (in varying degrees) during brief conversations I've shared with fellow parents at the pool, the pharmacy, or Target.

While taking a walk over the weekend, I was alternately feeding and soothing my PAD when I encountered a friend who told me about her son's confrontation with the arduous task of writing his college application essays. I continued my stroll, happily distracted by thoughts of this young man, a tenacious athlete blessed with the patience to pass along his soccer skills to the neighborhood children. He's a member of my kids' babysitting hall of fame due to his genuine enthusiasm for hide-and-go-seek and the fact that he's as cool as he is kind.

How could I help this young man write an essay that showcases these fine qualities (and others)? I could tell him to jot down: the thing he wanted most but didn't get, the person he had to learn to like, the hardest transition he's ever made, his most humiliating moment, something that surprised him, and something that really ticked him off, just for starters. I could suggest that he pick the challenge that generated the most juice and write about what he learned from that experience.

I was a block from my house when it struck me that in order to write such an essay he would have had to encounter the kind of bumps from which we want to shield our children. How will they learn grace and sportsmanship if they win every basketball game? How will they learn compassion if they don't experience being an outsider at some point on the playground? And how will they learn what true friendship looks like if they haven't had their hearts broken by someone who will inevitably friend them on whatever networking site will replace Facebook?

Trust me, I'm much wiser and more magnanimous on paper than I am off the page, but by the time I arrived home, my brief bout of PAD had subsided. Phew. Just in time for the first day of school.