What fresh hell is this

[eggsandsourdough]

High school!!

DD started last year and jesus fucking christ what a rollercoaster.

The transition has been absolutly brutal, not so much for my DD in the sense she made a huge group of friends but the sheer drama, behaviour,shocking stories.

My lovely, kind empathetic grl has turned into a monster.

I was not ready!! What a humbling experience.

Ok I'm scared now about all those saying year 9 is the worst 😩 year 7 with DD was one of the hardest years of my life!! So far year 8 has been so much more settled and now you're telling me it's gets even worse. Dear god no!

I am so glad we skipped secondary school!

My DC were in school until Y5, then during COVID we just never returned as we realised they were much happier at home. Both my DC are autistic - DS was at special school and DD was in mainstream but struggling. She wouldn't have qualified for a special school but would have found mainstream almost impossible (she has a separate language processing disability alongside being autistic and ADHD so she can't follow classroom discussions).

The local secondary schools around here are a bit of a nightmare at the moment. The one that's next to the special school DS would have gone to had a stabbing recently and teachers are currently out on strike. Others in the area don't seem much better. I think the teachers who work there are having a really hard time.

In the home ed community in our area, there seems to be a bit of a different attitude to parents compared to the teens attending school. Don't get me wrong, there's still teen hormones etc to navigate but it feels much easier and less antagonistic. Most home ed parents take their DC along to home ed events etc, so the parents get to know each other and the other teens get to know us. There doesn't seem to be any of the whole "my parents are embarrassing" stigma within home ed. We have a mix of SEN and non-SEN teens which means there are varying degrees of independence but the same approach to parents seems to be there.

I've worked in both primary and secondary and can confirm that for boys and girls Year 5 and Year 9 is where they reach peak levels of friendship drama, defiance, entitlement, just general dickhead behaviour really.

Im on my 3rd DD in high school
Its brutal. YANBU.

Its bloody hard but they do get better. The friendship thing is tough :( I hate it

Year 8 was worse for both of my elder DC. Dd3 currently year 8. I cant bear if if 9 is even worse

My mum was a secondary school teacher and she said years 8 and 9 for girls and 9 and 10 for boys. My own dds are now year 11 and we have exam stress and boyfriend stress and 6th form stress. A few friendship stresses too as they are realising they are on their own paths (dd1s bf has been her bf since they were 4 and they have always gone in the same direction and that’s now diverging). But they are really good company, growing up, finding their place in the world.

years 8 and 9 were awful. We had horrific friendship issues, dd2 getting so anxious she could barely function, dd1 and dh fighting so badly I didn’t know what to do (to the extent I almost had to consider asking him to leave because she was so impossible and he couldn’t handle it). Thank fuck they’re now not only human again but excellent company and fascinating to be around.

Feel free to dm me if you’d like to share notes! 📝

DD started yr 7 in sept.

Luckily she immediately made friends with 2 really nice girls. She comes home and tells me what 'drama' happened at school that day. She has 9 or 10 'satellite' friends who revolve around her who seem to have gone a bit mad! Most of them seem to have decided they're gay and the rest seem to want to find reasons to have physical fights at least once a week.

My own years at secondary - well my mother never knew the half of what went on. I lost my virginity at just 14 to a local oik and skipped school a lot.

My 3 older girls went through secondary ok. No massive dramas. But they had each other. DD 4 is a lot younger than them and now we have social media thrown in as well.

At the mo i'm fighting to keep DD free of tic tok and insta and what's app.

That's v reassuring! My yr 8 DD is also exactly the same lovely girl she was in primary.....but whilst she loved primary she often isn't happy about going in to school these days due to the drama and mean girls 😞

Ok so I’m not alone 😅😅

Shouldn’t there be some sort of public warning in place for high school as I literally had no idea!!

And to make it worse DD2 is starting in August, then just as they both leave high school and the light is near, DD3 will be starting 😂😂😂

So by my calculations I’ll have endured 13 years of high school!

It will always boggle my mind that we take humans at their messiest, most hormonal, chaotic and dramatic and say to them "now do the exams that will dictate the rest of your life!" Madness 🤣

100%.

i say to my DS that it's madness. Hormones. Brains that are not yet developed. They have no agency and choice over their world, what they do, how they conduct their lives and then we pile that pressure on them.

I think it's deeply deeply flawed.

My kids were lovely it other peoples hell spawn in year 8 that were the problem.

Dd2s newest “best friend” turned on her ostracising her from the group and spreading awful stories so no one else would be friends with her. The image of her face crumbling as she walked up the garden path after holding tears in all day will stay with me. Walking home alone sitting alone at lunch.

The girl later apologised and said she did it because she was “bored”. Dd thriving now but something irrevocably broke in her when that betrayal happened.

I voted YABU because of the JFC phrase in your op. The apple usually falls close to the tree.

Yes OP why does no one warn us !?!? Basically someone replaces your lovely 11 year old with a completely different stranger.....and the stranger stays for years !!!! Mine is 16 now and has improved a lot. It does get better and is seemingly necessary...

I'm in same boat re Yr 6 DD. I keep theatening to withdraw her.

Year 8 is the low point. Kids huddle together in big friendship groups in year 7, then in year 8 they realise they really don't like half the group, but the half they don't like is slightly different to the half someone else likes, so they fracture off into little factions within the group, then there's a big argument and the group shatters.

I was really fortunate with my kids pre phones thankfully, except one d she knew everything, and was very difficult, but that's another thread in itself as she left home at 18 still acting like her 13 year old self.

My experience is that it's a fucking shit show. Two girls. Another 2.5 years to go. Fc I survive!

That’s a reach. 😂

Year 7 is first year so S1 in terms of transition etc but they move up at age 11 rather that 12 (ISH).

So you got an extra year of a nice primary child!

Welcome to the club! DD had a Mother's Day tea at her school and ALL the children were mortified to actually have mothers.

Mine started high school in September and I haven't had the same experience as OP

But my child is challenging at home anyway and has been challenging for some years. Is this why it's different then??

I don't feel she's changed since high school

I actually feel she's had far less friend dramas at high school than she had in the later years of primary. Not much friendship issues in high school.

I've had 2 mums make issues with me since high school. One made be really upset actually. Before this I had no mum make any issues with me. So I wasn't expecting it.

It horrid but I’ve been waiting and expecting my DS’s to go feral because that’s what teens do, but so far they’ve been fine.
DS1 is in yr11. Sailed through school re friendships, no drama at all. He’s very laid back and nothing really seems to bother him which I think gets him a long way. He still talks to me and DH, happy to spend time with us (though would rather spend time with his friends). Definitely thinks he knows more than he does but is not completely unreasonable. The vast majority of his friends are also lovely. Polite, initiate a conversation with me if they come over.
DS2 is in yr9. Definitely more dramatic personality-wise and more of a grunter but still not awful. From his side of the story, he’s has friends who have then behaved like idiots so he’s moved on to another group. No major dramas, he’s just got on with it. He does have friends. I worry about him more but he he’s always insisted he’s fine and I have no real reason not to believe him.

So it doesn’t always have to be awful, though I appreciate I’m not through it yet!

@GardeningMummy While it's good to have a back up plan, don't write off secondary for her.

I was dreading the transition for my son. He was at a primary with less than 50 kids into a 1500 secondary with a 15 mile bus journey.

But he much prefers it. He likes the timetable and knowing exactly what is coming each day. Think he zones out from some of the chaos.

A fair bit is luck and them getting the right class for friendship etc. Several of my son's new friends have autism too. There's a much bigger pool to choose from in terms of finding their people.

It may all go wrong yet but so far it's gone better than I'd ever expected. Like you, I was terrified.

So I'd keep your options open and see how it goes.