Coming to terms with a negative high school experience

One child had bad HS experience but graduation day still gave this child a feeling of accomplishment. Also the school had a few friends that child wanted to say good bye to. Overall it was a good experience.

Having an excellent experience during one stage of your life doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve “peaked.” There may be equally good – perhaps even better – experiences down the road.

I had a great experience in college – so much so that the next 10 years were a letdown, even though I earned a graduate degree, got married, and established a career during those years. For all that time, I thought that nothing would ever be as good again as my undergraduate years had been. But then I had a child, and I discovered that raising him – and the younger sister who came along later – was even better. I would never have anticipated that, but it’s great that it happened.

“An excellent experience during one stage of life” is not peaking. Actually, I think it’s hard at the time to know when or if you are peaking. Maybe if you are an Olympic athlete, winning that gold medal is peaking, or getting the Oscar (unless you’re Meryl Streep) or a Grammy, but for most people, it may be hard to know when. What I was telling my friend was that her child’s life wasn’t over because he wasn’t popular in HS. If HS is the primo experience of your life, what do you have to look forward to? I think most kids realize when they graduate that there is a whole new world out there and they haven’t peaked in HS. However, there are people who do peak in HS. You see them or stereotypes of them in the faded and run to fat former HS QB who can’t talk about anything other than his winning TD run or the cheerleader who tries to kill people when her own D doesn’t make the squad. My friend needed to hear it the way I said it but other people may benefit from the converse - just because you don’t peak in HS, doesn’t mean you never will have anything great happen to you or that your life won’t be fulfilling.

I had a crappy college experience and counted the minutes till it was over, but I had an awesome time in law school, where I met my H, graduated second in my class and in general had a blast. Like @marian, I thought nothing could be better than those 3 years, until I began working and earning money and getting recognition by my boss and others for my accomplishments. Having my son was a phenomenal experience,too, as was having his younger siblings. Have I peaked yet? Career wise, perhaps, but I am not sure just when it happened. Life wise - I hope to continue having good experiences.

The point is, life is long and the HS years are just a stop along the way, as are the college years and the grad school years if you go that path. Don’t let a bad HS experience color your entire life and don’t let a great HS experience define you for the rest of your life.

I’m also sorry to hear of this. I’d guess, without a basis, that a lot of people dislike high school. I’d skip graduation and do something fun that day instead.

I’ve never bought into the “best years of your life” line.

In my opinion, the best year is almost always the one I’m in. (OK, in the interests of full disclosure, there was one year when we were absolutely drowning. Every time we caught our breath, along came another wave to pull us under. But in 59 years, that 18 month period was the exception.)

I’ve never understood telling kids that this one particular 4 year span was going to be the high point of their lives–as though everything to follow (college, perhaps love, marriage, kids career…) were all somehow less than those 4 “best years.”

Many kids are not crazy about their HS experience and consider it a necessary step to getting to the next stage. But I told my kid many times to enjoy whatever stage he’s in because that time period also shall and does pass. I told my kid I considered all my academic phases (from HS to graduate school) a take-it easy period to read books and think about things period until the work phase when I got down to the business of making money (even that due to my emotional response to some personal experience). My lack of success in academic settings never bothered me too much because I knew I would be able to turn it on in the real world, and this attitude was partly due to my sports experience which taught me things can change suddenly. Academic success was for me just academic. Early on, I realized I was never meant for a clear set process of getting into a certain profession and dutifully following in the steps of comfort and that I had to take certain risks and be creative in creating a business meeting the demand. Luckily, I never fell into a trap of thinking my academic success (or failure) determined my future of where I wanted to go. And it turned out my academic success (or failure) had no bearing to my business success/failure.

I once went to a going away lunch of someone I didn’t particularly care for at work just to make sure he was leaving.

You could always treat graduation that way.

I agree with post #8. My daughter had a fine high school experience, but graduating was all about putting the nonsense behind and looking forward to the future. I think your child should view this as an opportunity to put the past behind. The great thing about finishing high school is that many kids realize quickly that none of it mattered much.

I think it matters because kids go from effectively child to adult between middle school and graduating. You learn about social classes and finances, you learn about your sexuality, you learn about personal responsibility, you learn about your own personality. What doesn’t matter is that the four years don’t have to be nor will they be the best four years of your life nor do those experiences define you forever.

What does your child want? Do that.

celebrate the closing of that chapter of life, and welcome the new chapter, that the student has much more control over.

This thread is a couple weeks old but really helpful for me - my DD20 has social anxiety & other stuff, and it’s been such a journey of ups and downs…socially and academically. It’s tiring, makes me sad sometimes, and occasionally it seems that everyone else’s kids are having a great time while mine struggles. Nice to be reminded that all will work out fine in the end and we are not alone!

Most people’s high school experience isn’t like Disney’s High School Musical. But sadly, kids get ideas, impressions, and expectations from things like that.

Celebrate she is out. Be happy its over. Look forward to a new chapter of life being free and don’t dwell on the past.

Opposite POV here. I had a great time in High School…but I absolutely hated my high school graduation ceremony which was hours and hours long because there were over 1000 in my graduating class. Every single persons name was read…each person was given their “diploma” (which was really only the leather holder).

I never attended any of my own college graduations because of this.

My D had a very rough final semester in HS. Looking back 4 years later, the sad thing is that the difficult experiences ended up souring her memories of 3.5 good years that came before that.

Make sure your kid understands that s/he will NEVER have to see those HS kids again. When they’ve spent the past 12 years with the same kids its hard for them to understand that those kids will no longer be part of their lives. Make sure they get that. Purge the FB and Instagram accounts. And by all means celebrate that they survived.

I’m sure the years have been painful for you too, watching your child suffer. So much of the advice applies to you, too. Stay off social media. Celebrate that your kid got through it. And look towards the future, not back at the past.

I did not fit in at all in HS and was thrilled to be able to leave. I was very academically oriented and had little to no social skills in HS in a very affluent Northeast suburb when sports and social skills were very important to popularity.
When I got to college, I felt immediately that “there are people like me here.” For the most part, I never saw anyone from HS again for a long time, so I didn’t have to deal with them. I got an invitation from someone I liked and decided to go back to my 30th HS reunion. I discovered a few things. Lots of people knew me that I didn’t remember. In part because I have had one of the most interesting careers among my classmates (and developed social skills in the interim), going back years later was actually quite pleasant and I learned that a few things I thought were true were in fact not.

I agree with the advice to stay off social media and to work to make the future good. There is lots of potential for college to be much better than HS and OP’s kid should relish the exciting possibility.

“…it will mark the end of a very painful three years for my child”

Celebrate this with your child. Celebrate resilience. Celebrate survival. Celebrate your child making it through to the other side. It’s finally over. Done. The future awaits. Onward and upward.

It’s okay to celebrate in a way that honors your kid’s experience and what was accomplished by simply making it through. That’s huge for a teen facing painful challenges. Huge. And as many have pointed out here, it is entirely possible to leave high school and everything it encompasses in the dust.

I’m really proud of your kid for making it through.

I didn’t like both HS and college and graduate school, although I made friends and learned a lot. Some kids are not meant to be academicians. But I was good at self-learning so I really didn’t need colleges and always felt that colleges should be cut down to 2 years. I really think 4 years is an arbitrary number of years designed to make money for colleges. lol

I found HS and colleges academics a breeze because I didn’t care what grades I got!

Anyway, you should celebrate the end of your painful three years with a nice dinner and a movie and look forward to a better chapter of your lives.

I sometimes wish there were no colleges so people are forced to self learn and seek mentors and learn to value people who have more experiences.