School and Girls

My eight-year-old goes to regular, plain-old third grade. She likes being there and the year I homeschooled her with the boys was so unproductive that I felt like I had no choice but to send her to school. For the most part I'm okay with her being in school. It's a built-in community and there's a lot to be said for that. When we moved to the area we are in eleven years ago, we picked the area partly because there was a neighborhood school, so we've known a lot of the people at the school for a long time now.

Today was Crazy Sock Day at school. I got a call reminding us about that last night, so I told Annika. She has some pretty fun socks--rainbow striped ones that I thought she'd want to wear. This morning though she chose another pair of cute, long socks, but plain blue ones. I asked her why and she said that she just changed her mind.

That's fine. She picks out her own clothes--I have about a dozen better things to do each morning. But on the way to school she asked me three or four times if I was sure that it really was Crazy Sock Day. The poor thing was so worried that she would be the only one with crazy socks that I started to worry.

My sample size is small and she's my oldest girl, but I'm worried that her little spirit, that thing that makes Annika, Annika is disappearing because of school. I recognize so much of me in her that it's worrisome. I don't want Annika to take her cues from these other girls that don't have her best interest in mind. The little mind games are already starting in her third grade class.

So, what do I do? For right now, assume that homeschooling her is not an option. I won't guarantee that it never will be, but for right now she's staying in school. I feel like I've given her responses to the things she's already told me happen, but I can't anticipate everything. I want her to have the confidence to be goofy if she wants to be, to wear crazy socks on days that it's not even crazy sock day. I  want her to tell her friends that she's going to be whoever she wants to be, whenever she wants to.

School. It's crazy. And not cute like crazy socks.