Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Family decisions

Hi again
We are going through a trying time with my 14yr old pushing us to allow her to live away from home and attend a new school in our capital city (about 2 hrs from here) The school is great - a public one (coz we can't afford the private boarding schools here) and they do have an accredited supervised homestay program for International & Rurally isolated students as well.

She has great aspirations in the IT field and our current school albeit a lovely Christian school locally, has only got 25o students from reception to Yr 10 (middle school) currently. They have achieved approval to extend their school to Yr 11 & 12 next year, but with minimal students still they will have limited skilled teachers & subjects to offer. They are all equipped for open access learning via internet/computers etc, but I am reluctant to rely on the discipline of my (sometimes lazy) eldest daughter to actually excell in those subjects when she has no peers to work with or a qualified teacher to push her into achieving the best she can do....

Is it just me? Am I simply being selfish in not wanting to let her go? Or am I worrying that she might fall in a heap in a strange environment. She may just flourish and attain great things....she is determined to do this however, so today I have to go into our school and announce this news to the Deputy Principal & then live with the consequences....

I think I've been chicken to do this up until now, but she is sooooo determined to go!

cheers
Tracey

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Tracey, Love the new blog!

My son, Joseph, ended up going to school on the other side of the country from CA- in CT. It was a hard decision for our family, too.

In the end, we enrolled him in the school, and it ended up being an excellent opportunity for him. He became very mature and we do not regret our decision.

Whatever your decision will be for your daughter, it is challenging each way. If you go for the school, be sure to buy her a phone card or a cell phone to keep in contact with you.

Hugs, Carla

TraceyB said...

Thanks Carla!
She received a cell phone for her birthday this year (social reasons) and gets $5- per month on it with 1c texts. She is learning to budget!!
She will need much more when she goes to the city to school I know. But we do get 3 x 2min free calls a day to one number using her phone as well, so that is something....
We are way out of town here in the bush and the phones are how these teenagers keep in touch & socialize. Took me a long time to give into the phone as well!
cheers

Anonymous said...

Hi, Tracey! I'm so glad you started a blog, as I have missed you! How's it going with your daughter? Any updates?

Featheronawire Sally Bramald said...

I think you have to let her go, if not she might end up resenting you for the rest of her life.
I know I blame my parents for not putting my education first.

If she messes up whilst she is away, it's down to her. In a school of 25 kids how can she possibly succeed?

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