It’s that time of year: High School Football and Homecoming Dances.
Now, I don’t want to date myself, but it was not THAT long ago that I was looking forward to going to my own Homecoming Dance. I was dress shopping, getting my fancy shoes dyed to match said dress, and working on my best Banana-Clip up-do. If I try real hard, I can almost smell the white carnation wristlet I wore.
So, with all that pent up nostalgia, I am looking forward to my kids going to their Homecoming Dance, right?
Wrong. Apparently, Homecoming is not all that it was once cracked up to be. Getting dressed up, going to a somewhat fancy dinner, and then arriving at the strobe-lit, balloon-covered school gymnasium for a dance is just not as enticing as it was in my day. How can this be possible?! I’ve taken to asking all of my kid’s friends (much to their dismay)…
“Homecoming is only for couples.”
“Only Squares go to Homecoming.”
“It’s only for upperclassmen.”
“It’s only for people on the Homecoming Court.”
“You have to spend a lot of money just to ask a girl to go.”
The list goes on, but you get the idea.
So, instead of going to Homecoming, they ask: “Why can’t we just rent a limo and go to downtown Atlanta and ride the giant Ferris wheel?” Or: “Maybe we could just go out to dinner and have a big party instead?”
These are the alternatives the kids are throwing out there. So they don’t want to go to the dance, but we still should spend a lot of money to entertain them for the evening because the event they should be excited to attend is not good enough?
So here’s the Vent part — and I am just as guilty as the next parent, so I am not pointing fingers (at least not to your face) — Have we, as parents, made our children’s lives SO fun and entertaining on a daily basis that the mere idea of putting on a suit and tie, buying a corsage and a nice dinner, and ending up at your school is just so completely boring to our kids? I know we do it. We throw parties, take them on trips, and entertain them as much as we can afford. We even have Homecoming now for our 6th, 7th and 8th graders, which is a very “dress-up” event. Are they just over the concept by the time high school rolls around?
I do understand there is a lot of pressure — mainly on the boys — to come up with an ultra creative way to ask a girl to a dance. I’m going to blame Pinterest and pretty much all social media for that one. I mean, it is nerve-wracking enough for these kids to get the courage to ask someone. Now it has to be photo documented, for all of the internet (or at least, all of Mom’s Facebook Friends) to see. Don’t get me wrong, it can be very cute and fun, but I am sure this makes some kids uncomfortable.
Forgive me for sounding like a “Get off my lawn!” type of oldster. But I really wish the kids could just be excited for some of the simpler things that we parents grew up enjoying. Childhood and adolescence go by too quickly to not have fun doing these kind of things.
But my guess is you will catch me throwing together some sort of fun substitute event for my kids and their friends that night, so feel free to give me a hard time for caving in if you see me.
Search
Latest Posts
