Driving to Exhaustion
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. But I was not prepared.
High school is exhausting. It is one constant carpool. A whole calendar by itself. And it changes weekly. Daily even.
No wonder parents of 15-year-olds plead with their child to hurry up and get that driver’s license.
Lots of parents told me that I’d want my daughter to drive when she was 16. I scoffed. Have you seen the way people drive in South Florida? What sane parent would let their baby behind the wheel in this jungle?
I had a similar reaction back when I was struggling with a newborn and toddler at home when a well-meaning friend told me that I might as well get used to it, because it gets worse in elementary school.
How could it be worse? They’re in school all day.
My friend was right. The school wanted all kinds of time from me, and then we had the afternoon activity shuttle almost daily.
But we got used to that, limited the activities to keep us all sane, and life went on.
Now high school has put the activity shuttle on hyperdrive. High school activities determine our weekend schedules and rule our lives.
I was warned about this, too. My neighbor whose son started high school a year before mine told me they’d get me for volunteer time in high school, and the activities would rule the weekends. I laughed. Middle school had been such a breeze. They hardly wanted anything of me.
Our daughter, a freshman, is in just two activities: speech/debate (curiously called “forensics,” but it has nothing to do with dead bodies) and water polo.
Forensics, I’ve learned, requires parent judges at tournaments or else the school gets fined. So, for the first time since elementary school, I get e-mails from the forensics mom, a high-school version of the room mother, who pleads with me to be a judge. It’ll be fun, she says. You’ll get a chance to bond with your daughter.
I’m all about bonding. So I sign up.
The judging, I learn, is. at a school that is at least 45 minutes from my home, if there's no traffic. But that’s OK, there won’t be any traffic, because they want me to be there at 7 a.m. on a Saturday. What time is it over? 6:30 p.m. Yep. An entire Saturday – fully 12 hours of it -- is gone. From dark to dark. No worries, says my daughter cheerfully. There’s still Sunday to get the homework done.
I spend Sunday doing laundry and cooking the week’s meals. Because the weekdays are shot, too -- by water polo, which is a two-hour practice every single day at a pool that’s a half-hour from our home, and games on weekends, except when there’s a forensics tournament.
Oh, and if there's ever a free weekend, then there's a volunteer gig or a movie date or some other essential requiring transportation.
But I’m not complaining. I just want my daughter to learn to drive.
Gretchen Day-Bryant has a son in high school and a daughter in middle school. She’s lived to tell about the struggles of juggling little kids and work.
Joy Oglesby has a preschooler...
Cindy Kent Fort Lauderdale mother of three. Her kids span in ages from teenager to 20s.
Rafael Olmeda and his wife welcomed their first son in Feb. 2009, and he's helping raise two teenage stepdaughters.
Lois Solomon lives in Boca Raton with her husband and three daughters.
Georgia East is the parent of a five-year-old girl, who came into the world weighing 1 pound, 13 ounces.
Brittany Wallman is the mother of Creed, 15, and Lily, 7, and is married to a journalist, Bob Norman. She covers Broward County government, which is filled with almost as much drama as the Norman household. Almost.
Chris Tiedje is the Social Media Coordinator and the father of a 7-year-old girl, and two boys ages 4 and 3.
Kyara Lomer Camarena has a 2-year-old son, Copelan, and a brand new baby. 
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