Reno 360°: A blog for those who love Reno and aren't afraid to admit it

Megg Mueller, editor, reno.com and tahoe.com, mmueller@TahoeRenoOnline.com
September 26, 2007

Tonight is back-to-school night at Damonte Ranch High School. My daughter, Molly, is a junior there, so I will be sitting in those little seats tonight, trying not to fidget, hoping to impress the teacher with my eager smile.

Good lord, was I always such a suck up??

Definitely not when I was the kid, back when my daughters tell me my hair was big enough to be a satellite dish. But now as the mom, I am totally hoping my kids' teachers like me. I'm hoping they'll see that I'm committed to my children's education, even if I do prefer to converse by e-mail. And I want them to see that even though she's almost out of school, I'm still here.

A long time ago, when my oldest kid was entering high school, I remember the principal coming to the middle school to talk to us nervous parents. He made the usual jokes -- no, your child won't fit in the locker and get stuck -- but he made one very salient point that has stuck with me; stay involved, even when they don't want you around. See it's easy when they're in elementary school; we go to back-to-school nights, we volunteer to work the library, we attend open house. But as our kids get older, we figure "what the heck ... I've done this all before" and we stop going. Well some of us do. I did, for a while. Two kids, too many nights of things to go to ... it was easy to stop.

But Molly's almost gone. OK, not quite, but we're getting to the end. One more year after this, and she can legally tell me to go stuff it when I ask for her report card. I need to be here now, to sit in that seat, to listen to her anatomy teacher tell us what gross things they're doing, to hear the math teacher explain how after lunch is the worst time of day for math ... I need to hear this stuff again.

So if you're sitting in a little chair at your child's school in the next few weeks, looking at your watch, thinking about that Dancing with the Stars episode you're missing (yeah, me too), well ... good for you. You're a great parent. Keep it up.