The School Mask

At school, Alexia is proper and she adapts to everyone. Her teacher tells me in every meeting that she is so well behaved, that she tries so hard, that she follows every rule. And I know she does. I know she does it with all her soul. All her energy goes into fitting in, doing it right, masking her daily challenges.

But that adaptation has a huge cost.

That cost is paid at home. At home she drops the mask. This is her safe haven, where she doesn’t have to pretend and everything she held in for hours comes out.

And what she holds in isn’t small.

She holds in that older kids take her lunch away. She comes home with an empty lunchbox and when I ask her if she ate, she says yes. Then later, much later, she tells me that someone took it.

She holds in that someone pushed her in the yard. She fell. She scraped her knees. She didn’t tell the teacher. She didn’t tell anyone. She spent the whole day walking with that pain, trying to be proper, trying to act like nothing happened, until she got home and she couldn’t walk anymore. Her knees were scraped really bad. Almost to the bone and she said nothing at school. Nothing.

She holds in the little incidents that for others are nothing but for her are everything. When we give her lunch money and someone takes it from her. When someone takes her pencils. When someone tells her to move and she moves even if she was there first. She doesn’t tell the teacher any of these things. She doesn’t know how. Or she is afraid. Or she thinks that if she says something she will be doing it wrong.

For her, speaking up is harder than enduring. So she endures. For hours.

That is the mask. The mask isn’t just being quiet and doing what they tell her. The mask is swallowing everything that hurts so she can keep belonging.

School is on strike right now, but learning doesn’t stop. For one assignment I have to mentally prepare. I know she won’t cooperate. Not because she doesn’t want to. Because she can’t in the way the school expects.

What is quick and simple for others is torment for her. Sitting down to write when her body is still holding the push from yesterday. Holding a pencil when her hands still remember the pain in her knees. Reading instructions when her mind is still trying to understand why someone took her food and what she should have done.

For that one page I need infinite patience and a thousand strategies. I need to become a game, a story, a song, a break, a hug. Do you want to do it with the blue marker or the red one. Do you want to do it on the floor. We do two letters and then we jump. We do one line and then we eat something yummy. And even with all that, some days there is no way. And I have to learn that letting go is also teaching.

I wish her teacher could see what I see at four in the afternoon. I wish I could explain that the girl who seems so fine at school is the same girl who can’t walk when she gets home because she held the pain all day. That the girl who never complains is the girl who is learning that complaining isn’t safe. That the girl who adapts to everyone is the girl who needs someone to adapt to her.

I don’t think she knows how to ask for help yet. She doesn’t know that she can say hey, this is mine, or hey, you pushed me. She thinks if she endures, she is being good. And that breaks my heart because being good shouldn’t hurt that much. It shouldn’t mean coming home with an empty stomach and knees that burn.

So at home we practice. We practice in small moments. What would you say if someone takes your lunch. What would you say if someone pushes you. We practice with dolls, with drawings, with stories. And sometimes she looks at me like I am asking for the impossible. And sometimes she surprises me and says it. My lunch. I didn’t like that. And for us, that is huge. That is bigger than any worksheet.

Being her mom is being her anchor when the world is too loud. It is being her cheerleader when she feels small. It is being her safe place when the world asks more than she can process without breaking even a bit. It is teaching her, little by little, that she can tell me when someone takes her lunch. That she can tell me when someone pushes her. That telling isn’t doing it wrong. That her voice matters even if it shakes.

It is exhausting. It is lonely at times. It is invisible work.

To the moms of invisible battles, the ones who get told everything is fine at school and then live the meltdown in the kitchen, the hunger, the scraped knees that were hidden all day, you are not alone.

You are not alone if you cry in the bathroom after homework. You are not alone if you feel rage because someone took your daughter’s food and she didn’t tell anyone. You are not alone if you feel guilt for losing patience.

What you do matters. Your child isn’t manipulating you. Your child is coming home to recharge where it is safe. With you.

Does this happen at your house. How do you handle it when the mask falls and all the little things she didn’t tell at school finally come out. I’ll be reading you in the comments.