I have had a few people tell me in the past that they think it's so sad that my girls will "miss" the prom that regular school kids enjoy. My oldest is in fifth grade, and I first started hearing this around the time she was in kindergarten and first grade. It's as if kids suffer through eleven years of school all for the big payoff - the prom!
I know every teenage girl dreams of getting asked to the prom by that "certain someone." She dreams of getting all dressed up in a fancy dress and being swept off her feet like a true Cinderella. She dreams of that magic night where she looks like a princess and is treated like one. (Well, I certainly felt like Cinderella when I was working as a waitress in order to buy my own prom dresses and shoes! - lol!)
My Junior year I went "stag" - but I got to hang out with some friends afterwards and it was still a great time. My senior year was a disaster, I was as tall as my date, and we ended up getting into a fender bump in his mom's new car. He also embarassed me in front of my sister and her friends. It was awful. I could have saved myself some money and heartache by just staying home.
I went to a Christian school so, although we had a substitute prom in the form of "Jr.-Sr. Banquet," where we had no dancing but got to dress up in fancy-shmancy dresses, go to a nice reception hall and have chicken cordon bleu, get our pictures made, chit-chat with our friends, and listen to an inspirational speaker. It was pretty neat, but hardly worth the $200 I shelled out for a dress and shoes.
Most of today's proms are nothing like the ones at my school. I don't know that proms have ever really been like the ideal - the dreamy Cinderella story I mentioned above . Years ago I was a volunteer counselor for a CPC and prom season was one of our busiest times of the year, besides summer time when kids apparently had nothing else to do. In fact, my "prom" was nothing like the ideal for a lot of my classmates - only I wasn't aware of it back then. Years after graduation I found out that some left after the "prom" to go to the home of one of the more permissive parents where there WAS dancing (not a big deal) but also drinking (a big deal).
I mention all of this to say, if you're thinking about homeschooling don't get sidetracked by the unimportant and temporary - like the prom or participation in sports or band or anything else. An education is forever, and a quality education trumps all the proms in the world!
Tia Linschied of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine wrote an excellent article about prom parties:
It's that Most Ridiculous Time of the Year: Prom Season
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