by Betsy Shaw posted in Parenting

I did not lead my 16-year-old child to Washington DC to attend the March for our Lives protest last weekend.
She led me.
From the moment it was announced that March 24th was the day  young people around the country would join together and say "enough," it was understood she would be there.

 
I had moments of wondering if I was coddling her, and if, out of principle, I shouldn't accommodate her grandiose wish to travel so far, and tell her to protest locally.
Something told me now was not the time for austerity. Something told me, when a teenaged girl who has been struggling of late to find anything of substance to truly get behind, it would be foolish to squelch this dream simply because that is what parents, adults, so often do to children: Tell them "NO." While she and a friend, armed with handmade posters and charged cell phones, pushed their way through the sea of peers to the front of the Pennsylvania Avenue crowd with the object of getting as close to the main stage, which framed the capitol building, as they could -- ideally close enough to see the lips of the numerous speakers moving -- I hung back. Together, another mom and I moved out towards the edge of the throng.
We were unwilling to get locked in. We also felt as if this was truly a young person's fight.

 
It is they who have to go to school each day, and imagine, against their will, which one of their classmates may be having a bad enough da...