What I Learned When My Tween Said “That School Assembly Was The Worst Of My Life”
The car still smells like half-eaten Goldfish crackers and the pumpkin air freshener I hung last month when I picked Lila up from middle school that Wednesday. She threw her backpack in the back and slumped into the seat, didn’t even reach for her AirPods like she usually does, just stared out the side window at the passing soccer fields. “That assembly was the worst assembly of my life,” she said, voice flat, no extra drama. I’d already gotten the nurse’s email an hour earlier: Lila was having a panic attack, could I pick her up early? I’d assumed it was another stomach bug, she gets those when test weeks roll around, so I didn’t push her right away. Just pulled into the gas station down the street and bought us two blue raspberry slushies, the kind that stain your tongue purple for hours.
By the time we pulled back onto the main road, her slushie was dripping down her wrist onto her favorite jeans, and she started talking. It was the annual anti-bullying assembly the school brings in every fall, the one with the traveling speaker who does interactive skits. She’d known it was happening that day, but no one had said anything about him calling random kids out of the audience to come up on stage. She’d spent the whole 20 minutes before it started staring at the laces of her sneakers, repeating to herself don’t call me don’t call me, because she can’t even do oral presentations in front of her 25-person class without her voice shaking. Then the speaker did his big bit: he dragged a volunteer up on stage, started mocking their backpack and their haircut just like a bully would, and then turned to the whole gym and yelled that anyone who didn’t step in to stop it was just as bad as the bully. Lila said her chest got tight right then. She couldn’t get enough air, and her vision went spotty, and she just grabbed her bag and ran out before the nurse even came to get her. Half the kids in her grade turned to look when she left, she said, and now they all think she’s weird.
I’ve worked as a special ed para at the elementary school down the road for 12 years, so I know all about the check-the-box professional development and mandatory school events that look great on the district website but don’t actually work for half the kids in the building. Still, I was surprised when I texted our class parent group that night and three other parents wrote back saying their kids came home upset too. One mom said her 12-year-old with autism refused to get on the bus the next morning, because he thought the assembly speaker was going to call him out for being quiet. Another said her kid cried for 20 minutes because she felt guilty for not jumping on stage to help the volunteer.
I didn’t march into the principal’s office ready to yell. I emailed her and Lila’s counselor, asked if we could meet for 20 minutes after school the next week, and brought three specific small changes I’d seen work at my elementary school, instead of just complaining that the assembly was bad. First, any time the school hosts an assembly with public audience participation, they should send a note home to parents three days in advance that says what the interaction will look like. That lets parents prep their kids who struggle with anxiety, and lets kids decide ahead of time if they want to opt out. Second, don’t call on cold volunteers for demonstrations. Ask for kids who want to participate ahead of time, and only use those who agreed. Third, keep a quiet supervised room open any time there’s a whole-school assembly, so kids can leave if they get overwhelmed, no questions asked, no penalty, no need to have a pre-existing IEP to use it.
The principal and counselor were actually receptive. They said they’d never thought about it that way, because the speaker always gets great reviews from other districts, and most kids think he’s funny. They agreed to try the changes for the next year’s assembly, and added the quiet room policy for all future assemblies right away. This fall, when the anti-bullying assembly rolled around again, Lila checked the note that came home, decided she didn’t want to sit through the interactive part, and went to the library with four other kids instead. She did her homework while the assembly played on a speaker in the corner, and when it was over, she walked back to class with her friends. No panic attack, no embarrassment, no big deal.
A lot of people talk about how assemblies like this are good for kids because they “start the conversation” about bullying or mental health or whatever the topic is. But the conversation only works if the kid can actually stay in the room to have it. For kids who struggle with social anxiety, or sensory issues, or just hate being in big crowds, being put on the spot in front of hundreds of other kids isn’t a learning moment—it’s a traumatic one. As a parent, the biggest mistake I see other people make (and I’ve made it myself) is rushing to fix the bad feeling. When your kid comes home saying something was the worst thing that ever happened to them, your first instinct is to say “it’s not that bad” or “you should have just told the teacher you didn’t want to go up” or “don’t be upset, it’s over.” But that just tells them their feelings don’t make sense, so they stop talking. The first thing I did that day was just say, “That sounds so embarrassing and scary. I’d be upset too if that happened to me.” That’s it. I didn’t fix it right away, I didn’t give her advice, I just said what I saw. That’s the part that made her feel safe enough to tell me the whole thing.
It’s not a perfect fix. The speaker this year still did the same big call-out to the audience, even after we asked him to adjust that part of his routine, and there were still a couple kids who left early. But more kids got to choose what felt okay for them, and that’s more than we had last year. Lila still gets anxious before whole-school events, and I still have to remind her she can leave any time she wants, no explanation needed. Last week she came home and said the fire drill assembly was “pretty okay, actually.” That’s enough for me right now.
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