What To Do When Your 17 Year Old Wants To Go Back To School After Dropping Out
The rain streaked the kitchen window at 10:12 last Tuesday, and I was halfway through answering a work email when my 17 year old, Lila, leaned against the fridge next to the half-eaten sleeve of saltine crackers and said, “I want back in.” I’d been expecting this conversation for 10 months, but not like this. For 10 months, I’d asked every week if she wanted to try online classes, if she wanted to look at GED practice tests, if she had any idea what she wanted to do next. She’d always just shrugged and said she was fine working at the coffee shop downtown.
She dropped out after we moved sophomore year. She switched districts, fell in with the wrong group, and got bullied after turning down an invitation to a party. She started skipping first period, then whole days. By the end of the year, she’d failed two classes and had 27 unexcused absences. She told me she’d rather get a full-time job than walk those hallways again. We fought for three weeks, then I stopped. I was tired, she was 16, I couldn’t drag her through the front doors by her arm. We let her work 20 hours a week, sleep in until 11, hang out with her best friend from middle school who’d graduated a year early. I worried about it every night, but I didn’t push anymore.
The weekend before she said she wanted back, her boss scheduled her for a 12-hour shift on the Fourth of July. We’ve gone camping with my side of the family every Fourth since she was a baby. When she asked for the shift off, he told her that since she didn’t have a high school diploma, she couldn’t get a full-time spot with set hours, so she had to take whatever shifts came. That same day, a regular who was a senior at her old high school came in and showed her a flyer for the annual spring art show. Lila’s been drawing since she was 8, and she’d been planning to submit a portfolio before she dropped out. That night, she sat on the couch and thought it through, and decided she wanted back.
I almost opened a new tab and started searching for the fastest GED program in the state before I stopped myself. I’d already made that mistake once, pushing what I thought was the easiest option instead of asking what she wanted. She said she didn’t want a GED. She tried working through a free program over the winter, and it was just her alone in her room, no feedback, no one to hold her accountable, and it felt like nothing. She wanted to go back to the regular public high school, take art, walk at graduation next year if she could.
The first thing I did the next morning was call the school counseling office directly, not just leave a message. A lot of parents assume 17 is too old to re-enroll in regular high school, but our district allows students to stay until they turn 21, and they have a credit recovery program for students who left and came back. We sat down with the counselor a week later, and mapped it out: Lila already had 16 of the 28 credits she needed to graduate. She’d do two six-week summer school courses for the algebra and English she failed, and take three classes this fall plus art, and she’d graduate in May, right on schedule.
Before she started, we asked for three small, concrete changes that made all the difference: we asked to move her locker from the hallway where the girls who bullied her hung out, we asked for an earlier lunch period so the cafeteria wasn’t as crowded, and we asked the school nurse to check in with her once a week just to see how she was doing. The school didn’t fight us on any of it, even though Lila doesn’t have a formal IEP. Most schools will work with you on small adjustments if you ask upfront, before there’s a crisis.
We also didn’t make her quit her job at the coffee shop. A lot of people told me I should, that it would distract her from school. But we worked out a deal with her boss: she only works 15 hours a week, all on weekends and one evening after school. The job gives her spending money, it gets her out of the house, and it’s something that’s hers, separate from school. That keeps her from feeling like school took over every part of her life, which I think is a big reason she’s still showing up.
We already had a rough patch. The second week, she turned the corner by the gym and ran right into the girl that led the bullying. She came home crying, threw her backpack on the floor, and said she wasn’t going back. I didn’t give her a speech about pushing through or how it builds character. I called the counselor right after dinner, and she had Lila a new locker and a new algebra classroom by the next morning. Lila went to school, and hasn’t mentioned the girl since.
It’s only been three weeks now. Some days she comes home complaining about how much homework she has, how annoying her chemistry teacher is, how she’d rather be at work. She forgets to bring her lunch half the time, and I have to drop it off for her at the front office. She taped her art show flyer to the fridge yesterday, right next to her coffee shop employee of the month certificate from last month. We don’t know if she’ll stick it out for the whole year, if she’ll actually walk across that stage next May. But right now, she gets up on her own every morning, she turns in her homework, and she’s excited to work on her portfolio for the show. That’s enough for right now.
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