Me in eighth grade, in my Honeycomb sweater, stirrup pants and Bass penny loafers, with friends at a Revere Middle School activity night.Johnston family
CLEVELAND, Ohio – I still remember the sting of middle school. The low hum of insecurity, the drama over lunch table politics, the disappointment over sleepover invitations.
Middle school had no instruction manual. But to successfully navigate those hallways, you had to wear the right thing, say the right thing, know the right things. Otherwise you could fall into a bottomless pit of friendless loserdom.
It was dreadful in the ‘90s (when I dealt with it only in seventh and eighth grades), and it’s dreadful now (when it has expanded to sixth and sometimes down to fifth).
Because everything is changing: kids’ bodies, their friend groups, their feelings.
Kids are trying to break free of childhood, forge their own identities, handle tougher schoolwork and manage the assault of puberty, all while playing it cool in front of their peers. They are physically and socially awkward.
Parents no longer can make everything better. Now smartphones make everything worse. Kids get zero break from social anxiety.
And as parents, we may feel helpless watching them hurt.
We can no longer arrange playdates, micromanage their homework or brush their teeth for them. We can’t fix things. We don’t even understand what they’re saying at times, with all that slang.
The good news is that we can help coach our kids, and provide much-needed perspective.
“Everyone hates middle school,” I tell my kids.
I tell them how one week in seventh grade, I wore the same Gap sweater vest twice. My mom said it was fine, that no one would notice. But she was wrong. They noticed. I never wore anything twice in the same week again.
How I once invited a new girl to sit at our lunch table, and my table-mates liked her more than me, so I temporarily got voted out.
How most of the girls I consider my best friends from high school, I didn’t even hang out with in middle school.
“Only 1 percent of seventh-grade friendships are still intact in 12th grade, and more than two-thirds of friendships shift during the first year of middle school,” Phyllis Fagell, a school counselor, writes in the book Middle School Matters. She stresses that every kid will feel rejected.
When kids feel bad, they lash out at others, so that others also feel bad. That may be a friend, or their parents.
God bless the middle school teachers and administrators who shape these kids all day, every day. And thanks to social accounts, like teacher Mr. Lindsey, who help us parents make sense of their experience.
If you are living in a middle school world, here are some tips to try
Keep your cool: You’re the grown-up, after all. Your kid’s job is to test their boundaries and reassure themselves that they’re loved. So if they’re screaming at you or rolling their eyes or muttering insults under their breath, take a breath of your own. This is the tween version of the toddler meltdown.
Praise their effort: They can’t control the outcome – whether that’s the grade they got on their essay or the response to asking a new friend if they want to hang out. You can’t control it either. But they can decide how hard they try. In this middle school age of ennui, when simply emptying the dishwasher is apparently an insurmountable task, give them props for effort.
Let them know they can come to you with anything: Sure, you’re their parent, not their friend. But let them know it’s OK to come to you with problems, or if they need help. When they’re in trouble, you want them to call you.
Do stuff one-on-one: Forced family fun is wonderful. But in our house often family time breaks down into sibling fights. My kids are much more enjoyable on their own, and honestly, I am, too. Make time for a parent-child date night, whether it’s playing mini golf, getting ice cream or shopping. They’ll probably tell you more in an hour than you got out of them in the last week.
Put down your phone: This is a good idea for both of you.
Learn to float: With all our commitments and our stressors, life can feel hectic and exhausting. So it’s tempting to look forward to events and think, once this is over, life will slow down, and we can enjoy it more. But life has no fast-forward button, and any finish line — whether it’s a work deadline or a kids sports tournament — is arbitrary. We’ll always have another one. So while “just keep swimming” is an understandable mantra, learning to float is also a good idea. Then maybe we can enjoy the ride.
Bond with other parents: We’re all dealing with the same hassles, so we might as well compare stories, solicit perspective and make each other feel better. As a bonus, unlike back when we were in middle school, we can commiserate over a bottle of wine.
Cleveland.com content director Laura Johnston writes weekly about life in her 40s in the column, Our Best Life. Subscribe to the newsletter to get the column delivered to your inbox Friday mornings. Or find her on Instagram @ourbestlifecle.
