How to Survive Middle School: Parent Edition

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll give you my main take-aways from the horror of middle school.  

Both of my kids will be in high school next year, which means that I can safely say that we survived middle school.  It was honestly touch and go there for a while.  My son's experience was easy and uncomplicated.  He had a good group of friends going into middle school, he wasn't too high up in the status hierarchy, nor was he too far down, and he was a boy.  He had some friends who floated up in status, but the majority of his elementary school friends actually stayed together and there wasn't much drama.  My daughter was a totally different story.  I'm not authorized to give too much info -- and it's not my story to tell, but it was a tough two years.  Like something you'd see on an after-school special.  She came out the other end with more solid friendships and with her psyche intact.  But it felt like a battle.  I've been asked by a couple of folks what advice I would give to parents going through this or with kids about to enter middle school.  So, this video is a snapshot of what I've learned. 

Embrace Reality

First of all, you are going to need to embrace your kid's reality if you want to be at all helpful.  Middle school sucks and no amount of should-ing or lecturing by you is going to make it any different.   I'm about to throw some generalizations at you and obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but I think it helps to understand the basic rules of play.  Here is some of the reality that your kids are dealing with:

• Middle schoolers live by hierarchy. Everyone knows where they sit on the status ladder. They know who is above them and who is below them. They will take opportunities to move up -- and will fight like hell not to move down. Some decisions they make here might horrify you. As much as you think this should NOT be the case -- it just is -- and lecturing your kid about how things should be won't change it.
• Middle schoolers are not ready to embrace individuality yet. Like most adults, you probably want your kids to accept who they are, celebrate differences, and be unique. But that is just not where they are in their developmental journey. Middle school is the crucible of identity development and they all want to look exactly alike dammit. Sometimes it's really just weird how identically they will look with their straight, long hair, skinny jeans, UGGs, and identical t-shirts. But apparently, this robotic stepping stone of identity development helps them to separate from their parents and gain a separate identity before they can go on to become individuals. And if this sameness urge isn't great enough -- they will receive endless "hate" from their peers if they deviate even slightly from the cookie cutter standards in terms of dress, speech, behavior, etc. And let's be honest -- middle schoolers can be scary. No one can make you feel smaller than a 13 year old girl. For god's sakes, help your kid to blend in a bit — you don’t want them getting eaten alive any more than necessary. And if they aren't the type that blends in easily (I wasn't) at least understand why life might be a challenging for them.
• Middle schoolers can’t really be friends with everyone. This may be the biggest fantasy peddled by well-meaning parents. Why aren’t you friends with everyone? That is just not how things work. Middle schoolers naturally form groups and kids just don’t flit from one group to another. Those who do suffer from very superficial relationships and feelings of not belonging anywhere. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't strive to nurture some friendships outside of their group, but it is difficult and we will talk more about that in a bit.

Don’t Hold On Too Tightly

Here’s how I see it.  Kids in elementary school form loose groups on the basis of a bunch of circumstantial things — they live in the same neighborhood, their parents are friends, they are in the same class, or they do a sport or activity together.  Middle school is like a giant flour sieve, taking all of these loose clumps and sieving them into individual grains of flour into a bowl.  Once they are in the bowl, they form stronger clumps based on different, less circumstantial things —  primarily on how much they like each other and status level.  This is a fairly natural occurrence, but it is PAINFUL.  There is rejection and confusion and sadness involved in these sometimes seismic realignments. But in the end, friendship at this age is really just about one thing — do you want to spend time with each other?  Once you get older it encompasses more complexity like loyalty and history and duty, but it is quite simple in middle school.  And it is a two way street. You have to like them and they have to like you back. You can’t force someone to like you — nor should you try.  I guess one of the most important things that you learn in middle school, and it holds true in later life, is that when someone doesn’t want you around — don’t try to convince them they do.  The folks who have the hardest time in middle school try to force relationships that aren’t working. They are hanging onto groups that don’t want them.  And then making increasingly risky and bad decisions just so that they can continue to hang on.  This sets your kid up to sacrifice their own worthiness for the sake of “winning” AND can be a precursor to being on the wrong end of an abusive relationship. Cut your losses, don’t hang on too tightly and move on.  Which brings me to my last piece of advice for middle schoolers

Diversify Your Friendships

This is harder than it sounds and you will get major push-back from your kid on this.  But basically, you don’t want to put all of your friendship eggs in one basket. Let’s say your kid is part of a group that consists of 4 kids.  That’s great!  But that is not quite diverse enough for my taste — particularly since they are all in one group and could turn in an instant.  I know that it is not really possible to really belong to multiple groups at one time since middle schoolers make you choose your alliances.  And flitting from one group to another is just a recipe for always being on the outside looking in.  But I think creating and nurturing one-on-one friendships with people in groups different from your own is crucial to social well-being.  Why?  For the same reason you diversify your investment portfolio — if one sector, industry, company goes down, you have other resources invested elsewhere.  If this seems too cynical, than consider this -- diversity in friendships also gives you different perspectives, different voices, and sometimes different values.  It makes your life richer and helps to see things outside of your narrow prism.  AND it has the added benefit of buttressing your social foundation.  How do you do this?  Just start feeding relationships with potential friends outside your group.  It doesn’t have to be super high investment — just start a Snapchat streak with them that is slightly more personal (my daughter informed me that this was a particularly cringy sentence).  Or make a point to seek them out in activities you do together to ask about things that are going on with them.  Chances are — they will also be grateful to have a low-investment friend outside of their own group to talk to.  The more of these relationships your kid can nurture and maintain, the richer and more stable his or her friendship base will be.  Plus, if things go south with their group — they will have someone to talk to about it. 

Advice To Parents

And just a quick word of advice for parents -- you really want to keep these lines of communication open.   It's the only way to be involved in some of these tough, painful and sometimes risky decisions your kid will be making.  Your job -- almost in its entirety -- is to love them and make sure they understand that they are worth friendships that are strong and that they are worth treatment that is kind and respectful.  Fighting back is not usually the right answer.  Encourage your kid to make healthy decisions for themselves and to walk away from relationships that aren't great for them.  Also, kids don't usually want us to march in and crusade on their behalf.  What they want is for us to listen, to empathize, and to shoulder some of the pain for them.  I'm, unfortunately, not wired particularly well for this, but my kids are good at keeping me in line -- don't fix, don't advise, don't rush to judgement -- just help carry part of their load.  

Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!