How to Survive Middle School: Parent Edition
2.9 هزار بار بازدید -
6 سال پیش
-
In this video, I'll give
In this video, I'll give you my main parenting take-aways from the horror of middle school.
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*** A truncated transcript follows. A full transcript can be found at www.marblejar.net. ***
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 RealityFirst 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. . . .
Please subscribe and leave comments below!
*** A truncated transcript follows. A full transcript can be found at www.marblejar.net. ***
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 RealityFirst 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. . . .
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