Surviving the Middle School Years

The Middle School Years:  Surviving Adolescence and Adolescents

So your child is in middle school.  If this is your first child or only child, you may not realize the changes that are in store for both you and your child.  A few years back, I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that summed up the transition perfectly.  Your child transforms from being a loving “dog” to being a finicky “cat”.

            When children are young and adoring of their parents, they are like dogs.  They are cheerful, they crave attention, and they desperately want to by their parents’ sides.  However, with adolescence and middle school comes the shift from children being dogs to cats.  Overnight, a child does not want a parent’s constant attention.  In fact, attention, particularly that showing outward signs of love, is only allowed when the child is ready for it.  Coming and going should be at his or her choice, along with two-way conversation and signs of affection.

            Surviving adolescence is quite the challenge, as it surviving adolescents.  The middle school grades have been the most challenging for American education. Middle school presents an unsettled mix between innocence and churlishness with students in an array of stages of personal, physical, emotional, and intellectual development.  Adolescents’ levels of self-respect, self-efficacy, and self-esteem drop, not only threatening their personal selves, but their tolerance for others.  The ages of 12 to 15 are a period of important developmental changes and a time of stress and conflict. The physiological changes often lead to future problems, doubts about self-concept, and relationships with others.

Parents of middle school students, do not despair.  In approximately 5 – 8 years, your child will again become a dog.  This transition is usually accompanied by a need for money, clean laundry, or a home-cooked meal.  Regardless, the return to dog-hood will be welcomed.

What can you do in the meantime, particularly to survive the middle school years?  There are many steps one can take to survive their child’s middle school years without going crazy.  Below are four.   

BE EMPATHETIC:  Realize that adolescent life is different now than it was when you were that age.  Be understanding, patient, and supportive.

BEFRIEND TEACHERS:  Middle school teachers are experts in the dog/cat transition.  They see it year after year in hundreds of students.  Befriend your child’s teachers and work with them as allies to help your child to stay on track and continue to be successful despite the hormones, peer pressure, and social distractions.

BE PROACTIVE:  It is much easier to avoid disasters than to recover from them.  Be proactive by staying up-to-date on your child’s latest peer group.  Look for signs of academic struggles, particularly in language arts and math.  Because the state standards are more demanding than ever before, many young people’s minds are not ready to grasp the content that teachers are mandated to teach.  If your child is struggling, seek help immediately.  Find a tutor.  There are many options available in the Sacramento area to suit your child’s needs.  Little else can compare to the progress a child can experience through one-on-one academic support from an encouraging expert in that field. 

Finally, BE THERE.  Your presence, whether your child admits it or not, is crucial and wanted (most of the time).  You are your child’s foundation and hope that everything will be okay.  Be home, try to be at school, be a part of your child’s middle school experience.  Cats need attention too.

For Students to Read: Step One to Academic Success

If you're reading this blog and you're a student, you want to do one or more of the following:  improve your grades, learn more, enjoy school more, and/or make your parents happier with your academic performance.  I applaud you.  You know how many of your peers struggle with their grades and do nothing about it.  A lot.

Possibly you are a student who finds him/herself surrounded with the brainiacs who, on their own, earn over a 4.0 and you're just trying to keep up.  If that's the case, I applaud you even more loudly.  You know that we are reflections of our peer groups.  You've chosen well for the present and in the future.  You have help with classwork and homework, you're less likely to get in trouble while hanging out with these smart friends  because they're too busy studying to do anything too bad.  Your parents are more likely to let you hang out with them because they're "good influences."  And think of the future business partner potential you have in your grasp.  Remember the movie Social Network?  And think of Steve Jobs who created Apple with his buddy at age 21.  Both he and Mark Zuckerberg surrounded themselves with smart friends and didn't even graduate from college before they reaped those benefits.

Needless to say, you may need help NOW!  The most important step to better grades is easy.  Truly.  The first step for academic success is for you to believe that you can succeed. 

There's a saying from a motivational speaker and author, Mike Dooley, that I love.  Thoughts become things.  The more we think something, the more that something transpires and actually happens.  What we think about, after a while, becomes reality.

Let me give you an example.  Do you know a guy who isn't really all that, but gets the girls all the time because they're attracted to his confidence?  That guy is so confident in his ability to attract girls that he exudes that "you know you want me" vibe.  The girls buy into it, feed into his belief in himself and his consequential words, actions, and way of presenting himself to the world, and he gets the girls!  He may not be the cutest, most athletic, smartest, or even kindest guy around, but he scores because he thinks he can.  Thoughts become things.

On the same token, if you tell yourself that you're bad at math or science or anything over and over again, you believe it more and more so that eventually that thought becomes part of who you are -- Chris who's cute, loves soccer, and is bad at math.  Every time you sign up for a math course you tell yourself, "Ugg.  I hate math.  I'm so bad at it."  When you get a bad grade on a test, you're not overly affected because you reason with yourself, "Ya, I'm bad at math." You may have even gotten to the point where you have your parents convinced that "you're bad at math" so they don't even get angry with poor math grades any more.  Or sadly, they sent you the message over and over again that your struggles with math are genetic.  They were bad at math so that's why you are too.  Hello!  Ask you biology teacher if there are "bad at math/good at math" genes.  The answer will be no.  What we have is BELIEFS about math, or any other subject, that we create for ourselves. To shift those beliefs and improve your grades in those classes, you have to retrain your brain, your beliefs, your thoughts.  Thoughts become things.

First, stop yourself any time you utter anything negative about yourself and school work.  You are no longer allowed to say you're bad at any subject, that you hate any subject or teacher (no, you can't blame teachers any more for less than desirable grades), or that you can't do a thing.  When those words start to leave your mouth, stop yourself.  You can wear a rubber band around your wrist as a reminder, or enlist help from others.  Tell you best friend or a parent that you owe him/her a quarter every time you say something negative about school.

Secondly, turn off the voices inside your head that go to that negative place.  When you're trying to solve a math problem, replace "I can't do this," with "I can do this."  Solving that problem may take a while, but it can be done.  It's been solved by thousands upon thousands of students before you, and will be solved by many others after you.  You can solve it too.  It might take a little while, but be patient.  Difficult things take a while, impossible things take a little longer.    

Finally, the last step is reprogramming your brain.  After a while you won't be uttering negative words any more and you won't even be thinking them.  In that void, your new thoughts (that become things) will be positive statements about school.  Here are some possible messages you can program into your brain.  "I can solve any problem thrown at me."  "I love the feeling of solving a math problem."  "I'm confident at speaking in front of my class."  "My teacher always answers my questions --eventually."  "I love learning."  These statements are most powerful when repeated regularly.  Try thinking one of the above or your own over and over again every time you brush your teeth.  If you walk to school, you can repeat one mantra to yourself the entire time you're walking down a particular block.  Or you can simply repeat your new thought ten times before you go to bed every night.

Just like anything, the more we do something, the better we get at it.  The more you tell your brain something, the more it will program that into who you are. Before long, my example at the beginning of this article becomes:  "I'm Chris who's cute, loves soccer, and kicks butt at math."