When Kids Know Best
It's hard to accept, but middle-schoolers want — and need — to build independence by making their own decisions.
When our family moved to California from Ohio, our middle son, Aaron, was 11. A few weeks after the move, Aaron's entire class was scheduled to go on a two-day "retreat" to Jack London State Park in nearby Sonoma County. Aaron was having trouble adjusting to the whole social scene at his new school, and at first I was adamant that he go on this trip. I thought, he needs to get comfortable with these kids and to begin to integrate — what a good opportunity! I was convinced that I, his mother, knew what was best for him.
And Aaron? He would rather have pulled out his fingernails, one by one, than go. So there we were, in our respective corners, neither of us willing to budge. I was so sure I was right and that once he was on the trip with his classmates he'd really enjoy himself! And meet lots of kids! And make friends! And become assimilated!
After this went on for a few days, and Aaron's anxiety increased by the hour, I realized how miserable the prospect of this field trip was making him. I started to recognize also that I was projecting my own needs — to be incorporated into a new community — onto Aaron, who just wanted to be left alone to make friends at his own pace and in his own way. Excuse the pun, but the last thing he wanted was to be thrown to the wolves at Jack London State Park.
So I relented, and I have to say in retrospect it was one of the best decisions I've made as a parent. Aaron eventually made friends; but "it was initially safer for him to stay in the company of his family as opposed to the unfamiliar territory of a new peer group," explains Madeline Levine, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author of The Price of Privilege. In other words, Aaron knew what was best for himself.
The start of middle school can be "a real soul-searching process" for parents, says Mary Halpin, Ph.D., school psychologist at Washburne Middle School in Winnetka, Illinois. Parents are confronted with a new reality and a new conflict: Sometimes what we think is "best" for our kids, may not be. Or sometimes, we need to let them make their own decisions even in spite of our vast stores of life knowledge. And this is tough for us. "Their desire to be more independent is normal at this age," says Halpin. "But they're going to push for a mile when you're comfortable giving them a yard."
Middle school does herald a new age of push-and-pull for kids, between wanting independence and wanting to stay close to the family. As parents, we watch these first tentative (or, in some cases, giant) steps toward freedom and are terrified that we're losing our hold on our kids forever. As Karen Tracy, mother of three in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, puts it, "When I think of the middle school years, I think, last chance! Once they get to high school, my parenting days are over." When issues come up for her two older children, Dylan, 14, and Harrison, 11, she says, "there's a certain anxious intensity to the challenges, like, ‘This is it! We better solve this, now.'"
Take a Deep Breath — and a Step Back
The feeling that middle school is our "last chance" to influence our kids is common, but the tough part is finding a way to balance their need to spread their new wings against our desire to have them make good choices. "Parents can nudge kids in a direction, but the kids have to feel like it's their decision," says Linda Perlstein, author of Not Much, Just Chillin.' "Middle school kids start to realize their parents are fallible, and they let you know that regularly. They still want a connection with their family, but on their terms."
Walking this delicate line can seem a Herculean task for parents, who are used to calling the shots. But it is critical in order to maintain communication with your middle-schooler. "Parents tend to underestimate middle-school kids' needs for adult warmth, involvement, concern, and supervision," says Levine. "At the same time, there needs to be a distinction between that and over-involvement. Being available without being overly involved is a tricky balance."
Parents are tested on this concept of balance almost constantly during middle school, as social scenes pop up which are completely new to us and to our kids. How much intervention and oversight is appropriate? How much is too much? How do we know when to exert influence and when to back off and let the kids make their own decisions?
The rule of thumb, according to our experts, is that — with the exception of any scenario where a child's safety is an issue — we should try to back off whenever possible and begin to let our children handle social situations themselves. When we first moved, my then-12-year-old son, Jonah, was initially tormented by a group of classmates — they teased him mercilessly for being the new kid, for having lived in Ohio, for having red hair, for reading books at lunchtime, you name it. They stole his ball. They took his lunch sack and threw it in a puddle.
Did I want to personally wring their necks? You bet I did. Was I ready to march to the guidance counselor's office and demand action? Yep. But I didn't, because Jonah said, "Mom, just let me handle it." And he did. Now he has a core group of friends and the bullies have moved on.
Building Skills for Life
"If you intervene, the message is, ‘I don't think you can handle your relationships,' which may be true for a 3 year old but not for a 13 year old," says Levine. Adolescents, she says, need to develop a "toolbox" of self-management skills, including self-control, delayed gratification, and frustration tolerance, and they need to develop these skills while they are still under your roof. "If you allow your kid to go through his own experiences and to try different responses, he'll develop working skills for relationships with others."
This principle applies across a broad array of situations your child may face in middle school, and it also cuts both ways: it is as important to let your child lead when she doesn't want to do something as when she does. Let's say, for example, there's a 7th grade dance and you find out from the other parents "everyone" is attending. Your child insists she has no desire whatsoever to go. You remember your first school dance, and you push your child to participate. After all "everyone" is going, wouldn't it be weird for her not to?
No. Do not force it, say our experts. "As a parent, you have to realize where it's appropriate to exert control and where you're being annoying or controlling," says Perlstein. Adds Halpin, "You don't want to put her in a situation that's really above her abilities to cope — where she would leave the situation feeling worse about herself." So if you sense a high level of dread surrounding the dance, or violin practice has become akin to torture, or soccer has long ceased being any fun at all, "let your child take those steps toward independent decision-making," advises Perlstein.
Finessing Friendships
Friends become the center of a middle-schooler's universe, and it is crucial for parents to stay in tune. In elementary school, parents are the ultimate gatekeepers: we set up the playdates. If there's a kid in my son Henry's 2nd-grade class who I sense is a bad behavioral influence, I simply don't invite him over, or make an excuse when he invites Henry over. This becomes more difficult as our kids get older. To what degree can we — or do we want to — control their choices in friendships? Again, when do we back off and when do we insert ourselves?
There is no question that parents have less influence over friendships in middle school. And, our experts agree, this is normal and appropriate. But Levine notes that as kids' choices of friends are often evolving at this age, parents need to stay vigilant. "Kids can often make poor peer choices when there is stress at home, in their life, or at school," she says. "The point would be to try to maintain a warm relationship and reduce stress, and then out of that, hope for some discussion to keep them from making bad decisions."
And keeping lines of communication open with your middle-schooler, says Halpin, comes down to this: "Talk less. Listen more. Do not be judgmental. If they sense the judgment, they will clam up."
Friendships in middle school are notoriously mercurial as well. Your child's best friend today, bafflingly, could stop speaking to her tomorrow. Middle-schoolers are painfully aware of and preoccupied with the social strata. "Kids do recognize where they fit in, and it's the grown-ups' jobs to help them be okay with that," says Halpin. "It can be very painful if your child's best friend from elementary school joins the ‘popular group' and now won't even say hello to him in the halls."
Even if that child's mom is a friend or acquaintance of yours, stay out of it, say our experts. "Your kid just wants you to empathize — they don't want you to solve it!" says Perlstein. "It's not your drama, it's theirs." And drama doesn't even begin to describe it. "In young adolescence, there are rapidly shifting allegiances," says Levine. "Kids who are best friends one day find themselves on the outs with each other the next. This is a painful process and very difficult for parents to watch." Yet watch we must. Once the parent gets involved, the child is not developing the ability to deal with disappointment and — even worse — parental intervention can make continued rejection more likely.
"Be open, sympathetic, but communicate that you believe your kid is robust enough to handle these kinds of disappointments," advises Levine. Do not, however, underestimate how seriously your children take these rejections, nor the impact they can have on things like schoolwork. Halpin, the school psychologist, sees this all the time: "Having friends reject you, feeling isolated, having your parents unaware of the problem, and coming down hard on you for the homework you aren't doing because you're so preoccupied with the friend problem... many students go through these kinds of painful experiences," she says.
Middle school is an incredibly hard, transitional time for kids, but it's also trying for parents. The challenge is to stay connected to our kids without being overly involved, to use our life experience to help our kids without inadvertently projecting our own needs or desires onto them.
"The problem is, you can never put your child where you are in terms of evaluating experiences," says Levine. "Your knowledge is not transplantable." But a major goal of parenting, nonetheless, is to help promote autonomy, to move our kids toward independence, competence — in a word (and one Levine uses often): self-efficacy. So we need to grin and bear their newfound independence, to keep communication flowing, to try not to overreact, and to let them forge their own paths.
