Rightsizing Problems in the Middle Grades

Rightsizing Problems in the Middle Grades
An excerpt from “Chaos to Context: A Parents Guide to the Middle Grades” coming out on Dec 17, 2024

Whether it’s hygiene difficulties, friendship challenges, romantic relationships, or body image, what they bring you will likely be either minimized or maximized. Students rarely hit the right target in terms of right-sizing their concerns and issues, and of course, they wouldn’t. This is the first time they’ve really become aware that they HAVE concerns and issues and that they have a modicum of autonomy and responsibility in solving them themselves. It’s that last part that is one of the most exciting parts of raising a middle grader. Because they can do so much more than they were able to before. Not only are they able to perceive things, abstract things, new ideas, problems, challenges, and feelings, that they weren’t able to before, but they can work to solve them. They can use their nascent tools to practice being a person in the world. Middle school is the perfect place to practice. Not all the parts are quite put together the way they will be at the end whether it’s parts of the body or parts of the brain (more on that next chapter) so there’s some hit or miss happening here. But all that hit or miss, the practice, the growth, the trial, and error— it’s all building resilience and a feeling of self-efficacy in their own physical and emotional body- a feeling that they are a person who is competent and able to move about the world. As a person, we are both body and self. Puberty separates these two things and in middle school, the process by the end is to reintegrate them back together into identity, a cohesive whole, a self. But to do this, students need grown-ups along the way who will help them right-size. They need their grown-ups to be grown-ups. Remember, they are the ones going through a bunch of physical, hormonal, emotional, stuff. The adults need to be, as much as possible, the ones to help reframe. That modeling is how they will learn to, eventually, do that for themselves. 

Downsizing

Sometimes parents are surprised that their kids don’t know how to rightsize their problems already, on their own. Most people don’t! They haven’t practiced. And if you watch, people are really triggered by certain emotional situations, and they happen to happen all the time in middle school. For example, exclusion, unkindness, shaming, and loneliness. So grown-ups, don’t take the bait. It seems like they WANT you to react with heightened emotion. It may even seem like when you don’t they are disappointed. Just because they want you to react in a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the correct reaction. We make the mistake that just because our kids are suddenly able to write essays and do Algebra and logically argue with us sometimes that what they want must be the correct thing. It’s not always. They don’t always know what they need. They are full of puberty and hormones. 

They need right-sizing. 

Sometimes that’s just nodding and listening as they share their feelings with you. This is the time to ask: do you want me to listen, or do you want me to help you problem-solve? This is a phrase that can be used for almost EVERY conversation. Sometimes we assume they want us to step in— and we feel like we aren’t “doing our job” if we don’t, but they often don’t want us to and we aren’t letting them figure it out for themselves. 

Sometimes just listening right-sizes the problem for them. They’ve processed it by sharing it and now they can see it more clearly. Sometimes, they need you to ask questions. Often, without meaning to, the grown-up’s questions can trigger the student to get more upset. “What did she say to you?” “Did she say that to anyone else?” “Did anyone else have to do that?”  

Instead, focus on actionable items: “I wonder what you can do next?” “How will that look tomorrow?” “What will you say to her next time you see her?” “What can you control in this situation?” What can you do right now that will help you to feel better?”

To have them focus on their next steps, ground them in reality, and take them out of perseveration, they can focus on what they can do and what is in their sphere of control. They will also see that you take their feelings seriously, but that you don’t think their situation is the end of the world, which will be a relief. They don’t want it to be, either.