As a new season of Jump Up approaches, I hear parents begin to talk more about their sweet elementary child moving into the sometimes-scary territory of middle school.
I’m right there with you.
I have a tween moving into middle school this June and one who’s been there a couple of years already. Two in middle school! It is indeed a new season.
I will not sugarcoat it. This is not an easy time. A study published in Developmental Psychology in 2016 showed the strain this transition to middle school causes, especially for mothers.
The good news is that God is not surprised that our babies are growing up. In fact, He perfectly designed them for this transition. Even their brains are changing to help prepare them to be the adults they’ll need to be.
“Significant intellectual processes are emerging. Adolescents are moving from concrete to abstract thinking and to the beginnings of metacognition (the active monitoring and regulation of thinking processes),” according to the National Education Association’s writing about middle schoolers.
Author Michelle Icard says, in her book “Middle School Makeover,” that what we parents see as challenging — the increased risk-taking and independence of the teen years — is helping our children become adults. If they played it safe, they’d live with us forever.
So, we’re all in this together, this messy middle of growing up. My friends who are in it with me, and a little bit ahead, help me navigate this new territory every day.
Here’s what they’ve been sharing that I’m learning is most important:
Be available. Tweens and teens hold in their feelings — until they don’t. And you’re never quite sure when that’s going to happen. So, you need to be there when they finally release their fears about friends, their frustrations with school and their questions about their faith. Car rides and bedtimes are the most likely times for your teen to open up. Yep, you’ll be exhausted, but stay in that moment and listen.
Be prayerful. More and more, your teen isn’t within your control 24/7. He or she is going to friends’ houses and out-of-town sports events. When we can’t be there, we need to trust that God is already there. Be on your knees, but also pray with your teen. I heard a speaker say once that he often prayed a blessing over his child. When the child became a young woman and went to college, the last thing she asked her parents for as they dropped her off at her dorm was to say that blessing over her.
Get a game face. Your teen is going to tell you something that shocks you over the course of his teen years. Practice now to not react. Because when you react, you signal that, “Even though I told you that you can talk to me about anything, you really can’t.” When you don’t react, you can listen and hear more fully the situation.
Become tech savvy. Don’t assume anything about what your teen is or isn’t doing online. Create and be consistent about boundaries and talk about why your teen needs these boundaries. According to a study by the University of New Hampshire, “93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls were exposed to online pornography during their adolescence.” If you don’t have this conversation with your teen, the world will.
Be the person you want your kid to be. Shocking, but true, our kids are watching us. Of course, they roll their eyes and seem not to listen … but they are taking it all in. And if what they see in our lives doesn’t line up with what we’re telling them is true, they’re going to tune us out. Not that any of us are perfect, but through God’s strength we can be the models our kids need. In study after study, the majority of young people say that their parents were the biggest spiritual influence on their lives. So you, my friend, are a spiritual leader in your home. Your relationship with God matters.
Die to your pride. Your teen will embarrass you. Which is funny considering how often they say we’re embarrassing them. But the truth is, your teen will say something snarky, be unkind to a friend, text something inappropriate or just be downright surly during a family function and it will mortify you. Try to remember that it’s not about you. It’s about helping them become the man or woman of God you pray they’ll be some day. So, focus more on their hearts and less on their behavior.
Encourage your teen to know the difference between asset friends and liability friends. They should be friends with people not like themselves and be kind to all. But at the end of the day, they need to know that the friends who influence them, need to be asset friends — friends who build them up and help them to be their best selves.
Make sure your teens have adults who love Jesus in their lives. There will come a day soon that your teen will have something hard to work through and he will not want to tell you about it. Who will he talk to? Hopefully a trusted adult who follows hard after God. For this to happen, you must be intentional to help your teen develop healthy, strong relationships with other adults. This might mean hanging out with other middle school parents, inviting a small group leader into your lives or bringing grandparents in closer. Make sure you sign up for Blue Ridge’s Middle School text alerts and stay in the know about events and opportunities for your teen to spend time with Middle School leaders.
Serve and invite your teen to serve. No doubt this age brings a lot of self-focus. Serving others may be far from their minds. So, encourage serving by doing it together or helping your teen find an area of interest. Around Blue Ridge, you could serve together in the Café, on the grounds team, in Guest Services, on the Parking Team and in Kids Community, to name a few. Be intentional to talk about this.
Be ready for a marathon. Raising teens isn’t a sprint, it’s a long haul. As my husband always reminds me, “Our main job is not managing our adolescent’s behavior, it’s helping him become a young man.”
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
- Galatians 6:9
My best friend often reminds me, “The days are long, but the years are short.” Hang in there. You can do this!