Who Are These Young People?

• They are wonderful.

• They are Scary.

• They have a particular outlook on the world.

• They are adventuresome.

• They are cautious.

• They try on styles of behaving and dressing.

• They want to be independent but, in spite of what they say, they need their parents more than ever.

• Most of all, they are special.

• They will never be this age again!

We ought to be thoughtful, informed, and supportive.
We ought to make the most of this time --- for them and for ourselves.
They are Middle Schoolers!

So you have a 10-to 14-year-old in your household?
CONGRATULATIONS!

The next few years of your life will be filled with concerns about the most active, rambunctious, loving, self-absorbed, scared, (and scary) group of kids around. They love to eat your food but complain about your cooking. They crave your attention yet complain that you are watching them too closely.

They tell you terrible jokes then criticize your sense of humor. If their hair is straight, they want it curly; if they are short, they want to be tall; if they are tall, they complain that they are not like the other children.

One day, they eat anything that they can find, and the next day, they complain about their school's pizza, your chicken, and the way everything in the refrigerator tastes funny. They must have a certain shirt or pair of shoes, and after you have struggled to find a way to purchase these items they abandon them in the lunchroom, at the corner store, or under their bed.

What a dilemma! No matter what happens with these young adolescents, something is always wrong. The loving, responsive, responsible youngster you knew only a few years ago has turned into this mood forgetful irresponsible impolite, loud dynamo. He eats your food, dominates your telephone, requires more of a wardrobe than anyone else in the family, demands your attention constantly, and also insists on being left alone.

What Is Normal Behavior in this Age Group?

Many of the contradictions, contrasts and conflicts you see in your young teenager and pre-teenagers are quite normal.

As they grow, they are experiencing changes on all fronts: In the way they learn, feel, look, and deal with other people. These major changes, along with the pressures of todayís society, place most early adolescents under a great deal of stress.

There is no typical middle schooler; every child remains an individual with strengths, weaknesses, attractive and irritating qualities, but watch for some common traits as your child enters the middle school years.

Middle Schoolers are self-absorbed

It is important for middle schoolers to find out who they are and what they can do, separate from their families. At the same time they are most interested in themselves, they are also very occupied with their friends, so they are open to pressure from the group.

A delicate balance must be struck between honring the importance of their friends and asserting our adult responsibilites. In other words, we have to acknowledge their their friends are truly important, but we must make certain that we do not allow their friends to control their behavior.

Parents of young adoelscents worry that they will rejct family moral and social values.

Often their behavior suggests that they are questioning everything from religion to table manners. This fear is especially strong among Hispanic, Asian and other families new to this country.

Parents see their childen living by one set of standards at home and another at school and with their friends.

This can cause conflicts at home and at school. The middle school-age child from a different culture has a doubly hard time developing her own identity and meetingh expectations of parents and teachers.

What a Shame!

The twelve-year-old would rather not fly than to stand out from her crowd. To middle-level youngsters, everything would be just fine if only they could have the right clothing, hairstyle, and party invitations. They still have individuality, but they must not be separated too far from the crowd. In time, they will value individuals and recognize their personal accomplishments. For the moment, however, to be different is difficult.

The high energy/low energy cycle

Early adolescents have a great deal of physical and emotional energy and they are capable of being very productive, but they also have periods of unproductive behavior as far as adults can tell. They lounge around for hours listening to music, they sulk in their bedrooms, and they hang out with their friends doing nothing.

Adults may fear the high energy level of these youngsters. Sometimes they seem to be almost frantic. On the other hands, adults resent the laziness that they see and urge their youngster to be doing something. To the adult, the youngster's behavior is out of line. To the youngster, however it appears that ìnothing I ever do is right.

Risk-taking

This is a time in their lives when they feel almost immortal. Although they worry about what their friends are going to think about them, and about who is going to say what about them at the cafeteria table, they donít believe that they are physically in much danger in the world. We know better, and worry a lot about their physical safety.

Since on of their ìgrowing upî tasks is to become individuals, separate from their families, they often get into risk-taking behavior. We know that this has the possibility of getting them into trouble as well as the potential to help them learn to face the world as mature adults.

Once again, we face a dilemma: how can we help them take the risks they must without encouraging dangerous even life-threatening behavior?

For most of us, risk-taking at age twelve or thirteen meant using an occasional bad word, perhaps smoking a cigarette, and misbehaving in school. These days, however, risk-taking might involve experimentation with drugs, sexual activity for which they are not emotionally or intellectually prepared or anti-social behavior like shoplifting or vandalism, which leads to trouble with the law.

Super-sensitive

Children who have had friends since kindergarten often find that these friends have deserted them by the time they are in the seventh grade or earlier! Many youngsters cannot understand why long-term relationships are coming to an end, and they see themselves as unattractive or unworthy.

Sometimes, they feel that nothing is permanent and that no one can be counted on. At the same time, they feel they don't have the skills they need to survive on their own. They sometimes get upset and depressed about having to rely on friends (and adults) in whom they feel little trust.

The useless age?
How Middle Schoolers Grow Feelings

Children this age have difficulty controlling their emotions.

Sometimes they have outbursts of crying, fighting or even swearing at inappropriate times. Well, some adults have the same difficulty, right? They are usually embarrassed by these episodes, but they won't admit it. Somehow they feel honor bound not to admit any wrongdoing. The Japanese call it, saving face.

In addition, they have emotional concerns about their body changes.

They are confused about what is happening to them physically, so they tend to react very strongly to anything that has to do with their sexual growth. It is strange, but they tend to get just as embarrassed about maturing too quickly as they do about growing too slowly.

Children this age worry a lot about schoolwork, tests, and report cards. Along with their worrying, however, they often take an I donít care attitude which makes it seem as if they truly are not concerned; in most cases, however, this is just a way that they defend themselves by pretending that things that mean a lot to them really don't matter so much.

Children between the ages of 1- and 14 have a lot of anxiety, are easily angers, and take longer to recover from emotional outbursts than when they were younger. They are trying to figure out who they are, and they donít much like the looks of the person they see in the mirror.

Getting Along with Others
This is the time when children become very concerned with the standards set by their friends.

They show independence in their choice of friends and are very loyal to their group. When parents are unhappy about their friendships, children this age may insist on their right to choose the people with whom they are going to associate, and they frequently change friends depending on pressures from different groups and their shifting interests, needs, and wishes.

Although the herd instinct is strong at this age, it is not unusual for a child to feel that he or she has no friends.

Feelings of being excluded may disappear with the next phone call or may continue and cause a child to be withdrawn and sad, or to act out and be aggressive. Some children this age find it hard to make friends because they are shy or look or act different from most of their classmates. Parents can help with friendships by encouraging a child to join groups where everyone enjoys the same activity and by welcoming another youngster over to spend the night, to cook, or just do homework with your child.

These children are beginning to exert their own independence by breaking away from some parents controls.

They are often critical toward home, their parents, and society in general. At about age thirteen, many of these youngsters appear to be indifferent to adults especially teachers and parents. They are more concerned with presenting a positive image toward their friends than they are toward adults. This doesn't mean that they don't still love and need you. They just have difficulty expressing it. And sometimes they may even forget how they really feel towards caring family members.

At this time of life they have a growing interest in privacy. They crave time alone, to balance the time they spend with their friends. Some of this probably has to do with their need to think things through and also to explore aspects of their own sexual growth.

Beginning at about age eleven or twelve, early adolescents spend a lot of time on their telephone, having important conversations with their friends. They are beginning to show interest in the opposite sex, which in the earlier years takes the form of teasing. Actually, many of them are quite fearful of society is expectations for sexual roles and socializing.

And exciting social growth that takes place at this time is their ability to work in teams. They like to do things as a group, to produce their own comic books, to make music, to sing together, to do line dances, and to begin having parties together. Much of the relating between the sexes is still tentative; but interest is growing

Physical Growth

Many girls, beginning at age ten, show a rapid increase in weight. As they mature sexually, their bodies get back to proportion.

Boys often display awkwardness, restlessness, and laziness as a result of their uneven-growth.

Both sexes are often quite willing to work hard at acquiring physical skills like dancing or skate boarding, but they also are very self-conscious about their bodies and their awkwardness.

At about age eleven or twelve they begin to show signs of growth in their secondary sex characteristics, such as developing breasts and pubic hair. They are excited about this, but are also somewhat self-conscious. While they are anxious to have this obvious growth, they also have difficulty in accepting their body changes. They also are beginning to get very nervous about their physical attractiveness to others, and spend a lot of time worrying about their hair and their complexions.

Children this age begin showing an increased appetite. Even though they understand about nutrition, they tend to indulge in a lot of ìjunk foodî regardless of parental warnings.

Children at about age twelve begin to experience periods of extreme fatigue and are reluctant to admit it. Simultaneously, they get restless and have great bursts of energy.

Children's bones and muscles grow at different rates of speed during early adolescence, and this makes it difficult for them to sit still for long periods of time. They actually do have growing pains. This is one of the reasons why they take such strange positions while reading, socializing with friends, or talking on the telephone, It's also one of the reasons they find opportunities at school or at church to get up and walk around.

Learning
Younger early adolescents (ten and eleven-year-olds) are often not as organized as they were in elementary school.

The basic skills that they learned earlier, at home and school, need to be repeated and reinforced.

Things don't make a lot of sense to youngsters this age, because they still see facts and ideas in isolation. For instance, they may remember the battle of Gettysburg but find it difficult to understand how intelligent people in both the North and the South thought their side was right in the Civil War. Although they are beginning to develop their reasoning skills, they still act unreasonably. This is why it is so important for them to begin to understand how to make decisions.

Early adolescents tend to develop an interest in heroes, often entertainers or sport figures. Their dreams of glory usually have more to do with public appreciation and approval of these people rather than their real accomplishments. Probably a lot of this is connected with the childrenís own feelings of inadequacy. They may also choose a public figure whose standards are much different from your family's, earning your disapproval.

Although they are still reluctant to get very involved with grown-ups, they do like to discuss their experiences with adults particularly those outside of their homes. This is when aunts, uncles, older brothers and sisters, and especially teachers become extremely important in the lives of these youngsters.

Thirteen and fourteen-year-olds begin to see relationships among similar ideas and concepts and experiences. By seventh and eighth grad, children begin to assume personal responsibility for their own learning, and, although their interests come and go, this is a time in their lives when they begin making important decisions about careers, behavior, and their own intellectual worth. They are easily discouraged if they don't achieve their aims, and this is too bad because they have so many projects that don't come out as wonderfully as they had planned.

Values Early adolescent youngsters are trying to find their own values, separate from those held by their families. This does not necessarily mean conflict; however, it often means a testing of boundaries.

Parents and teachers are very aware that almost every day will bring some kind of a battle of wills sometimes these are about bedtimes, parties, curfews, language, or rules; sometimes, these have to do with ridicule of the family or schools beliefs. Adultsí standards for behavior are often ignored, defied, or questioned.

Children at this age also begin to have very high ideals, and they are looking for love (as advertised on TV), beauty (as seen in teen magazines), and justice (something which is available to everyone else, but not to them, and certainly not in their families). They are getting better at looking at the world more critically. Unfortunately, they are often not able to be objective about this; they still see everything through the filter of their own personality and their immediate needs.

Because they have confusing feelings about their identities, they often seek a more active religious involvement so that they can establish some sense of belonging to a group and being with people who share the same ideas.

Religions, with its practices and rituals, allows them to feel part of something bigger in life, than their own family and neighborhood, and these activities give them a structure through which they attempt to find more meaning to life. It is not surprising that many religions set age twelve or thirteen for youngsters to affirm their commitment. Children at this age are anxious to make a ìrite of passage,î and want to be accepted as young adults in their community.


This excerpt is adapted from THE MIDDLE SCHOOL YEARS,
A Parent's Handbook,
NCCE 10840 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia MD 21044