Teen Tips: Girls - Surviving Middle School

For parents sending your tween off to Middle school creates all kinds of anxiety for parents, but for your tween too! Middle school is a great time of a tweens life, including all kinds of new experiences and changes. The turmoil, emotion and hormones are all pooled together into the experience of growing into your early teen years. I think I heard it summed up the best by one of my daughters principals, for incoming Middle School parents. "Teens loose their minds for two years and by the time they come out of middle school they are normal again." . Here are some ideas about middle-school ups and downs and what parents can do -- and not do -- to help.

Middle school is full of really cool experience and stuff. While much of what goes on in school is normal and routine, there are the worries about the so called "mean girls"   But let me re-enforce that is important for parents to realize that this is a time when their daughters develop socially.While much is written about mean girls, it's important for parents to realize how much fun this time can be socially for their daughters.

Friendships

One of the key issues is for parents is understanding how friendships change. At this stage, when girls get together what they mostly do is talk. They talk in person about music and clothes and boys -- and then they talk online. Communication breaks down for many parents at this time, which develops frustration for many parents.  This is a critical time for parents, not to create times of conflict but to open up lines of communication. Looking for ways to communicate or new ways to community are paramount. Most adults have embraced the texting. Take the time to text your daughter, if you are not on a social networking site, join one. Get added to a friend on your child's, its key to understanding their conversations, and pitfalls that they are experiencing. It is also a critical time to stay relevant in your child's life. Texting, instant messaging and posting on your child's social networking site make it a great way to stay right out in front of your child. Saying "here I am", "I can help."  

The culture of media sets the tone for middle school.

Girls this age are thrilled that they are about to become teenagers. The entire pulse of what goes in middle school takes on its only feeling and way of thinking for them. Girls live their lives online, doing homework, watching TV, and talking to friends simultaneously. While they can use the Internet in wonderful ways, they can sometimes use it to flame and shame each other, spread vicious rumors, and post malicious information behind girls' backs. It is at the time, that by being involved, understanding the music, the shows and what is happening will help you keep those lines of communication open. This allows you to stay right in the mix with your tween, their friends and the issues they are facing.

Hormones can affect behavior in middle school.

It's hard to be a girl at this age and stage, like my daughters principal said the Hormones make girls edgy, crabby, cranky and teary and their bodies are going through all kinds of changes. Because this is all happening at once and at different rates it can make girls feel uncomfortable with their own. Those same raging hormones and interest in boys can also disrupt the existing social order. If you haven't had the "discussion" about sex with your tween by 10 or 11, now would the time. Listening during this key phase of your tween is paramount, especially when it involves boys. When your daughter mentions a boy, don't immediately jump to the possible attraction between them. It might or might not be there.

The social hierarchy intensifies in middle school.

Cliques get clique-ier, the need to be in power intensifies, and girls can get meaner and much of this behavior stems from the intense desire to belong, the need to feel powerful, and the conditioning that many girls have to not express their feelings directly. This sense of belonging can make a tween girl also ripe to joining a gang. Early recruitment is something parents should be concerned about, but if you are involved in your daughters  Some girls function as leaders, others as followers, and the rest live outside the groups. Some of these girls don't care, while others desperately want to belong. But don't worry to much about this, by eighth grade, most girls develop a certain sense of girls being mean to each other and they learn to steer away from those girls. By eighth grade they are focused their attention towards sex, but this does not mean they are ready to act upon it.

Having a teenager is an extremely difficult time in both your teen and parent's life. But being involved in your teens life, you can help them navigate these turbulent times, lending them guidance and being a valuable resource to your teen. This will only set them up for success in their future into high school and adult hood.