Puberty and changing hormones begin having an effect, and this is the time when “couples” start forming. Boys seem to let things roll off them more easily.”Īnd it goes without saying that boys and girls start to look at each other differently in middle school. “What others feel about them matters more than what they feel about themselves, and this comes through in everything they do. “Girls are extremely self-conscious,” she says. Stacy Nockowitz, who has taught middle school language arts over the past 10 years in New York, Massachusetts, and now Columbus, Ohio, says the one constant is that the transition to middle school seems to be harder on girls. Not only are new middle schoolers suddenly the youngest, they are most likely in a much bigger school with lots of kids they’ve never met before. When Jonah, my then 11 year old, was getting his hair cut before entering middle school, I instructed the hairstylist to “cut it like all the other 11-year-old boys.” Which, that year anyway, seemed to be an almost Beatle-like mop-top.īut even with cool hair, it’s not easy going from being “top dog” at your elementary school to the youngest in the middle school, many kids report. Everything embarrasses them at this age, and everyone is desperately trying to be like everyone else. What do parents and kids need to know in order to make this necessarily insecure time a bit more bearable, and even help the kids thrive?įor middle schoolers, embarrassment is the operative word. We watch with trepidation as our kids transition from the safe cocoon of elementary school to the mouth of the dragon, middle school. There is nothing unique about middle school humiliation.
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