By Nikki Kontz
You’ve purchased the notebooks, backpack and a long list of other school supplies to make sure your child is ready. You’ve got their new clothes or uniforms picked out and your tween looks great with a fresh, back-to-school haircut.
Your child seems ready for the transition to middle school, but are they prepared emotionally?
Entering middle school, with new academic and social structures, can be stressful for many kids. Research shows that one of the most intense physical and emotional transformations of a child’s life occurs around the same time they start middle school.
How can parents and adults help make this academic and emotional milestone as successful as possible for their tweens?
First, ask your child how he or she is feeling about their new environment. Most students are excited, but also nervous about starting middle school. Use open-ended questions to ask what it feels like to be back in school, what’s different and what they like about the new people they are meeting.
Then, check-in with your child regularly about their school experiences. Make sure they know you’re listening to what they’re saying – especially if they feel insecure, bullied or isolated – and do your best to validate their feelings and concerns.
Be careful not to give directives, opting instead to discuss options with your child and then let them decide how to proceed. As children move into the middle school years, your role as a parent naturally shifts to being more of an advisor than as the boss you were when they were younger.
Extracurricular activities are exceptional tools for easing the transition to middle school and eventually high school. Encourage your child to get involved. Orientation, dances and other extracurricular activities are designed to help students find connections and get to know their peers. Participating in sports, the performing arts, choir, student government or special interest clubs on campus can help students meet new people and form new connections with other students who have similar interests.
Parents may feel these social and athletic activities are less important than academics. However, social, group and team engagements are equally as important as academics to the success of children after graduation.
That’s because school is the primary place children and teens learn how to interact with other people. Middle school years are the period when children begin learning self-management skills, how to solve their own problems and how to advocate for themselves around others.
Practicing and learning how to interact with others in school prepares tweens to thrive in high school and in college, to cooperate with future co-workers and bosses, to serve clients in future careers, to have a healthy early adulthood and to achieve work/life balance.
While the first few weeks of middle school can be scary for some kids, supportive friends, family members and parents can play a big part in helping ease the transition. Talking with tweens about their fears and encouraging them to get involved in school activities makes a bigger difference than many parents and adults realize.
Tweens and teens of any age who are struggling with anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide or who just need to talk about their problems with a teen peer counselor who understands what they are going through are encouraged to call or text the 24/7/365 Teen Lifeline at (602) 248-TEEN (8336) for free and confidential help. Trained teenage peer counselors answer phone lines between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. every day of the year.
At all other times, calls are answered by specially trained crisis intervention specialists.
Nikki Kontz is the clinical director of Teen Lifeline, a Phoenix-based, nonprofit dedicated to preventing teen suicide in Arizona. Contact her at 602-248-8337.