by Dennis Harter
dennish@isb.ac.th
Middle School is an important time of change and development for adolescents. As parents, you know that your middle school aged-child is changing physically on the outside, but also beginning to behave differently too. This is due to chemical changes, also happening on the inside. The human brain undergoes a great transformation during these years, second only to the brain development of newborns and toddlers. As this chemistry changes, our middle school children begin to care more about their peers and independence as they distance slightly from their parents. This is a natural development, but it doesn’t mean that parents don’t play an important role.
Through this time, it’s important for parents to share expectations, boundaries and values, while at the same time allowing their children to handle their own problems, try solutions, and experience disappointment along with success. Middle school years are formative years for young people, as they learn how to self-manage and behave in socially intelligent and value-driven ways. They make mistakes and learn about who they want to become in the process.
A recent piece in the US newspaper, The Washington Post describes how middle school is a “dress-rehearsal” for life. Written by a middle school parent and drama teacher, it shares some parenting thoughts about letting children navigate their world, guiding them through with support, but not over-protecting them or solving their problems, if they fall within normal middle school life experiences. It’s a good read. As a parent of an MS student myself (with another one coming in a year), the article has provided me with things to think about as we balance shelter against experience.
Throughout the year, in MS, we will look at what we know about tweens and early teens and the best ways we can support them as adults in these formative years.