My Kid Is Starting Middle School & I Have Feelings

When I was pregnant with my second child, some girlfriends got together to throw me a sprinkle. It was gloriously low key, but much to my delight, retained the one hallmark of traditional baby showers that doesn’t make me sweat from inconvenient places: the questionnaire.

After a round of mocktails, we got to work. I made my way down the sheet, positing my best guess on the essential matters of this baby’s gender, length, weight, and time of birth. The last section focused on higher-order stuff — the hopes, dreams and fears of it all that feel fun to daydream about but ultimately strike me as frivolous. “Kind of like a birth plan,” I joked, noting the uselessness of a document that purports to tell an actual doctor how to safely deliver a baby. I conceded that of course we’re allowed to have wishes and preferences, especially on something so serious and personal as our own children, but I think we can all agree that when the rubber meets the road in life, we end up doing what has to be done.

With that idea in mind, I kept my answers as straightforward as possible. My hope was that this second baby would have a smaller head than my first (ouch). My dream was for him or her to eventually understand that feeling fulfilled is the real goal (chasing “happy” never works). And my fear? Middle school.

Unbelievably, the baby fêted at that sprinkle just celebrated her tenth birthday and is entering fifth grade. Her older brother is going into sixth and will turn 12 at Halloween. The rubber is indeed hitting the road on these pivotal developmental years that I dreaded for my fictional future children since I lived them myself. So what happens now that the children are real, and my icky feelings still are, too?

It all goes back to a scene straight out of Mean Girls.

Despite the ten tons of orthodontia that had been installed in my mouth just the week before my first day of sixth grade, things got off to a great start. Switching classrooms felt so grown up. Having a locker to decorate was cool. The lunch dynamic sorted itself out without much fanfare as three of my known besties and I seamlessly slid into the tables set for four.

I missed Friday of that second week for an out-of-town family party. I returned to school the following Monday ready to assume my new sixth-grade normal when… there was a girl in my seat at lunch. A new girl I didn’t know, who my friends apparently did? Their faces told me this arrangement would be permanent. And boy, was it.

As formative experiences go, this was a whopper. It changed me from someone who was reasonably comfortable in my own skin to one whose baseline assumption was that I was lacking — coolness? humor? smarts? looks? — whatever it was that would’ve made them want to save my seat.

Unfortunately, it was lunchtable-gate of thirty years ago that headlined my thoughts last month when I brought our oldest to a Q&A session for all incoming sixth graders. I watched this sweet son of mine take in the space and people around him. Do you know? I almost said out loud. Do you know it’s all going to change, right here in this room? (We were in the cafeteria, of course, because life is funny like that).

And so emerged the moment where I had to stop and ask myself, “Who is this about anyway?” As parents, isn’t that always the question? If motherhood is a mirror, the countdown to his first day of middle school has me standing squarely before it, and the challenge is clear: girl, get it together!

So like any good millennial who’s dabbled in the psychology of reparenting, I’ve tried to revisit my own experience with an eye towards what I needed then, and what I’ve learned since. And then I polled my friends.

The latter is a tale as old as time: what we all seem to have learned is that rejection, confusion and the wisdom of hindsight are facts of life that have to be dealt with continuously as we grow up, see more, and try new things (or don’t).

What I needed then is exactly what I need now, and what we all need, always: perspective. Given the status of my kids’ prefrontal cortices, I just hope I can be the one to provide it.

To do that, I realized I also need to get super specific with what exactly I’m afraid of. Here is what I found:

I’m scared of anything or anyone who will make it harder for them to feel joy, or be silly, or get excited about stuff they’ve always loved.

I’m worried they won’t be able to see that literally everyone is awkward and weird and not sure who they are or how they’re supposed to be.

I’m low-key devastated that I may never know them as well as I do in this moment.

It made me sad to hear my mom chats echo every word of these concerns. But glad for their honesty — and especially from the ones who have already been through the gauntlet of middle school, their tips.

The consensus is that all the Dr. Becky metaphors are true: the kids need a lighthouse, a pilot, a stabilizing force on middle school’s otherwise shaky ground.

We need to regularly zoom out and remember that middle school is about building towards becoming a functional adult, not a problem-free kid.

And finally, trying to control or predict exactly how these years will play out for my kids and our family is a fool’s errand.

…Kind of like a birth plan, if I may. So to close the loop on that metaphor, I’ll go ahead and quietly name some hopes and dreams for this era, just like I did all those years ago. My hope is that my kids are able to stay focused on what fills them — the experiences and people that make them feel warm and whole in lasting and meaningful ways. And my dream is that they use those big heads of theirs to do good, be good and (kindly) remind me when I could be doing better.

Catherine Nettleton lives outside New York City with her husband and three kids. Her writing focuses on grief and loss, parenting, and caregiving. For more, visit her Substack, Here's Hoping.