Middle School Rules

This afternoon I got a facebook message from a friend who lives in my community:

"Hey Christy - Now I'm coming to you for input.......(my oldest), like Kira, is starting FMS this year.......he's excited.....I'm very nervous and unsure.......any tips or advice I need before letting him go off in to the big world of middle school."

I replied: 

Off the top of my head...
1. Make sure he goes to the pool party Friday night for the 6th graders from all three feeder schools. You won't be staying.
2. Drop him off at the curb on the first day. You won't be staying.
3. Ask lots of open ended questions once he starts going school to get info out of him, as it will be harder and harder to get info out of him.
4. Be involved, even if he doesn't seem to like it.
5. Activities - sports, academic clubs, arts - if he isn't already involved or planning to be involved, encourage him to do it. It seemed to really help Seth a great deal to have a group of kids that he got extra close to. He's going to get an identity for something, it might as well be a sport or as an artist or something good, right?
6. You are not going in. Really.
7. Tell him it feels odd to you, you're not really sure how to act. He is getting older. He needs you a little less. This is new for both of you. It will help him recognize that those things all apply to him also. He will like the idea that he's got something to offer you... how to be a cool middle school mom.
8. Once he's involved with something, find out how you can help with that thing. For Seth that was soccer, and I volunteered to be the team coordinator and photographer. This allowed me to connect really well with the coach and ALL of the other kids in his little micro world (who were all completely digging me because I was taking bad ass pictures of them) and their parents, without it feeling like I was tagging along with him.
9. Tell him how awesome you are. He will forget to notice. So, tell him, "It would be socially appropriate for you to tell me I'm awesome right now." I use this every once and a while when I drive him to school without complaining that he missed the bus or even without him asking (like when it was sub-zero or he had a ton to carry.) I smile that knowing mother smile. He sheepishly says, "Thank you." We get on with our day.
10. You're not going in... just stay in the car and let him slam the door and trot off into that big ol' foreign building without you. He probably won't even look back... it's okay. He's already fine and you will be, in about fifteen years.

I wanted to post this little exchange for anyone else who wants to know how we (what that really means is 'I') survived the first year of middle school. If you haven't been paying attention, it was a doozie of a year and my kid rocked it.

I rocked it, too, thanks to the kind women running the above referenced pool party last year when Seth was a rising sixth grader. Their PTO table, covered with Fairview Middle School paraphernalia, was planted firmly across the sidewalk leading into the pool. They took my kid's cash and told him to go on in and have a good time.

I just stood there, while he bolted off into the festivities, wondering when he'd acquired that middle school swagger... finally I said to one of them, "I'm not going in, am I?" She smiled that knowing smile and said, "No, you're not going in. He'll be fine." I said, "Obviously, he's fine. What about me?"

We chatted for a while and then I said, "Okay, so what about the first day of school?" She said, "You're not going in." I said, "Really?" She said, "Really." I said, "He's got all of those school supplies... they won't even fit in his backpack?" She said, "You are not going in."

Really.

O-Mom Parenting Solution Number One: Don't Be That Girl (or Guy)

These women took the Easter sacrifice thing to a whole new level. They gave their freedom... for Easter candy.

Straight from The Salisbury Post...

Brawl erupts over Easter candy

Tuesday,  April 06, 2010 12:00 AM

Staff Report

Police aren't sure whether Walmart's prices were so good or if there was a shortage of chocolate rabbits. Whatever the reason, seven women ended up in a brawl in the Easter basket aisle Saturday evening. Candy eggs, rabbits and Peeps flew through the air in an unlikely Easter exchange.

Property damage, primarily to candy and Easter decorations, totaled nearly $800. Salisbury Police responded to the Walmart at 323 Arlington St. around 7 p.m. Saturday. The five officers separated the women into two groups — with each claiming the other group started the fight.

Unable to figure out who initiated the brawl, officers decided to charge all of those involved in the incident with public affray. Those charged, whose ages range from 17 to 24...

_____

I removed the names of the women involved because... well, even when it seems reasonable, I am not all that into shaming people. I do, sometimes, find sharing - for the good of the masses - simply irresistible.

Introducing O-Mom Parenting Solution Number One:

Don't Be That Girl (or Guy)

Don't Be That Girl (or Guy) Parenting Solutions began one hot summer afternoon a couple of years ago in a local ice cream shop, as my impressionable young children and I enjoyed our delicious frozen treats. People were coming and going while we chatted and shared the flavors we'd chosen, and I was a happy woman. Then, she walked in... smiling, full of life, and seemed very pleased with her tasty ice cream selection. I'm unclear about when we go from calling females "girls" to calling them "young women," but she seemed to be a perfectly friendly one of those. It is likely that the line gets drawn somewhere around the moment she got knocked up, but perhaps it wasn't until a few weeks after our encounter when the baby in her gigantic belly took it's first breath.

Normally a big ol' pregnant belly like that would leave me feeling warm and fuzzy, reminiscent of the treasured time, many years ago, when I created and incubated my charming, brown-chinned table-mates. My oh-how-I-love-pregnancy-and-natural-childbirth moment was profoundly distorted by the "Class of '06 Rules" t-shirt literally fighting its way across this girl/young woman's baby's residence. The signatures of her classmates, equally profoundly distorted, looked more like a human graffiti art project.

While I completely appreciate the with-child-and-needing-ice-cream thing, I didn't enjoy the reality check. It hit me that my son and daughter were still not old enough to keep from being blue-faced and brown-chinned at the ice cream shop, but they were no longer without the cognitive ability to assess that this girl/young woman was still in school... just like them. They could see that her little friends had signed her t-shirt. They could recall how, just a month before, their elementary school "peeps" left barely-legible streaks of Sharpie on the t-shirts all had been awarded for their reading prowess.

In truly O-Mom form, I said to the children, "If you are young enough to have your friends sign your t-shirt, then you're too young to get pregnant and have a belly like that. Kira, don't be that girl. Seth, don't date that girl... and make her that way."

In hindsight, I might have added a little something about the importance of preserving their high school memorabilia (a.k.a. the peer-autographed t-shirt) with the procurement of some high-quality maternity clothing, should this tragedy ever befall either of them.