Parenting - Middle School Years

Excerpted from
The Rollercoaster Years: Raising Your Child Through the Maddening Yet Magical Middle School Years
By Charlene C. Giannetti, Margaret Sagarese

Why Your Middler Is Distracted, Disorganized, and Disinterested

"Believe it or not, these kids are trying. Trying to cope with more and more. Too often we see so many of the problems they face and forget about the honest effort they are making." (Teacher from New Hampshire)

Your middler's life is like a three-ring circus with its sensory overload of sights, sounds, smells, and feelings. Not even the most extravagant production by Ringling Brothers could compete with all the excitement and drama. So many spectacular events unfolding! Remember how it is at the circus. Focus on the acrobats in ring one and you may miss the dancing bears in ring two or the trained horses in ring three.

Is it any wonder your child finds it impossible to concentrate on just one activity at a time? As adults we have learned how to juggle our work and responsibilities. (Although some of us accomplish this balancing act more easily than others!) Middlers have not yet acquired that coping mechanism so necessary for survival. And if any age group needs help adjusting, this one is it.

As we have learned, they are going through a tremendous growth spurt that can leave them sore, tired, and cranky. Their hormones are raging and are responsible for their varying moods. They toil under an increased load of schoolwork and extracurricular activities. They are forging new relationships with their peers, discovering the opposite sex, and attempting to exert some independence from their parents. It's exciting, to be sure, but dizzying and overwhelming, too.

How do they react? The responses, while as individual as the children themselves, can best be described by three adjectives: distracted, disorganized, and disinterested. In this chapter you will view your middler in 3-D and learn how you can help him to maintain his focus.

The First D-Distraction

Concentrating on a task for any length of time is something that your middler will have trouble doing. His tapping pencil, drumming fingers, squirming body, and wandering eyes will probably drive you to distraction. You can help yourself and your middler by remembering that much of this fidgeting is beyond his control. No doubt he is frustrated, too, by how his body is behaving. On top of that, he is developing the ability to ponder weighty matters. And there is so much to think about-school, friends, sports, fitting in, doing well, what to wear. His circuits are overloaded. No wonder he appears distracted.

It's not easy living with a child who seems to have a permanent case of spring fever. Your middler may appear to be constantly daydreaming-gazing into space, staring at the TV, lying on his bed looking at the ceiling. He is caught up in his own little world, one that, at the present time, does not seem to include you (or many other adults, for that matter). Capturing your child's attention will often seem to be an effort in futility. Even if he looks it you, he may not hear you. Even if he hears you, he may not listen. So your entreaties to take out the garbage, walk the dog, clean his room, will probably be ignored.

This generation of middlers has become particularly adept at tuning out unwanted noise. They have grown up surrounded by electronic pandemonium-arcade games, CDs, Walkmans, music videos, TV. This cacophony is so much white noise to these young people. Amazingly enough, they don't find it bothersome. Only 13 percent of middlers who answered our survey report doing their homework alone in a quiet room. The majority say they have no problem concentrating with a radio, CD player, or a TV on, often in a room filled with other people working and talking. If your daughter can screen out all that noise and distraction while doing her algebra, what chance do you have to break through?

A very slim chance indeed. Don't take it personally. Middlers are often indifferent to their surroundings. A messy room will drive you crazy, but your son will barely notice the empty soda cans, candy wrappers, and soiled underwear that litter his environment. Nagging him to clean his room is a conflict you are destined to lose. Yet most parents are unwilling to concede defeat. More than one-third who answered our survey placed messy rooms at the top of their "battle zone" list.

While you may be willing to overlook the fact that one-fifth of your home has turned into a landfill, you will probably have more trouble dealing with another symptom of middler distraction: a poor academic performance. "My daughter was labeled gifted in elementary school," said one mother. "She was always ahead of the others. Then in middle school, she stopped working. She didn't hand in homework, forgot assignments, failed tests. She'd claim she was doing her homework, but if you walked into her room while she was studying, she would quickly shuffle her papers to hide the letter she had been writing." This mother mused: "I wondered if it was because the learning always came so easy, then she got kinda overwhelmed when it required real studying so she just tuned out."

Some of that mother's analysis is probably true. Research shows that between the ages of twelve and fourteen, a child's ability to learn slacks off. Your son may no longer be able to absorb material at the breakneck pace he exhibited when he was younger. Unfortunately, this slowing down in brain power occurs at exactly the wrong time. Sixth, seventh, and eighth grades are demanding. Not only is there a greater volume of work, but also the assignments themselves become more challenging. Advanced subjects may have been added to your child's course load. Perhaps he is now learning a foreign language. Algebraic equations are creeping into his math work while chemistry and physics are being introduced in his science class. With the move to middle school comes a new routine, changing classes with each subject, requiring your child to deal with many more teachers, each with a different teaching style.

A temporary lag in homework or a disappointing grade here and there is to be expected during this transition. But if your child's school performance changes dramatically and continues to slide for longer than six months, those bad marks should serve as a red flag to warn you that something more serious is going on.