Middle School Years: Lower Your Voice

We have been a homeschooling family for 10 years. If you quickly calculated it, you know that we now have teenagers. And that journey is taking us to all sorts of different places.  But before you get on that road, there's the onramp.  The middle school years.  Oh my..... I do have to confess that I was warned.  But there were some aspects of the middle school years that I didn't even see coming.

It seems that during those times when adolescents begin to decide who they are and what they believe, they want to hear less of us telling them anything. Anything at all.  Even just what time the clock says!  That might (or might not) be a slight exaggeration.  But the point is, they wanna start doing some of the talking.  They make declarations.  They ask the questions, and they just want the answer without parental analysis.    This is their time.  For deciding which direction they are thinking of heading. There could be changes down the road a bit, but they're getting on that ramp and accelorating with purpose.  Mindsets are solidfying in some basic areas during these years and this is where we come in.  And it's the hard part.

Lower your voice.

Your young person doesn't want to hear his business come from a friend's mouth.  He doesn't want (too much) posted online. She's very picky about how she looked in a recent picture.  She doesn't want her business made into a blog post.  It's not cute anymore.  He may not be proud that he's homeschooled.  She may feel unsure if she's on grade level with peers.  He may feel awkward developmentally.  Or, none of these may be true.  But this is the time to begin respecting their privacy as young adults, which will get you immensely further than blurting it all out because you're "just sayin' " (as they would say).  The rules don't apply.