My oldest son now at his first day of middle school. He got on the bus at an ungodly early hour for a growing adolescent, going to school even though he has a bad cold. He did not want to miss the first day, because that is when they tell you everything--like where is your locker, who your teachers are, what do you need to bring to class with you, etc. The change is stressful enough, no need to fall behind if you are still ambulatory.
Watching him get on the bus, I felt my own anxiety, remembering how middle school was 2 of the toughest years of my education, mostly because of my peers. I am hoping that he will make friends and keep the ones he has, and not be singled out as prey by that inevitable group that makes life hell for everyone else. If they try him out, I hope that he will stand up for himself, and his friends stand with him.
Schools try harder to stop bullying than they did when I was in school, but you cannot underestimate the wiles of the adolescent mind. They have a lot more tools to work with too, like the internet and texting, camera phones, video phones, etc.
From an informal poll of my friends, 100% remembered getting bullied by someone in middle school. All of us can also remember some kid who was the focus of most of the intense bullying, who had no one to stand up for him (often because we were scared the focus would then come to us), whose life was scarred forever because he didn't know how to stand up for himself. In my middle school years, the poor kid's name was Pete. He was a nice boy, but he did not stand up for himself, and the lowlife druggie kids would gang up on him. I don't think he graduated with us. I will always feel I failed him, because maybe all it would have taken was rallying the other kids in the class to stand up and tell the low life kids none of us were going to take it from them anymore. There were so many more of us than there were of them. We talked amongst ourselves about how horrible it was, but we were too chicken to take a stand against them.
My personal bullies were a couple of girls, Jill and Stella, who made teasing me a personal challenge in 7th grade. I was miserable. Then sometime between 7th and 8th grade, I had spent a lot of time with some older friends and realized that I could take Jill and Stella's power away from them by 1) not acknowledging their teasing, 2) pretending they were by best friends and being super friendly to them. They walked into my Spanish II class and grinned evilly to each other, but the grins faded to confusion when I greeted them with great excitement and enthusiasm. I totally ignored when they tried some stuff that used to agitate me, and they were flummoxed. I was no fun anymore. They stopped bullying me immediately. Later, when we were in college, Stella apologized to me, and expressed she felt great shame that she ever acted like that, even 6 years later. Stella, I knew, had her own bullies to deal with, and thank goodness, most of us outgrow middle school. I forgave her long before she forgave herself!
Eighth grade was hard because I tried out a few new personalities that were not me, and highly annoying to others, apparently. I lost a few friends with that phase. A small group of girls singled me out for teasing because I had breasts and they did not. They spread the rumor that I stuffed my bra. I protested, but I was not about to expose myself even in the girls locker room to prove it false, because then they would spread the rumor I was gay. I had a boy ask me to "go with" him, and I was so excited! Finally a boy was paying attention to me! We held hands once in the hallway, and we got a lot of attention. Mean girl attention. That made me so nervous, and I avoided him and even hid from him for 3 weeks until he cornered me and said we should break up.
The next adolescent relationship was with a boy who professed his crush on me and then within weeks moved to New Hampshire. We carried on a pen pal relationship for many years, and it was easy to remain 100% faithful, because really, I was not ready for anything else. I highly recommend pen pal relationships during early high school. They allow for introspection, communication, and no physical involvement to screw up your life or health.
Yes, as I watch my son go off to middle school, I know he will have probably just as miserable of a time as everyone else. He will make his own mistakes, change his own behavior, and learn to deal with difficult people. He will be confused by girls. He will worry about his peers. But in the end, hopefully, he will come out whole and enjoy his high school years having already gone through the hard part.
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