Dear parents of middle schoolers

I’m not here to, for instance, let you know that your child hasn’t brought a pencil to class one single time since maybe the second day of school. I know you bought them pencils. What happened to those pencils? Only God knows.

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I just want to tell you a few things you may or may not know about your child. I know things are likely a bit rough at home now that your child is a sweaty mass of hormones and nonsense Tik Tok slang. Let me clear a few things up for you.

They love you so much. No kidding. They write about you in their journals. If I ask them who they admire, what they’re thankful for, even if they could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, fictional or nonfictional. They pick you.

They worry a lot about letting you down. Some of them really feel like they can never, ever be good enough for you. You want to look out for that. It’s really hard on them.

They can’t pause their video games when they’re playing online. This is a top thing they wish adults understood. Apparently you tell them to pause their game and take out the trash or whatever and they need you to understand that online games don’t pause. So there you go. I passed it along.

“Skibidi” comes from a YouTube show. They use it to mean bad. Except the ones who use it to mean good. It’s kind of all purpose. The important thing to note is that if you’re tired of hearing skibidi all of the time, start saying it yourself. It immediately becomes uncool. When I started saying skibidi in class, the middle schoolers were all “IT BURNS US!” and have pretty much stopped using the word in my presence.

That one thing you cook that they really like? It’s their favorite food. Not that food in general, just the way you make it.

They are funny. And insightful, bright, quirky, sweet, silly, and mostly wonderful.

They are often very mean to each other. You remember this, right? Bullying is real and it’s awful, but it’s also not the name for most of these interactions. Mostly this is people whose lives suddenly revolve around friends except they don’t know the rules of friendship or navigating a social scene.

They have poor impulse control and are extremely self-conscious and often think they can make themselves look better by making someone else look worse.

They’re not sociopaths.

They’ll learn more social skills and their brains will finish developing and they will adjust to their new hormonal reality. It’s still hard in the meantime though.

They do need to experience the consequences of their actions. If you swoop in to blame others and remove any sort of accountability from your child, you are not doing him or her a service.

They really do need to do their math homework. Repetition is the way to learn it. I hate this for them (and you) more than I can possibly say, but they do actually have to learn math.

The stuff they’re interested in may not make one bit of sense to you, but try to at least fake a desire to learn about it. Talking about it lights them up.

They don’t always tell the truth. It’s fine, you didn’t either at their age. Just keep this in mind.

They don’t approve of the side part in your hair. I personally do not accept style judgment from people wearing socks and crocs, but do what you want.

They arrive at sixth grade completely terrified about their lockers. Maybe pick up a combination lock somewhere over the summer and teach them how to open it.
They’ll be less anxious and we’ll have one less lock to open every day for the first two weeks of school.

They’re children. Big stinky children who, given the choice, would spend all day texting. But children nonetheless.

Tell them how proud you are, not just of their accomplishments, but of who they are as people. It will mean the world to them.

In exchange, I will tell them (as I do every year) that what you really want for Mother’s Day is a letter from them telling you why they think you’re a great mom. They will not believe this, but I will try.

They’ll be yours full-time again soon enough. I hope you’ll spend some time this summer soaking in the very cool person your child is at this moment in time. Make them that thing they like, go for a walk and let them tell you about their friends and their weird little obsessions. Tell them stories from when you were their age.

Remind them that they are fascinating and capable people who can achieve great things and who also need to apply deodorant daily. Every day. Forever. Please stress this.

We love them too. Thank you for sharing them with us.

Ms. Singaraju

This letter by Lori Singaraju was reproduced with permission.

Lori Singaraju is a middle-grade teacher and writer currently living in Okinawa with her active-duty Sailor husband and two young daughters. She is currently teaching Grade Six and says she will have to stay a middle-grade teacher so she has a chance of understanding what’s going on when her own children reach middle school.