Kind of a s/o-how many people had a positive middle school age social experience?

[magnificent_baby]

I had fun in jr. high; was friends with all the "groups" and don't remember feeling left out all that much. Any groups that existed really seemed to get along easily with other groups. 

 

 

Here's an article that I find to be so true regarding current trends:

 

http://community.today.com/parentingteam/post/being-left-out-hurts-lets-stop-social-engineering-now

 

(edited for privacy)

 

 

Edited October 4, 2016 by magnificent_baby

[frogger]

Horrid, but the awfulness extended through high school.

[happypamama]

I do think that they are just hard years for everyone as you give up many comforts of childhood and they are not replaced with any privileges of adulthood.

That's exactly what I told my daughter at 12 or 13, that you have more responsibilities than a child but not as many privileges as adults or even as older teens. I said that it was just a really hard few years. It's hard for teens to see the end goal of handling adult responsibilities while enjoying adult privileges.

 

Also, I expect this is going to be a biased bunch. Many of the people who enjoyed middle (and high) school aren't choosing to homeschool their kids and aren't here. I'm sure there are some, but this board has a lot of people who have significant qualms about their middle/high school experiences.

[ktgrok]

Middle school is what I imagine hell to be. Seriously. My version of hell would be doing lunges over and over again (I hate lunges) in a middle school. 

 

It was awful. So much self doubt, so little understanding of anything including myself, so much weird peer stuff going on, etc etc. My grades slipped, I was depressed,it was terrible. And I had good friends, that I'd known since kindergarten, supportive parents, and I was pretty smart and in a good school. I can only imagine how much worse it could have been. 

 

(actually, it was Jr High, 7th and 8th had their own school, 6th was in the elementary school). I also swore more and used more makeup than another time in my life. And probably single handedly destroyed the ozone with my hairspray usage. 

[LMD]

Pretty bad. Our school system goes k-6 & 7-12. I changed schools in 2nd, 8th & 10th, always the new kid.

 

I didn't have any friends in 5th, a couple/group in 6th/7th - as I desperately tried to escape my home life. But it was not comfortable or healthy, constant competition and bad behaviour. I didn't learn much of anything and nearly failed a few subjects. We did some things like drinking, shoplifting and kissing boys.

 

8th was the same drama with making friends and fitting in at a new school, lots of competition which drove us to bad behaviour. Then my friends turned on me and used the competitive behaviour against me, I was badly bullied all through 9th.

 

I did make one friend who stood up for me and wagged with me (skipped school). We are still best friends. I started sleeping with boys by then too, desperately seeking acceptance.

 

I changed school in 10th and it was better. The education was so so but I wasn't bullied. Most of my friends were proximity friends, apart from my future dh!

 

Eta- it is so important to me that dd is comfortable in her own skin before I throw her to the wolves. Her relationships with her friends are like night and day from mine...

Edited October 3, 2016 by LMD

[Rachel]

6th and 7th grade at the middle school in my hometown stunk. I knew a lot of kids already but that didn't seem to help in 6th grade.

 

I moved to a much larger town with a big university my 8th grade year, it was fabulous. I made a lot of friends despite not being outgoing and I'm still in touch with a few of them even though I only lived there two years.

 

I think the middle school years tend to be tough for everyone, but some people manage to get through them just fine.

[vonfirmath]

I do not remember these years as particularly bad. I enjoyed school. I had enough social for me (but I am not overly extroverted) -- but the social tended to be with my family and through church, not through schools. I was learning things at school I enjoyed and getting positive feedback there.

 

[LucyStoner]

They were pretty awful. To the point that I withdrew myself from school at the beginning of 7th and didn't go back until high school. That said, I experienced a large trauma right after turning 11 so that undoubtably colored the years in the worst possible ways.

[LucyStoner]

My son has had a great social experience from 6th to now (beginning of 8th). He is homeschooled but does some classes out of the home PT.

[RootAnn]

I found my best friends shortly before sixth grade in a K-6 school and had a very supportive & kind teacher. The opportunities and atmosphere was amazing.

 

Every elementary school in the district merged to a 7th-8th middle school, so the three of us went together. I found challenging classes and teachers who pushed us but who also obviously cared about us. I found another good friend and lots of like-minded academic peers. I also found out I could advocate for myself - and successfully got myself put on the gifted program list even though the original list didn't include me. There were so many opportunities for personal growth like Toastmasters, the Joseph Baldwin Academy, Science Camp, and Mathcounts, not to mention small challenges like schedule changes that meant changing homerooms & homeroom teachers after having to eat lunch by oneself for a month. 

 

It was glorious and I wouldn't change it for the world. Some of my fondest memories of teachers come from middle school. My friends were there to buffer any negative clique stuff that existed. Who cares if the "Popular Group" didn't know you existed in the hallway? One of my best friends would leave me little folded notes in my locker every day. And I got to see my crush everyday during French & Science class.  :001_tt1:  (Because, back then, boys were Really Really Important.)

[Guest]

Middle school is what I imagine hell to be. Seriously. My version of hell would be doing lunges over and over again (I hate lunges) in a middle school. 

 

It was awful. So much self doubt, so little understanding of anything including myself, so much weird peer stuff going on, etc etc. My grades slipped, I was depressed,it was terrible. And I had good friends, that I'd known since kindergarten, supportive parents, and I was pretty smart and in a good school. I can only imagine how much worse it could have been. 

 

(actually, it was Jr High, 7th and 8th had their own school, 6th was in the elementary school). I also swore more and used more makeup than another time in my life. And probably single handedly destroyed the ozone with my hairspray usage. 

 

The hairstyles alone probably make jr. high easier to deal with now. :) No one needs curling irons, Paul Mitchell, and Rave #4 as basic essentials to life like we did. 

[Ellie]

"Middle school" was not invented until after my children were almost grown, but if you mean ages 9ish through 12ish or so, most of those ages were fine for me. I spent several months at one junior high (eight grade) being bullied by three girls in homeroom, but other than that, I enjoyed my life.

[Farrar]

Social nightmare.

 

I had friends, but when I look back, it's odd, I didn't even *like* most of them much at the time. I had some positive experiences - especially doing school drama. There were a couple of decent teachers in there, but the classes were mostly unbelievably dull. There was assigned seating at lunch - 8th grade year, I had to sit at a table where I was the only white kid and the only girl. They weren't horrible boys exactly, but all they did was talk about girls in sexist terms, talk about rap music which I didn't know much about, and make nasty body related jokes. I used to just go somewhere else in my head. I remember a teacher being like, why do you look so depressed during lunch, why don't you socialize and talk, and I remember totally losing it - like, you created this situation where I'm segregated from anyone like me and you're going to ask this?!? She looked so confused. Then she offered to give me a library pass. I jumped on that, but then when I went to get it the next day, she changed her mind. You know, because it was more important that I eat. Adults suck.

 

Mostly... I think wrapping myself in a bubble of almost purposeful naivety and obliviousness helped me survive what could have turned into some nasty bullying. I just refused to be affected by any of it. Nose in a book. Screw you, rest of the world. I could care less. Good protection technique.

 

I look back on some of the things I witnessed or that happened around me in school and it's... shocking from an adult perspective. A girl that was relentlessly bullied was sexually assaulted in the bathroom by a boy she had a crush on - everyone knew about - the boy got a couple of days suspension. Kids were just cruel all the time. 

 

It's interesting to hear everyone's experiences. I later became a middle school teacher, as many of you know. I love middle schoolers. I'd never send my kids to middle school. There are some good places, good experiences to be had, but I think it's rare enough that I would never allow my kids to go.

[raptor_dad]

For me it was the tale of two systems inside the same school. 7th grade in the then 7th-9th jr high was about as good as you could reasonably expect for a public school... after the switch to a 6th-8th grade middle school it was as close to a lord of the flies version of hell as I ever hope to come.

 

7th grade in junior high everything was highly tracked. There were 8-12 of us in the top track depending on subject. I had 3 excellent teachers that year(for comparison, I had maybe 6 excellent teachers for all of high school). My english teacher was amazing, I specifically remember reading literally everything Thoreau published and doing a term paper on him and writing 100 page scifi novella. In science we covered the equivalent of all of a physical science course and 9th grade bio... I particularly remember dissecting a cat sized fetal pig in groups of 2. Math started out in a 38 person class in a trailer reviewing arithmetic but in October they found a teacher for the advanced group. We didn't have any books that year so we just did random stuff... in retrospect random stuff consisted of all of Algebra 1 and a bunch of other stuff using an undisclosed experimental new math curriculum. I'm sad to say I can't remember the name of that math teacher, who was one of the top 2 math teachers in my public school years. Socially, I didn't have any peers in my year but did have a number of friends in 9th grade who I met through the service club my science teacher ran. The science geeks gravitated to it because he was cool, not because we wanted to beautify the school. Lunch was multi-grade so I could hang out with them then. I'd meet several of these folks again when I was taking AP chem in 10th in HS. Otherwise folks left me alone. It was a huge improvement from elementary school.

 

8th grade in middle school everything was done in teams. Socialization was the main goal. Tracking was eliminated. The serious academic teachers all left for high school. Classes were all light weight and work sheets. I took Algebra 1 using even then vintage Dolciani structure method texts. I finished the book in under 2 months. That was fortuitous since most of my books got stolen by bullies at that point. It was my word versus theirs so the school did nothing and various staff actually used the "boys will be boys" line and I had no textbooks for the rest of the year but could if I asked extra nice borrow some in class. Not surprisingly after that point the bullying got worse. I basically stopped doing any work that year except a couple of term papers that I did 10x the required work for because they were interesting. At one conference, they threatened my access to advanced classes in the future and I explained that given my imputed(unknown to me) IQ and achievement scores I would be eligible for gifted courses even if I failed my classes and that nothing from 8th grade was going on my "permanent record". I finished out that year with well under a 2.0... though I did go to states in MathCounts. That year was horrible at the time and pisses me off even more now... it was such a brutal stupid waste of potential based on some ones weird social theory that kids should be restricted to 120 peers and forced to form some sort of society with them. 

 

In high school where I had tracking, good teachers, and multi-age peers again, I immediately went back to being a model student with a 4.0. I think middle school is a rough period for kids developmentally but I think downplaying academics and making it more about social relationships makes it worse than it needs to be for some kids.

 

[Lang Syne Boardie]

Socially, I was fine. It was miles better than 5th and 6th had been, b/c those grades were traumatic because of serious problems at home. But in 7th and 8th I was fed and clothed a little better, and had some great friends.

 

My problem was academic. I remember the most abysmal classes in the universe; several being not just a waste of time but obviously harmful in various ways. The academics were so damaging and disappointing that I actually made up my mind by Christmas of 8th grade that if I ever had children, they would be homeschooled!

 

High school was more of the same. I was never bullied, had good friends, made (mostly) good grades in spite of being too bored to do homework most of the time...but knowing all the while that my day was being wasted because I could learn so much more at the library if they'd just turn me loose.

 

It's like 7th grade was the mile marker when school became about something other than learning, for me. Learning is what happens outside of school. I was reading a lot of John Holt, which obviously informed my opinion of my institutional learning experience.

[UCF612]

I enjoyed all my school years. That's not to say they were perfect but I had friends, had fun, made good grades.

[City Mouse]

It wa okay for me. I was not picked on, but was quiet and shy. I wasn't terribly social but had a small group of friends.

[Reefgazer]

I had an OK experience; it wasn't spectacular, but I wasn't miserable and was mostly happy.  I've always been too busy to care much about the social aspect of things, so oblivion might have contributed to that.  :)

[ondreeuh]

My middle school years were overall very positive, socially at least. I had zero friends from elementary (I sat with the outcasts at lunch, who I didn't like, but they didn't kick me out). My middle school had 3-4 other elementary schools feeding into it, and I loved meeting new people. I made friends right away with kids from the other schools and two of them are still close to my heart. For the first time I was well liked - not popular, but treated nicely by most everyone. I was mean to some boys, and I feel guilty about that, but I wasn't bullied. I remember nothing of the academics, but socially I finally figured things out (except for how to not be jealous about boys!).

 

My personal life was kind of a mess - my mother was enduring treatment for terminal cancer - and middle school kept me excited about each day.

Edited October 3, 2016 by ondreeuh

[LMD]

I feel such a sense of loss when I hear about people having great school experiences.

 

I am thankful that university has always been that for me. At least there was one place where it all worked out the way it was supposed to.

I actually felt unspeakably angry the first time I read wtm.

 

Then I gave it to my friend to read and she bombarded me with angry ranting too lol.

 

Dh and I both feel like our education from school was 90% wasted time.

[nd293]

I was never happy at school, socially speaking, but I was an ultra awkward introvert. There was only ever one 'mean girl' in my circle and another who was a friend of a friend, so that wasn't really an issue. I loved the academic environment, though.

 

Dd15 had a mostly happy experience Years 6-8. She had started school after 3 years of homeschooling. There were some challenges but you could see her growing through them, and you could see that she knew she was learning to deal with difficult people and was proud of herself. Year 9 she met her first real mean girl. She'd never really met someone who disliked her straight off and was openly rude and mean. I was very unhappy about the academics at the school and the internal politics, so we moved her again. The mean girl wasn't a catalyst but it certainly made the move more appealing. (There were only 5 girls, so one mean one couldn't really be avoided).

 

Those are difficult years. I really tried to mentor dd through them, to get her to understand how to deal with different personality types and to understand and honour her own personality. In some ways being in a tiny school was good for that, as no one type of child could dominate, but you got experience with all types. She certainly didn't go through any really sad or miserable phase during those years.

 

ETA: I think staying out of social media helped dd have a positive experience in those years. In different years where more of the kids spent more time online things weren't as good (it was a small school so I heard about what was happening in other grades). Contact with friend came mostly through my cell phone, so, for instance, when one girl sent an "I hate you" text I was able to discourage that relationship. (And later years confirmed it was a wise move.) Now she uses social media but has the maturity not to let destructive people into her circle.

Edited October 4, 2016 by nd293

[Wheres Toto]

Middle school for me was just 7th and 8th grade and it sucked.  High school wasn't much better but I did stage crew, track team, and had a job so it was a slight improvement.

 

My oldest went to public school except K-2nd in Catholic School.  She always had lots of friends, was very social, fit in well, blah blah blah. Middle school was the only time she EVER had serious problems with other kids.  She got past it, but it was rough for a little while.

 

Ds is now in 6th grade but we are actually doing pretty good as far as social opportunities. He connected with kids over the summer at our universities GT program, we have a good set of friends in our 4-H STEM group, as well as Sunday School, choir, and Tai Kwan Do.   We're probably doing better now than we have in any years past.

[momacacia]

It was just fine. No better or worse than any other years. Shrug.

[Janeway]

I liked junior high. But we did not have middle schools back then, where I grew up anyway. My husband hated middle school. I went to one school k-3, then another 4-6. I hated hated hated the 4-6 school. Kids were bullies. My parents had moved so I was in a new school district. I had been in an accelerated program where I came from and the new district did not even have that. The kids were bored and the teachers were just, they tried to have every single child in the class of over 30 kids do the exact same thing all the time. It was awful. I remember thinking that the lack of challenge or even school work led to boredom which led to the bullying. And I was just a little child seeing that and realizing it. THAT was when I decided I would home school my own children. 7-9 was junior high. They tracked there and I liked school again. 

[Heathermomster]

I just asked DH what he remembers about middle school. He states that it is all a blur except for a tampon movie and some sort of ball room where the kickballs were stored for pe and recess. That's all he's got.

[KrissiK]

Well, I had friends and I wasn't miserable. I think I was fairly happy in middle school. However, there was a lot of drama amongst my friends, some of my friends were busted for pills, I was exposed to p0rn.... These are all things I do not consider positive and wish I hadn't had to go through.

[shawthorne44]

Middle school for me was just 7th and 8th grade and it sucked.  High school wasn't much better but I did stage crew, track team, and had a job so it was a slight improvement.

...

 

I think this is what made high school better for me.  I worked at the baseball stadium, so I had that social outlet.   I was in a very nice, active church youth group.   I was in debate and competitions involved a lot of sitting around in the hallway waiting for the next match and talking to others.   In fact, until my senior year I dated exclusively boys who didn't go to my high school.   I'd found my tribe in debate.  Because I had all these other sources for friends, it didn't really matter if I had a good friend at high school.   Since I didn't care, that somewhat shielded me from mean kid stuff.   

[bettyandbob]

Middle school was awful for me. Bullying, awkwardness, lots of insecurity...

 

Ds was in a private school in 7th grade and bullied. We returned to homeschooling then. He went to public high school in 9th grade at his request and did as well as we could expect (he liked it).

I7

Dd did OK in public middle school. She was in the gifted program. This limited the group she associated with severely. She still saw bad behavior among this peer group. She'd talk to me about it at the end of the day as a way to process.

[Shellydon]

Hated it for myself, but I have one that is 7th now and one in 9th both loved/love middle school.  They love homeschooling and love their friends at co-op.  It has been good for them.

[gingersmom]

We had moved to a new state and my parents enrolled me in an all girls school. Uniforms (extremely strict about them), headmistress, no boys, a recipe for disaster.

 

I finally switched to public school for 10th grade and life was much better.

 

I did have a cousin (a year older) who was being homeschooled but my mother was convinced she was learning nothing and would not even entertain the idea.

[Joyofsixreboot]

I had a great time. I had a close group of friends, sports, activities, clubs, etc. I do remember being self-conscious of my changing body but that had nothing to do with school. My 12 yo 7 th grader has only 1 friend she sees only occasionally. I don't know if PS will help but next year I'm sending her. She is in activities but just doesn't have hang out friends. It makes me sad 😦 DD that is now a senior returned to PS last year for this reason. She has blossomed. YMMV. I know some kids have great social lives while homeschooling but that hasn't been our experience.

[klmama]

It was junior high back when I was there, and those years were the most fun I'd had socially up to that point.  I finally met other kids that were like me!  Elementary school recess was just with my immediate class, and we lived on different planets. 

[mom2scouts]

My father taught in middle school for 40 years. He loved working with that age, but he knew they were rough years. He was extremely supportive when I started homeschooling, but he made me promise I would not put my kids back in school unless I did it in elementary or high school. I also have a friend who works in our local middle school and she has stories I don't even want to hear about what goes on in our "excellent" middle school.

[HelenNotOfTroy]

I found that age range no better or worse than any other. I had social ups and downs, but it wasn't awful nor was I particularly popular.

[LucyStoner]

"Middle school" was not invented until after my children were almost grown, but if you mean ages 9ish through 12ish or so, most of those ages were fine for me. I spent several months at one junior high (eight grade) being bullied by three girls in homeroom, but other than that, I enjoyed my life.

Middle school in the US is generally grades 6-8, a one grade shift from US junior high being 7-9. Most kids are 11-12 in 6th grade so the ages would be 11-14 or thereabouts. 9 year olds are usually in 3rd or 4th grade. Grades 6-8 middle schools date back to the 1960s and were in use in about 1/3 of districts by the early 1980s. Middle schools became the model in the majority of districts by the time I was starting 6th grade. Our home district is now in a multi year reshifting from junior high to middle school.

 

Why on earth do I know this? I've been reading a big book on the history of American education, finding information to incorporate into our American Government materials this year, lol.

[Desert Strawberry]

I was a troubled kid, but my school was wonderful. I still have my friends from 7th grade. My counselor saved my life. My teachers changed my life. Overall, I had a great experience.

[gaillardia]

The one experience where everybody in my science group refused to dissect the eye and I had to do it, yeah, that was A positive experience.

The rest of my time, not so much. 

[eternalsummer]

hated it

[UnionJack]

I am sad when I hear people had such rough middle school experiences. I loved middle school. Really, really loved it. I had an amazing teacher who developed my confidence in so many ways (sadly, he died shortly after I graduated from college; I wish my husband and children could've met him). I really came out of my shell during those years.

[Alicia64]

Hated it, but we'd moved a lot and I had really awful parents. So I was batting zero.

 

My kitty and dog were so special to me.

 

Alley

[Guest]

Dreadful. I was pulled from a tiny private school that I loved (despite all it's weirdness as an ACE/Bill Gothard school) in the middle of 6th grade and was summarily chucked into public school. I do think this is *the* worst time for kids to change schooling situations, and adding in the change from that tiny Christian school to a massive public school...*shudder.* In many ways, I was not much different from a very sheltered homeschooled child. I was clueless that there were kids who would be so mean over: your hair, your shoes, your kind of purse, your kind of coat, what neighborhood you lived in, what kind of lunch you had and what sort of carrying vessel it was in, if you had "cool" underwear or "babyish" underwear (locker room; inescapable), whether your name could be rhymed with "smell" or "flat-as-a-bench." And so on. I was not even especially unattractive to look at, if I do say so myself, but if you are "out," you just are. :(

 

I think a large part of it is that this is how middle school is; I also think this immaturity lasts farther into high school for males. More 9th grade girls seem to have settled down but 9th grade for boys can still be full of tumult. I have always thought middle school was THE most important time for homeschooling because it just helps get through that yucky part with fewer scars. This is what is the only thinking keeping me still hsing my youngest right now, since I really would like to be an earner again and do other things. But I'm trying to hang in there for a while longer for DS.

[Dmmetler]

I', kind of glad to hear that it doesn't have to be miserable. The program DD is applying to is a self-contained GT school at a University, so maybe it would be a good social experience. It's just a lot to weigh, both academically and emotionally/socially.

[shawthorne44]

I don't think that you can compare your local public Middle School to a self-contained GT school at a University.   There is a great deal of selection in the GT school, including self-selection.  Because those that aren't interested in academics will just not be there no matter how smart they are.   If everyone is smart, you can connect on that but it isn't a big deal because everyone is smart.  

 

[Janeway]

I just asked DH what he remembers about middle school. He states that it is all a blur except for a tampon movie and some sort of ball room where the kickballs were stored for pe and recess. That's all he's got.

. Tampons and balls and that's it huh? Lol

[Bluegoat]

My dd has started ps this year for grade 6, and contrary to my experience, she is really enjoying it.  I am cautiously hopeful she will enjoy the jr high next year.

 

I do think though that the fact that she was homeschooled through most of elementary has been part of the reason she can enjoy it now.  I tend to think that had she been in ps for her earliest years, in particular, he attitudes would be different.