Communities

Sometime between 9:00 p.m. on May 31st and 8:00 a.m. on June 1st immediately following a child’s fifth grade year, a mysterious transformation takes place in the life of that child. It’s as though the floodgates holding back the torrents of hormones have been flung wide open, allowing those hormones to wreak havoc on your heretofore cherubic child. Psychologists call it the preadolescent phase. We parents know it better as the middle school mayhem.

The young boy who had previously considered zipping his pants to be an optional activity is now meticulously matching his T-shirts and tennis shoes. The same girl who had formerly balked at bathing is now spending countless hours in the shower, presumably washing and conditioning each hair individually. And nowadays both the boy and the girl position themselves in front of mirrors to spike, spray, streak, and straighten said hairs. (Speaking of which, my son recently asked my husband what he thought about boys coloring their hair. After scraping himself off the ceiling, my husband replied, “No one in my house is going to color their hair unless they’re female, over 40, and going gray.” Regardless of the veracity of his statement, this store-bought blonde felt completely justified in giving him the cold shoulder for the next couple of hours.)

Somehow we think that if we can just make it through the terrible threes (our twos were a breeze compared to the threes), we can kick on our parenting auto-pilot until, say, the kids are about 16. No one warns us of the alter ego lying dormant in our 11-year-old kids. These are the kids who are oblivious to the elderly woman needing someone to hold open a door for her, yet painfully aware of each and every glance from their peers. While remaining emotionally unmoved when watching poignant movies they can become alternately hysterical and depressed at the first sight of a pimple breakout. It’s as though there’s another person inside of them trying to get out, and in a way, there is.

Part of me wants to protect my child from this affliction. But then I realize who I really want to protect is me. I want to rock him while he holds his blankie and stuffed Barnie, to assure myself that the boogie monster known as adolescence will never get my child. I want to keep him just as he is, because the present is safe. It’s the future that’s unknown.

Just as God has a plan for my life, though, He has a plan for my children’s lives as well. And that plan involves change. Being a person who is fairly fond of ruts, change has never been my forte. But I’m learning that the changes God brings into my life, whether through my children or something else, have the potential to make me a better, stronger, more loving person, and the quicker I can adapt to those changes, the better off we’ll all be.

So for now, I’m going to go give my son a hug while he’ll still let me. Maybe we can even cuddle on the couch while I read him a book. Then I’m going to stand in line for my turn in the shower. And if you hear some wailing once I get in, you’ll know I’m singing the middle school blues.

Article extracted from Family Life's monthly e-magazine The Family Room. To subscribe to The Family Room click here.

Donna Hill lives in Bryant, Arkansas, with her husband, Kevin, and their five children. With their second child entering sixth grade this year, they have recently begun singing the next verse of the Middle School Blues.

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