Middle Fool
Middle school kids are the reason lions eat their young. Plus, an excerpt from Dad Truths!
Is middle school the worst age?
We all know what kids go through during those strange years between elementary school and high school, what with the hormones and the puberty and the confusing social dynamics and the increased academic pressure and actual responsibilities and the sudden need to start considering the future in a way that they never have before.
It doesn’t help that all of those new complications begin to arise within that weird limbo between still being a little kid (and still wanting to be a little kid) and no longer being a little kid (and no longer wanting to be a little kid).
Did I mention the bullies and the peer pressure and the social media and the school dances and everything else? It’s rough out there.
But who cares!
I’m not asking if middle school is the worst age for kids, I’m asking if it’s the worst age for parents! Because my kid is currently wrapping up 8th grade and I am not having a good time.
(Please note that I did not say that the middle school years are the hardest age for parents. I am well aware that the stakes continue to get higher and higher as our kids enter high school and gain terrifying new levels of independence and responsibility, neither of which come easily.)
This is not me blaming my 13-year-old. I’ve already written about the challenges that he’s had over the past few years, and I’m not only sympathetic, I’m more than happy to blame most of those challenges on the other middle schoolers he interacts with every day. Because, despite what all the nice parents and the occasional well-meaning teacher would like you to think, middle schoolers are THE WORST.
This is on my mind not only because my 13-year-old has been in rare form lately, but also because a post has been circulating around social media in which one of those wonderful, well-meaning teachers relays all the wonderful things about the middle schoolers she has in her classroom 10 months out of the year. It’s a touching attempt to reassure parents that the kids are alright, and that despite all the skibidi and the YouTube and the constant forgetting of their homework, they remain our sweet little kids.
And she’s right. In many ways, these 12-and 13- and 14-year-olds, with their idiotic slang and awful jokes and obnoxious behavior, are just work-in-progress human beings trying to adapt and survive as best they can in what can only be described as an unpredictable and unforgiving environment.
Having once been in middle school myself, I understand the turmoil they’re enduring, and while I may not have experienced the exact trials and tribulations my son battles through every day, my adolescent years—and yours—probably weren’t all that different. It’s just the way it is.
So yeah, as his dad, who loves him unconditionally, I know that underneath all the eyerolls and bad moods and body odor, he’s still my sweet, goofy, lovable little guy. But holy shit he can be annoying as hell—they’re all annoying as hell—and I can’t wait until this stage is over.
His interests, his jokes, his favorite music (despite my best efforts), his slang; it’s bottom-of-the-barrel stuff! And yes, I know this is the most cliched “GET OFF MY LAWN” old man nonsense ever, and I acknowledge that, but it’s also true!
I don’t care how old I am or you are or anyone is, the constant sound of awful “dees nuts” jokes and terrible parody songs about Minecraft and “funny” rap battles between TV characters, and the ever-present chatter about skibidi and rizz and the silly Fortnite dances and the batshit losing of their minds whenever someone utters an entirely innocent phrase that maybe sort of accidentally sounded like a sexual reference (with which he has zero actual familiarity!) is CLOWN SHIT!
I can’t take it anymore!
Which, of course, is how it should be. I’m not supposed to be able to take it.
This is the exact age when my son is supposed to be doing clown shit. It’s the exact same age I was when I was doing the late 80s/early 90s equivalent of this nonsense (I once called a radio station and entered a rap contest by performing an original song called “The Slicin’ Dicin’ Psychopath” so I am well aware have no leg to stand on!) and the exact same age you were when you were doing your version of this nonsense (you were probably obsessed with boy bands, admit it!) and it’s the same age my sons’ kids will be when they’re doing their equivalent of it and so on and so forth.
And maybe, when my kid is 17 and vaping and buying condoms and doing donuts in parking lots and aspiring to be a house DJ, I’ll look back on these years and wish he was still forgetting to shower and calling me bro and begging me for V-bucks. But I doubt it.
Again, it’s not his fault. Middle school kids barely understand themselves, let alone each other, and that can lead to some strange behavior. It’s not easy to comport yourself when your body and your brain are operating on entirely different frequencies, especially when you’re in the middle of a scrum of people all trying to figure themselves out, and you’ve got the internet and social media feeding you nonsense and putting your own nonsense out there in ways we old heads didn’t have to deal with. I get it! My son and his peers are going through a lot; times are fraught, and they deserve a little slack.
Like that teacher wrote, my son, like all the other middle schoolers, is a sensitive, kind-hearted, silly guy who loves a good belly laugh. But he’s also a smelly, obnoxious, absent-minded loose cannon with a terrible sense of humor. Both things can be true, and when you have a middle schooler, both things often are.
Which is fine. Nobody is judging adults by their behavior in 8th grade, and I am confident that my son will grow out of this stage and round into someone I can say confidently say the number 69 around.
I just hope it happens fast. Because my kid has L rizz and it is cringe, no cap.
Social Media Round-up
A Bit of Dad Truths
It’s almost Father’s Day, which means you’re running out of time to buy my book and give your husband or father or father’s husband or father figure or favorite male authority figure the gift of a lifetime!
To entice you, I thought I’d share a little excerpt from one of the early chapters of the book, in which I relay just how little I knew about babies before I had one of my own…
That Time I Dropped My Friend’s Baby…
About a year before my first kid was born, my best man made the foolish decision to let me hold his nine-month-old son. He was an adorable little guy, and the fact that he was wearing one of those skull-shaping helmets only made him cuter. (One thing I did know about babies is that their heads are soft as hell, but I had no idea that because of that, doctors often prescribe them helmets so that when they sleep their heads don’t flatten out and morph into squares. Wild, right?) Thankfully it made him a lot safer too, which really came in handy that fateful afternoon.
When my buddy offered to let me hold his baby, I happily accepted because I knew it was only temporary, and I figured I had to start somewhere! But at a certain point, I was ready to give the baby back. After all, he wasn’t my baby, and the primary benefit of holding someone else’s baby is that you’re not expected to keep him. It’s a real perk.
Unfortunately, my buddy had taken off. (Only to the other room, but knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d hightailed it to Mexico for a carefree, child-free life!) So, when I was done with the baby-holding experience, I had no one to hand that baby off to. But I needed to redistribute the child, which I did—by standing him flat on his feet on the floor in front of me.
A fun little bit of trivia about nine-month-olds: They can’t walk. Or stand. But they can fall! In fact, they’re prodigies at it…
You’ll have to click the button below to buy the book and find out what happened next! Spoiler alert: I am not in jail.
Middle school is horrible. The kids are horrible to each other, and to their parents. But they do, in fact, grow out of it. But middle school is why they start as babies so we adore them long before they become insufferable eye rolling gremlins. 🤣🤣 Good luck!!!