The following is a transcript of a segment of our recent Gathering Gold episode on The Middle School Years. Victoria and I highlight and expound upon many of the themes I wrote about in this blog post on the link between the middle school years and anxiety.
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Calling it “middle school” is very interesting and maybe unconsciously and uncharacteristically wise of our culture. Because they are these in-between, in-the-middle years: you’re not a little kid, but you’re not a teenager.
Now we have a new term in the culture called tweens, which I think is also unconsciously and uncharacteristically wise because it also speaks to being between. Again, you’re not quite a teen and no longer a child. From my lifelong work around transitions, we can shine a light on this in-between, middle time and have some understanding or some reference point to say: yes, this is an in-between time. And what do we know about transitions?
There are three stages. In every transition, there’s a letting go, there’s an in-between, which is the liminal zone, and there’s the new beginning. There’s an autumn, there’s a winter, there’s a spring.
That middle stage, the liminal stage, is the in-between. That’s the middle school years. And what we know about the liminal stage is that we are more vulnerable during this time. The metaphors are often the snake without a skin before it grows its new skin. And also the caterpillar in the chrysalis before it emerges as a beautiful, glorious butterfly.
These are perfect metaphors because there’s a skinless time of every transition. There is also a mushy time in the cocoon before the new self emerges.
I love both of those metaphors when talking about the middle school years. Metaphor is always helpful to ground and also to expand into the archetypal place, especially for parents who have kids in or approaching middle school because this time can be very challenging for parents, too. Holding your child within the context of transitions and the frame of a metaphor helps to trust that there is a light at the end of this dark portal.
You’re watching your child who was full of spark and energy and confidence start to retreat, start to get insecure, wonder who they are and where they fit in the world. Things you may not have ever seen before are going to emerge in those years, and it’s hard to trust that, when attended to, the caterpillar will emerge and will contain elements and colors of the child self as they emerge at 16 or 17 as their butterfly self.
But what’s really interesting about the chrysalis stage is that if you mess with it, if you mess with a cocoon and the caterpillar inside the cocoon, if you see the caterpillar trying to emerge and you’re like, oh, I have to help, it looks like it’s getting stuck in there – if you touch it at all, the caterpillar will die. So we have this impulse with our middle schoolers to get in there and help and guide and share this approach and that tool, but what they’re needing from is us to be present, to witness and accompany.
It’s this kind of this mushy, awful, potentially beautiful time of life that just has to be endured. There’s nothing to solve. There’s nothing to fix.
It can be very painful, and as a parent it can be excruciating to watch your child in the mushy, sticky, uncomfortable, long, liminal stage. But to trust that spring always comes, and if witnessed but not messed with, the beautiful butterfly does emerge from the chrysalis.
The snake without a skin, it’s like what you’re saying, Victoria. When we are skinless, we are both extremely vulnerable to criticism, to the hard stuff, but also to our potential gifts. It’s kind of a blank slate time where the seed of something new, of a new interest or gift starts to emerge.
One of the roles of parents and teachers is to pay very, very close attention to the quietest shimmer or whisper of a gift that might be emerging during those years. One of the greatest tragedies of our education system is the way that we do middle school is terrible.
When Asher was in middle school, the only thing I wanted for him and all of those kids was to be immersed in stories and mythology and drumming – in places where they could find and place themselves. I wanted them to be reading some of the great archetypal stories and reading mythology, to be in their bodies, so that any gifts that were going to emerge would be seen and celebrated. But nothing remotely like that happened for him in the school system.
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What were your middle school years like?
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