There are certain parenting milestones you know are coming.
First steps. First words. First day of kindergarten. Learning to ride a bike. Losing the first tooth.
And then, apparently, one day you wake up and you are the parent of a junior high school student.
I’m not sure I was emotionally prepared for this one.
Our child is walking into junior high, and suddenly I’m remembering my junior high experience. And let me tell you, those memories are not exactly giving me warm, nostalgic, coming-of-age movie vibes.
Junior High Was WILD
I hated junior high.
There. I said it.
Looking back, I can laugh at some of it now, but at the time it felt like I had been dropped into another universe.
I went to a school where there were gangs. Fights happened in the hallways. We had “random” lockdowns so drug dogs could search the lockers.
And by random, I mean basically every Friday.
Nothing says, “Have a great weekend!” quite like sitting in a classroom while a drug dog sniffs through the school.
I had come from elementary school where my biggest concerns were probably recess and whether I remembered my homework, and suddenly I was seeing things I didn’t even know existed.
One memory has stuck with me all these years.
I was sitting in my seventh-grade typing class talking to one of my friends when she casually told me she was going to be switching schools because she was pregnant.
I remember sitting there completely stunned.
I barely understood how someone got pregnant.
I was sheltered. I was naive. And junior high wasted absolutely no time informing me that the world was much bigger and more complicated than I realized.
And Now I’m Sending My Own Kid Into It
Obviously, his junior high experience doesn’t have to look anything like mine.
Schools are different. Kids are different. Times are different.
But the feelings that come with these years probably aren’t all that different.
Junior high is such a strange in-between.
You’re not a little kid anymore, but you’re definitely not an adult. Friendships change. Bodies change. Expectations change. Social pressures get bigger. Kids start figuring out who they are while simultaneously worrying about what everyone else thinks they should be.
And as a parent, I’m realizing my job is changing too.
I can’t be there for every conversation.
I won’t know everything that happens in the hallway.
I won’t hear every joke, see every interaction, or know when something somebody says sticks with him longer than it should.
And I think that’s the part that gets me.
More Than Anything, I Want Him to Talk to Us
Of all the things I want for my child during these junior high school years, this might be the biggest:
I want home to be the safe place.
I want him to know he can tell me what’s happening.
The good stuff.
The embarrassing stuff.
The funny stuff.
The confusing stuff.
And especially the stuff he thinks I might not want to hear.
I don’t want his first thought to be, Dad is going to freak out.
I don’t want him to hide something because he thinks he’ll automatically be in trouble.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be rules, consequences, expectations, or difficult conversations. I’m still his dad. My job isn’t to be the cool parent who lets everything slide.
My job is to make sure he knows that nothing he tells me will ever make me stop being on his team.
I’d rather have an uncomfortable conversation with my child than have him navigate something difficult alone because he was afraid to come to me.
I Want to Listen Before I Lecture
This may be the hardest part of parenting a junior high student.
Because dads like to fix things.
Kid has a problem?
GREAT. I HAVE A FOUR-STEP PLAN AND POSSIBLY A SPREADSHEET.
But sometimes they don’t need the plan.
Sometimes they just need someone to listen.
I’m trying to remember that when he tells me something, my reaction matters. If I immediately get angry, start lecturing, or turn every story into a life lesson, eventually he may stop telling me the stories.
I want to ask more questions.
How did that make you feel?
What do you think you should do?
Do you want my advice, or do you just want me to listen?
That last one might save us all.
Junior High Wasn’t All Bad
Here’s the funny thing.
For as much as I say I hated junior high—and I absolutely did—some really great things came out of those years too.
I made friendships.
I learned how to navigate uncomfortable situations.
I started figuring out who I was.
I learned that people can have lives completely different from mine.
I became more independent.
I experienced things that forced me to grow up a little.
And I have stories.
SO. MANY. STORIES.
Some of which my children absolutely do not need to hear yet. 😂
Those years helped shape me, even if I wouldn’t exactly volunteer to relive them.
Maybe that’s what I need to remember as we start this new chapter.
His Story Gets to Be Different Than Mine
One of the hardest parts of raising teenagers and tweens is separating our childhood from theirs.
My junior high experience belongs to me.
His belongs to him.
I don’t want my fears to become his fears before he’s even had the chance to experience it for himself.
Maybe he’ll love junior high.
Maybe he’ll find his people.
Maybe he’ll discover something he’s really good at.
Maybe he’ll have a teacher who changes his life.
Maybe he’ll come home with hilarious stories that we’ll laugh about for years.
And yes, there will probably be hard days too.
I just hope that when those days happen, he knows where he can bring them.
So Here We Go
First day of junior high.
He gets a new school, new teachers, new classes, new friends, more independence, and a whole lot of experiences ahead of him.
And we get a new phase of parenting.
I’m excited for him.
I’m nervous for him.
And there’s a small part of seventh-grade me that wants to grab him by the shoulders and say, “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S COMING.”
But I won’t.
Because this isn’t my junior high story.
It’s his.
My job now is to give him enough room to write it while making sure he always knows we’re right here when he needs us.
And maybe that’s one of the biggest lessons I’m learning about parenting older kids: eventually, you can’t walk every hallway with them.
You just have to make sure they know they can always walk back through your door and tell you what happened.
And I really hope he does.
