Middle School Years Hardest for Moms

The middle school years from grades 6 through 8 are a time of big transition for families as children become teens, deal with the hormonal changes of puberty, and move from an often supportive elementary school setting to the world of middle school where parents aren't as involved at school. A 2016 study of 2,200 mostly well-educated mothers found that mothers of middle school students also struggle. Mothers report more distress and less well-being when their children hit grades 6 to 8. Mothers of infants and grown children are happiest, according to the study, lead by Suniya Luthar, a psychology professor and researcher at Arizona State University at Tempe.

Researchers expected to find that mothers of infants are similarly stressed as the levels experienced by mothers of middle-schoolers, but they are not. The University of Arizona's research team believes this might be because infants are exhausting, but are also intensely rewarding to hold and cuddle. Middle-schoolers are usually not as rewarding or cuddly. Their developmental task is beginning to make them seek individuation from parents and push parents away.

Other factors probably also impact parents' levels of satisfaction. Many parents know their children's friends, classmates and a community of other parents and teachers. When the middle school transition begins, students often interact at school with minimal parent involvement, and moms may feel more disconnected as students share less about their world, their school experiences and their friends. A number of the middle school students I see in counseling long for the independence of being dropped off to see a movie or spend time with friends without a parent accompanying them. Parents can suffer a big fall from grace, as the big need that our children had for us in younger years begins to change.

Parents' confidence in their abilities to discipline, influence and communicate with their child all decline in the middle school years. It's important not to buy in to stereotypes about teens which lump them all together as negative. Friendships with other parents of middle school age children and parenting classes can really help mitigate the sense of distress and isolation, as well as normalize the developmental parenting shifts that are happening.

Parents of middle school students need to get support from each other as less emotional rewards come in from their children. It's also important to shift and continue to connect with children, but in different ways. For example, providing space for your teen or preteen to have friends over at your home and provide snacks but remain on the periphery. Continue to reach out to connect with middle- schoolers at dinnertime and in the car, and having them teach you some things when you can.

It's been said that preteens and teens are building a house of self, and that they need to be able to set some boundaries and separation from us in order to feel they are opening and closing the doors in their house.They let us in close at times and close us out at others. It's our job as parents to be there, be loving and interested and not too needy. Keep that in mind when your sweet child asks you to drop them off down the block from their middle school or high school so no one sees you. It's a bittersweet passage that is necessary so they can begin preparing to separate from us and begin those first steps towards becoming their own person.

Honoring Our Dads, Stepdads and Granddads

With Father's Day approaching this Sunday, I think it's time we all pause and reflect to honor good dads everywhere. Many times, Father's Day gets trampled on by Mother's Day, graduations, and spring birthdays. It's just not fair. Fathers and the other important good men in our lives who nurture, develop, inspire and support children, teens, and young adults deserve the spotlight all on their own.

Together, let's reach out to the men in our lives who make a difference, both to us and to our children, because they suit up, show up, and do the right thing. These are the good men who show us that women do not corner the market on nurturing and supporting others. They might be our fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers, uncles, or family friends. What they have in common is taking a loving concern for the young people in their lives, and doing all they can to be a positive male influence. We salute you. You make a huge difference.

Men and women are different, and we provide children and young adults with different things. I often think of it as women bringing children INTO the world and men taking children OUT into the world, helping them launch into the adult world, separate from their mother, and become a successful adult. All our lives, we benefit from having a positive, kind male role model we respect and can turn to for advice. It's not that you can't succeed without that support; it just makes it so much easier. It gives you a firm foundation. You have someone to ask about the exclusively male perspective on life, and ask for their input or guidance.

Good dads stay connected to their children, whether or not they are still married to that child's mother. They stay involved and actively engaged with their child or children all their lives. We hope that our marriages endure, but the parent-child relationship must endure all your life. In research by the Center for the Family in Transition in Mill Valley, California, Judith Wallerstein, Ph.D., and her team has done the longest study to date on outcomes for children of divorce. One of the worst things that can possibly happen to children in their parents' divorce is that their father disengages, in terms of emotional support, time, and financial support. I often caution parents I counsel not to do this. Parents who love their children stay involved, no matter what.

Grandfathers, stepfathers, and uncles can all be critically important roles, defined by who plays the role and how you play it. It's messy to get involved. You have to give---time, attention, listening, support. You can receive incredible rewards by becoming a positive male influence. You might be the only chance a particular child in your life has to know a honest, kind, nurturing, grounded man. Both girls and boys need the positive male adult energy to have successful careers and relationships later on.

This week, give some affirmation and applause to the good men in your life who nurtured and supported you, or who give that love and positive male role modeling to your children. Stand-up guys are sometimes taken for granted, but they really shouldn't be. Strong, kind, loyal and devoted men are an incredible blessing, both to good women and to building a wonderful next generation. We honor you for defining what a good man is really like.

New York Times Article: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

An essay by writer/philosopher Alain De Botton from last Sunday's New York Times has great relationship advice with a healthy amount of skepticism about finding one right partner, and a realistic view about learning how to become mature, flexible and negotiate differences gracefully. Read the article here!

Between Mothers and Daughters

What is it about the mother/daughter relationship that makes it often so intense, whether intensely positive or negative? Why are women rarely neutral about their bond with their mothers?

One recent study of family relationship based on cell phone bills showed that for most older women, their most frequent daily calls were with their daughter, if they had one.

When I ask women in individual or couples counseling about the "life script" they got from their mother, useful information emerges. As an adult woman, the more you can understand about your mother, the more you can grow to understand about yourself. It is important to look behind the "mask" of the mother role. Understanding the woman she is---her background, her growing up years, her beliefs, and her relationships, may shed a great deal of light on how she mothered you.

Your own life may build from a foundation of her values, fears, and beliefs; or your life may be, in part, a reaction to your mother's. For example, a woman may react strongly to her mother playing a voiceless/childlike role with her husband, and in the daughter's own marriage she may be quite focused on not being taken advantage of.

In examining the life script you received about being a woman, consider the family your mother came from. Was she born into an advantaged or disadvantaged family? How many siblings were there to compete with for parental attention? Was the family stable, or did she deal with a great deal of change and instability? Were the children nurtured by anyone? What hopes and dreams did she have for her own life? Did she benefit from a good education, or is she a self-made woman? What are her beliefs about men, marriage, raising children, faith, and a woman's role in the family? How did she appear to you as a child? Was she joyful or joyless? Was she a strong woman, or a martyr?

The fit between your temperament and your mother's is an important factor in determining how close you are to her. Stella Chess, MD, has done extensive research to determine the factor of "goodness of fit" between a child's temperament and a parent's temperament. If it is not a very natural fit (for example if a daughter is very unstructured and spontaneous, while the mother is extremely structured and planned), then the mother's ability to accept the child's natural temperament, rather than "declare war" on it, is a critical factor in creating a loving, positive mother/daughter bond.

It has been said that it is primarily in the mother-child relationship that we learn how to love and be loved. What an incredible responsibility it is to be what psychologist Bruno Bettelheim termed a "good enough mother." A mother doesn't have to be perfect. Admitting your own mistakes, apologizing as needed, recognizing and honoring your daughter's own unique strengths and gifts, listening, and spending time together in enjoyable activities, are sure ways to strengthen a mother/daughter relationship.

What if you don't like the script you got from your mother? Then, as you become consciously aware of what her script was for you, you may choose to selectively rewrite it, just like a playwright rewrites a script. Writer Pam Finger says,"You do not have to be your mother unless she is who you want to be. You do not have to be your mother's mother, or even your grandmother's mother on your father's side. You may inherit their chins or their hips or their eyes, but you are not destined to become the women who came before you. You are not destined to live their lives.So if you inherit something, inherit their resilience. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

There can be difficult aspects of the mother/daughter relationship. Because we share our gender, mothers can impose strong messages about roles and relationships, even our relationship with our own body. Sometimes as mothers age, they have unresolved feelings stirred up by their daughters emerging into adulthood and asserting themselves. Developmentally, it is healthy for daughters in their teens and twenties to push back and reject some of who their mother is. Mothers need to stay grounded, patient, and give up control, as it is appropriate. (She may be back closer to you later in life). Some daughters sense a feeling of competitiveness between themselves and their mother.  A mother may have unrealized hopes and dreams for her younger self that she may project on her daughter.

As an emotionally mature woman of any age, it is possible to come to peace with your relationship with your mother. You can decide how you are like her, and in what ways you are different. You can determine what the boundary can safely be between the two of you. You can choose what you wish to ask of her and what you would like to give her.

Through our relationship with our mother, we can look behind us into our past. With our mother, we see our emotional roots and her roots with the woman who raised her. Through our relationship with our daughters, we can look into the future and see our dreams for them. We can anticipate the ways in which they will need to do this same sifting process of positive and negative scripts with us in time.

A key to coming to peace with your relationship with your mother is to begin to view her not just in her role as your mother, but as a woman in her own context. This shift helps to equalize the power between adult daughter and mother. When you make this shift, you can be free to construct a different relationship with your mother, being aware of your history with her, accepting what love and stability she can provide, and begin the lifelong task of "mothering" yourself.

Recently, I have been organizing closets at home, and ran across some heartfelt notes and drawings that my daughters made for me when there were little, and it touched me deeply. Children grow up and launch, but the enduring closeness between mothers and daughters, when it works, is among life's sweetest blessings. This week as we approach Mother's Day, I honor all those who seek to nurture, encourage, and mother to the best of their ability. It's a big job, but with the potential for great meaning. Mothering can be one of life's most transformational and complex experiences.

Family Therapy: Still Effective After All These Years

Times change, but family therapy has stayed relevant for families over time. Family therapy is empirically supported and clinically effective. Clients report marked improvements in relationships, functioning and emotional health. In the April 18, 2016 issue of Time Magazine, one reporter shares her own recent experience in family therapy. Read the Time article here.

When You Don't Get What You Want

Character is shaped and defined in the times in our lives when we don't get what we want. Part of being human is dealing with loss and disappointment. Whether you don't get in to the college of your choice, or your spouse dies prematurely, or your plans don't work out for a job, grad school, a relationship, loss is a part of our lives. There is usually no way to avoid it. All risks- including good ones, involve the potential of it not working out.

Learning how to feel and express the pain of the loss, including the sadness, anger, hurt, confusion and disappointment is healthy. Later, learning how to process the loss and grow through what happens is key to growing emotionally.

Have you ever noticed the differences in people you know who have survived and thrived despite difficulty and loss?

There are some qualities I really like that people are more likely to develop if they run into some setbacks and loss in their lives. These include being grateful rather than entitled, compassion for others, resiliency and developing perspective about what's really important. These are the unexpected gifts of working through not getting what you want.

When we can learn to stop blaming others, we grow.

When we learn to accept disappointment, work through the feelings and redirect our course and go on, we become resilient and inspire others.

When we understand loss, we develop a reverence for how fragile our lives are and appreciative for the people who truly matter.

When we realize that it is things not working out that can shapes our character, we can be made gentler and more tenderized by our experiences. We can become more sensitive to the struggles of others.

Loss, disappointment and not getting what we want are all teachers if we receive the lessons. Poet and philosopher Mark Nepo writes in his book Seven Thousand Ways to Listen (Simon and Schuster, 2012) that, "Sooner or later, everyone will face not getting what they want. How we respond to this unavoidable moment determines how much peace or agitation we will have in our lives. This is the moment that opens all others, for our acceptance of things as they are and not as would have them allows us to find our place in the stream of life. Free of our entitlements, we can discover that we are small fish in the stream and go about finding the current."

Not getting what you want? That makes you normal, and possibly better, if you let it.

Connections With Grandparents Stabilize Teens

It's rough being a teenager, but having a loving, involved grandparent really helps teens smoothly transition through these turbulent years. While teens are busy individuating and separating from parents as they need to do developmentally, grandparents can be a safe place to attach emotionally. Teens with close, loving relationships with a grandparent are likely to have fewer emotional and behavioral problems than teens without that attachment.

A recent study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel surveyed 1,405 teens ages 12 to 18, involved in a larger study. Teens who enjoyed a close relationship with both their parents and grandparents experienced the lowest amount of adjustment difficulties on questionnaires measuring hyperactivity, and emotional distress like excessive worrying, social skills problems, fighting and bullying. The study was published this past year in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry online.

While grandparents have long been considered by family therapists as a help to teens who are having conflict with one or both parents, this study suggests that there are benefits to teens of being close to grandparents even when the teen is well connected with parents. Teens who were securely attached to both parents and grandparents had the least problems. Being close to grandparents didn't seem to help as much if the teens weren't close to their own parents. For teens who indicated a moderate or a strong bond with their parent, the close relationship with a grandparent played an increasingly strong role in decreasing adjustment difficulties.

In my counseling practice, I always encourage people to make the most of the relationship they can have with their grandchildren and other young people. Being a grandparent is one of those interesting roles in life that is highly variable. You can make much of your emotional contribution to the role or none, it's up to your willingness and your adult children's openness to having you involved. If you don't have children or grandchildren, consider reaching out to other teens who may need your stabilizing influence and loving concern.

I can remember my parents' house being a wonderful haven for our children when they were teens; a great place to learn to cook, do art, try gardening, watch classic movies or go for a swim with Gram and Gramps. As it works out, research backs up my observations that grandparents and teenaged grandchildren can provide meaningful connections to each other and memories that can last a lifetime. It's good to be needed.