I Don't Like My Middle Schooler Right Now (and I feel terrible about it)

Why does the same screen-time argument happen every single night? You say it’s time to get off. They say, “One more minute.” You repeat yourself. They push back. And somehow everybody ends up going to bed annoyed. In this episode of Middle Years, I’m talking about the part of technology that wears so many parents down. It's not the screen itself. It's the fight about the screen. We talk about: why screen-time conflict is often a design problem, not just a discipline problemwhat gets activated...

What do you do when your middle schooler loses her friend group and there is absolutely nothing you can do to make the lunch table go back to the way it was? In this episode of Middle Years, I answer a mom whose eighth-grade daughter has been left out and is heartbroken. We talk about: why friendship loss in middle school is real griefthe difference between the social problem and the story your child may start telling herself about what it meanswhy “I got left out” can quietly become “I am le...

Let me tell you who so often ends up sitting across from a trauma therapist twenty years later: a strong and resilient person. They're the kid who never made a fuss. The kid nobody worried about because she never gave anyone a reason to. Somewhere along the way, we flattened "resilient" into handles hard things without needing anyone. And from the outside, you cannot tell the difference between a kid who is strong and a kid who has quietly concluded that strong is the only option they have. I...

Your middle schooler says he’s not lonely. So why are you still worried? In this episode of Middle Years with Bridget KerMorris, I answer a mom whose 12-year-old son is well-liked at school, has ADHD, and rarely reaches out to friends outside of school. She’s wondering whether to trust that he’s genuinely content or worry that difficulty maintaining friendships will catch up with him later. We talk about: why the question isn’t “does he have enough friends?”the hidden executive-function load ...

Your middle schooler says “leave me alone,” slams the door, or falls apart the second they see you. It can feel like rejection but what if it’s actually a hidden reach? In this episode of Middle Years with Bridget KerMorris, I’m sharing one of the most powerful ideas from my recent workshop, Your Middle Schooler Is Secretly Obsessed With You: the backward glance. That little look your toddler used to give you from across the playground never really disappeared. It just changed form. Now it mi...