The Worst Years of Our Lives

Source: Benjamin Stoddert Middle School, Temple Hills, Maryland. Carol M. Highsmith, 2011. LC-HS503-6048. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

The middle school years have a well-deserved reputation as a time of cliques, drama, backstabbing, ridicule, bullying, and total awkwardness, when emotional outbursts and panic attacks peak.

Being cool or popular assume heightened importance. So does fitting in. Conversely, embarrassment and humiliation become intense fears and recurrent realities.

Why are the middle school years typically the worst years in a person’s life?

The answer: These years are a time of abrupt and profound transition, and a period of profound change, physiologically, emotionally, cognitively, and socially.

Popular attention tends to focus on the hormonal changes associated with the onset of puberty. And there is no question that middle schools go through a series of physiological and cognitive developments with profound affective implications.

Self-consciousness increases and the young begin to separate themselves psychologically from their parents. Sensibilities evolve, as middle schools began to experience a host of adult emotions – including the first stirrings of romantic love, lust, and the desire to be loved, admired, and respected – but before the young have developed realistic expectations or a firm sense of self.

Meanwhile, differentials in rates of physical and social maturation divide middle schoolers into a clearly defined hierarchy, with the more athletic, developed, or grown up in appearance at the top.

But it is not enough to focus on the physical or the hormonal. Institutional and social changes are at least as important. We mustn’t minimize the psychological significance of the change that the young undergo, as fifth or sixth or seventh move from student-centered elementary schools into much larger institutions that typically combine multiple elementary schools. Academically, students shift from a single teacher or only a handful, to classes each of which has a separate instructor and far more rigorous academic demands.

As a result, older relationships are disrupted, insecurity mounts, and jealousies and rivalries abound.

Loosely knit friendship networks and play groups now reorganize into peer groups. Friendship itself – now defined of personal loyalty and intense emotional bonding – grows in importance. At the same time, cross-gender relations undergo profound changes, as consciousness about the nature of these relationships mounts.

Fortunately, precisely became the middle school years are a time of transition, its ordeals inevitably comes to an end. In high school, the clearly defined middle-school hierarchy splinters, as students gravitate into separate circles based on shared interests, styles, and aspirations. Extracurricular options expand, giving students opportunities to develop or embrace alternate identities.

But for too many, the miseries of middle school remain a lasting scar and a persistent source of insecurity and self-doubt.