Advice for parent of a new middle schooler?

My oldest son started 6th grade this year. He seems to like it just fine, but I’m finding it a big adjustment. I know middle school is all about getting a lot less handholding, but it just feels like I get no information anymore about what is going on at the school.

He often misses the assignment of homework. I don’t know what to do about this except keep telling him to write it down when a teacher tells them there’s homework.

It seems like there’s lots of extracurricular activities, but the only way to find out about them is to be listening to the morning announcements, which he has a difficult time hearing. I can’t encourage him to get involved in stuff if I never know it’s happening.

The school has a website, but stuff tends to get on there after it would be helpful to know about it.

Any advice you can give me about this stage of parenting is appreciated!

I’m on our middle school website every day to check. Some teachers are better than others at making sure things go on there.

To some extent, the best advice I have is a time machine, where you start prepping them for the brave new world of “the teacher isn’t there to babysit you” in elementary school. Since that isn’t possible, make sure your kid has a planner where they write down everything, have conversations with the teachers regularly and let them know your kid is having adjustment issues.

Middle school is the great, because it’s the time to learn from your mistakes. Yes not turning in your homework will cause your grade to go down…a lot.

But this is the time for them to learn about consequences, before they really count. Making a D in history in the 6th grade is not going to keep you out of Harvard.

Not learning this lesson and making a D in 10th grade history just might keep you out of the college you are really interested in.

One challenge I remember with my daughter was that it took her a while to figure out that each teacher had a different method of assigning homework. One wrote it upper left corner on the white board every day, another had a different system etc etc.

Eventually she figured out that nothing on that corner of the whiteboard with a different teacher did not mean no homework!

The hardest part of the middle school transition is stepping back and letting your kid falter a bit while he figures it out. Don’t be surprised if his grades fall (a lot) for 6th grade, he’ll get it together by 7th.

This is the year for him to learn how to get homework assignments and connect with extra curricular activities without his mom’s help.

The Kiddo is in 7th grade this year and oh, what a difference from 6th grade. I agree with those who say sixth grade is the time for kids to learn how to be more independent.

Kiddo received NC (no credit; they don’t assign grades lower than a C) one quarter last year in math for not doing homework. We had told him what the consequences were for low grades and he suffered them…no electronic entertainment (video games; computer; TV) until his grade was brought up to at least a C. He still struggled to remember to write assignments in his book, but he did much better.

This year is a complete change…he comes home, has a snack, gets to his homework right away. First quarter grades were 4 A’s and a B. He says he learned his lesson last year.

I think that keeping communications open and not getting mad is really important. Does your son have a homework notebook? Our school distributes them at the beginning of the year, but you can find them anywhere. Last year, I started having the Kiddo write down something for each class. If there was not homework assigned he needed to write “none” so that I know he checked. It seemed to help.

Also, have your son get the number of at least one friend in each class. That way, if he does forget to write it down, he can call the friend for that class and check to see if there is homework.

Does your son have an advisor or homeroom teacher? My son’s school has the kids with the same advisor for all three years of middle school. Their advisor is also their homeroom teacher. I keep in touch with my son’s advisor from time to time.

Oh, and another I found that worked was being emotionally neutral when he screwed up. It’s hard, but it seemed to make more of an impact than getting angry. I started responding in a very matter-of-fact tone to things. “It looks like you aren’t turning in your math homework on time. I’m sorry you will be missing your favorite TV show for the next couple of weeks.” End of statement, no more discussion. For some reason, this really affected him more than the getting angry did.

Hope things start going better for you guys!

I teach middle school, and we do nothing but hold hands, I agree with giving them room to learn from their mistakes; a D won’t keep them out of the college of their choice. Stanford has never called me about a kid’s seventh-grade academics. I am surprised at the number of kids whose parents come in, meet with the teachers, want to set up all kinds of special arrangements where I write down the assignments for the student, or they come in once a week and clean out his locker, or whatever and the kid just sits there. When I’m working harder than the kid there’s a problem, so that’s when I back way off and let the student sink until he wakes up and realizes he has to put some effort in, too. I’m sure that’s not what’s going on with your student, but here sixth-grade is elementary and seventh is the learning year. Let him sink a bit, but not so far he can’t work his way out. You want him to get organized, but not get retained!

The telephone is your son’s best friend. If he forgets a homework assignment, just have him call another kid in the class and ask him what the homework is. I remember in sixth grade, there was this one girl who never ever wrote the homework down. She was pretty popular, and I think by calling a classmate every night it actually helped her with making friends.

I like this. Kids are good at tuning out ranting and hollering, but a calm, steady stare really helps communication. (Not to mention: it’s better than ranting and hollering!)

OP, I concur with the others: this is the best time for your son to start learning from his own mistakes, before the consequences can really matter. Let him get involved in the extracurricular stuff that interests him, not what momma pushes (sorry, “encourages”) him to do.
Why does he have a difficult time hearing the morning announcements? Those are crucial. Does he have ear problems, or is the classroom too noisy, or the loudspeaker too quiet, or …?

He says the class is too noisy, though he has also said he thinks he has hearing problems. I am skeptical of this, but we are getting a hearing test.

Thanks for the insightful advice everybody!

My daughter is in 8th grade this year, and she’s finally got her act together with homework. It helps a lot that 4 of her classes are good for high school credit, though.

It won’t help with homework, but I would suggest that you sign up for the PTA listserv and, if your school has one, the informal parent listserv. Also, if your school district has a listserv, I suggest you get on that too. You’ll get a lot of emails, but it really helps to have a source of information that’s not filtered by your kid.

Joining the PTA is not a terrible thing. Even if you don’t think your personality will work with your local group, the people in the PTA - especially the ones who’ve been at the school for awhile - are a great source of information. So go to a couple of meetings and network (and volunteer to do stuff).

After-school activities should be advertised somewhere in the school, he could go to the guidance counselors office, or the front office and ask for a flyer. Depending on when your school year started, it may not be too late to join. At my daughter’s school, the first practice isn’t until Oct 4th.

Talk with him and try to figure out what might help with this. Would a separate small notebook for writing down homework assignments help? The problem could be that he doesn’t write down the assignments, or it could be that he can’t find where he wrote down the assignments when he gets home.

When you grow up, they (college professors, bosses, people who send you bills, etc) often don’t care how you remember to do something, they only care that it gets done. It’s a good skill to be able to figure out alternative ways to do something that you find the standard way hard to do.

In elementary school, they do more hand-holding, more telling you the way to do stuff like remember to do homework. They’ll tell you stuff like whether you should use a spiral notebook or a three-ring binder. In middle school and more so later on in high school, they do less of that. That’s a two-edged sword. It’s really helpful if the way they taught you to do stuff in elementary school is difficult for you, because it means you can find a method that works better for you. The downside is that you do have to figure out by yourself a way to do these things. It took some of us a while to realize that we don’t have to do things the way we were told to in elementary school any more, if that way doesn’t work for us.

I’m terrible at keeping a three-ring binder neat. If I have to keep a three-ring binder, it will generally be in no discernible order, and have all kinds of handouts stuck in random places in it (I’m going to punch holes in them, someday). I do better with a spiral notebook or a composition book, where the medium keeps stuff in order for me. I tried for many years to keep three-ring binders, though, because my elementary school teachers insisted that I do so, and I thought I needed to learn to keep a three-ring binder. It never worked. Fortunately, after I graduated high school (yes, some of us are a bit slow on the uptake), I figured out that I was wasting my time and energy trying to keep a three-ring binder organized, and that nobody would really care if I gave up trying. I liked school a lot better, after that.

There’s an even bigger lesson here, one that I didn’t figure out till I got to grad school. It’s better to work with your strengths than to try and work on your weaknesses. Instead of trying to eliminate your weaknesses, acknowledge them and try to find ways to work around them and get done what you need to do. It’s generally a more efficient use of your time and energy to get better at something you’re good at than it is to try to get good at something you’re bad at.

At least, this was the way things were for me. Maybe this has changed, now that the Earth’s crust has cooled and all.

ETA: Something you should be aware of as a parent is that if somebody’s going to get depression, it often hits around puberty. Be on the lookout for signs of that, especially if there are depressed people in your family.

The sex talk, if you haven’t started talking with him about it already, can’t wait any longer. Nor should vaccinating him against HPV or hepatitis B, if you’re going to do that. Some middle-school kids do have sex, or experience pressure to have sex. Just telling him “Don’t do it” or getting upset if he talks about sex won’t cut it.

I do too and it’s quite true with 6th grade. In 7th grade, I try not to hold their hands with things as much as possible, but 6th grade is a major learning year for middle school.

I tell my 7th graders that 6th grade is elementary in a middle school building. 7th Grade is middle school.