My kids and notes: Year 11.7
October 14, 2026
Life with JB
The start of middle school has felt a lot like the time you spend holding your breath as you creak your way up the curve of a rollercoaster, anticipating the drop. I can’t tell what the drop is going to be but the fact that our most social family member still hasn’t established even the start of any promising friendships worries me. There’s always been a bit of a shuffle of friends and they’ve had the misfortune of as several besties move away in a row, one after another, along with the near suffocating presence of drama-inclined classmates. But they’ve also always managed to form some sort of social circle that works for them. It’s never taken this long before, though. Ironic that the one time they might be taking their time forming new friendships, it’s making me nervous rather than glad that they’re possibly pacing themself and observing people before befriending them. I used to wish they’d be a little more circumspect about declaring friendship because it’s frustrating when yet another so called friend turns out to be a crappy person. Now, maybe because middle school is expected to be so hard socially, I’m twisting my whiskers when they’re not so quick to make friends.
Everyone I know, teachers and parents who have been through it recently, have said that the kids are mostly terrible in their middle school arc. Even the most adjusted and well socialized kid we know went silent and communicated in single syllables with his parents for two years even if he didn’t engage in any of the other “lost hold of my brains” antics that his cohort reveled in. He didn’t even think they were funny, he found them intensely irritating. But his answers to every question were also: Fine. Stuff. (He’s recovered now. He’s got a lot of opinions to share, though he never did hesitate to share those with us before.)
Life with Smol Acrobat
We saw Smol Acrobat standing up for themself in real time the other day. At a birthday party, the kids were all lined up and the line rippled as the front of the line kids took a hasty unexpected step backwards. The kid behind SmolAc in line started to cry and yell SmolAc pushed me! SmolAc clearly replied, no, it was the line that was pushing (and we all got pushed).
Precious Moments
SmolAc with pomp and fervor: Tonight! We celebrate! Da zoooon!
JB, *exasperated* it’s “tonight, we steal the moon!”
SmolAc, trying to guess my age: are you 16? Are you ONE HUNDRED???
Haha, “fine” “Stuff”… DC2 will occasionally give us that when zie is feeling grumpy.
DC2 had kind of a dearth of middle school friends (half of them went to another middle school) but went back to being a social butterfly in high school. This year’s social circle is all going to graduate at the end of the year though, so who knows what next year will hold. The smart kids from hir own grade and the next grade up taking classes with hir this year are kind of obnoxious (“why do you study? *I* don’t need to study”) and zie hasn’t really been in classes other than orchestra with the non-obnoxious smart kids in hir grade for whatever reason, but maybe next year. And several of her other friends have dropped from AP to advanced or regular, so they may never see each other again.
Gosh that’s a long time to go.. JB keeps saying they don’t think they fit in and I think that IS a very middle school thing but I don’t know that their psyche could handle this for 3 years.
UGH THOSE kids. I went to school with those “I don’t need to study” kids (but in my case, they were all lying, they were just being superior snotfaces).