Middle School Friendships Are Practice (and that's actually good news)

What if your middle schooler's friendship struggles aren't a sign that something is wrong?

What if they're exactly where they're supposed to be?

In this special episode of Middle Years, I'm sharing one of the most important sections from my Social Lives of Middle Schoolers workshop.

You'll hear the big reframe that changes how I think about middle school friendships:

Friendships are where kids practice. Home is where they're safe.

From there, we dive into the very first shift every parent needs to make before trying to help their child through friendship drama.

Because when our child gets left out, ignored, or hurt by a friend, it doesn't just activate them. It activates us, too.

In this episode, we'll talk about:

• Why middle school friendships are supposed to be messy.
• The difference between what happened and the meaning we make of it.
• How your own middle school experiences can quietly shape the way you respond to your child's.
• Why your steadiness helps keep one hard friendship moment from becoming your child's identity.

This episode is an invitation to stop trying to fix every friendship problem and start tending to something even more important: your child's sense of belonging.

Ready to build a relationship that can weather the middle school years and beyond? Check out my Unbreakable Bond resource (click here). It's designed to help you create the kind of connection that lasts through disagreements, growing independence, and all the beautiful, messy moments in between.

I hope you'll also click here to find me on Instagram.

Click here to be the first to hear about upcoming workshops.

Transcript

Here's the big reframe I want to give you . . . the one idea I hope you carry out of here today. 

Friendships at this age are where kids practice. Home is where they're safe.

Let me unpack both halves, because together they change everything. 

When I say, friendships are where they practice . . . What I'm saying is, middle school friendships are not the final draft of your child's social life. They are practice relationships. 

Let's dig into what that means.

Middle school is the first time your child really starts learning to lean on someone who isn't family.

To let a friend be a soft place, someone they can rely on and be known by. 

And the friend they're learning to lean on is another kid, learning that exact same thing at the exact same time, before either one has any idea how to do that yet. 

So of course they reach for each other and miss. 

We're looking at two 12-year-olds who are both still under construction, both brand-new at being a real friend to someone, 

Of course they drop the ball sometimes. Of course they bump into each other and get it wrong. 

Truly, friendship is hard enough at forty. Let alone at thirteen. 

So when a friendship goes sideways, here's what I want you to hear: that is not a failure. It is not a red flag. Nobody is the villain. Everybody is a work in progress. This is just what practice looks like.

Middle school friendships are unavoidably bumpy. I think you know exactly what I mean . . .

It's the best friend since kindergarten who suddenly has a new best friend. 

The group chat that lights up at 9pm and someone's been left out 

Sometimes it's your kid being left out, 

And sometimes, if we're honest, your kid is the one leaving someone out. 

It's when our kid climbs into the car and says, "I didn't have anyone to sit with today." 

If you're living any of that right now, your stomach probably just tightened as I listed it. 

I know. 

It is genuinely hard to watch. 

And here's what might offer you some relief: I am not going to hand you a different move for each one of those. 

This is in part because the specifics change week to week — 

The friend who's the whole problem in September is old news by November. 

But mostly it's because underneath every single one of those situations, your kid is asking the same quiet question. 

And that question is the thing you can actually tend to.

So this is the part that takes the pressure off. 

Because we live in a world that puts enormous weight on our kids' friendships — and I don't think that's wrong. 

Friendships matter. 

But if friendships are the practice, two beginners, bound to stumble, 

They can't be the thing that holds your child steady. 

Something else in their life has to be the steady thing and that brings us to the second half of the reframe . . . 

Home is where they're safe. 

In attachment research, there's a name for this: the secure base.

It's the safe, known place a child ventures out from and comes back to.

And here's what makes home different from everything happening out in your kid's social world:

It's the one place in their life with a relationship that isn't between two people both still figuring it out.

It's them, still under construction,

And a grown, steady adult. That's you.

Which means home is where a healthy relationship actually gets modeled.

Where they're welcome and liked no matter what happened out there.

Now, I want to say something to the part of you that just went, "Wait. My kid barely talks to me. Am I even that for them?"

Because I know some of you went there.

Being a secure base is not about your kid telling you everything.

It's not about staying calm all the time, or having a home with no slammed doors.

A secure base isn't a performance you're passing or failing.

It's a direction you keep turning toward.

The steady adult who keeps showing up, keeps the door open, keeps coming back.

You don't have to already be it.

Every single shift we're about to walk through is how you build it.

And one more thing, because it offers a lens to look through for almost everything you're going to see this year . . .

What looks like a friendship problem is almost always a belonging question. 

Your middle schooler isn't only wondering, "Do I have friends?" 

Underneath, they're asking the biggest questions a human asks: 

Where do I belong? 

Who is safe? 

Who am I when I'm with other people? 

When you see the questions underneath the question, everything changes. 

It means you can stop scrambling to fix the friendship, which often isn't even possible, 

And start tending to something deeper.

There is such an opportunity here for parents.

To make sure your child still knows, all the way down, that they belong. 

You may not be able to fix the friendship. 

But you can always tend to the belonging. 

So how do we actually do that? 

I'm glad you asked.

Let's walk through 5 shifts that make this possible.

Here's the map, so you know where we're headed: 

First, what's coming up in you. 

Second, how you become the place where you kid doesn't have to audition to belong. 

Third, repair — both ways. 

Fourth, reading the kid in front of you — 

Seeing their temperament, the way their mind works, who they are in this moment — and leading from what you see. 

And fifth, the long view: handing your child the ability to read relationships for themselves. 

They build on each other, so let's take them one at a time.

Now, I know why you're here. 

You love your kid and if they're having a hard time . . . every instinct you've got is pointing straight at wanting to know how to help them. 

So it might feel strange that the very first shift points back at you. 

Stay with me because, I promise, this is the fastest way to actually help them. 

We'll spend a few minutes here and then every single thing after this is about the child in front of you. 

This just happens to be the part that makes the rest of the shifts possible.

And I want to be crystal clear about what I'm not asking you to do. 

You've been told a thousand times to just stay calm. 

And if it was that easy to switch into calm mode . . . you would have done it by now. 

But, the truth is, It's nearly impossible to feel calm when your kid is hurting.

That's exactly what sent me looking for what could actually reliably work for parents (including me). 

And here's what I found: it isn't forced calm, and it isn't becoming a more patient, less-like-you version of yourself. 

Your child does not need you endlessly calm.

And they do not want a different parent. 

They want you.

The funny one, the creative one, the one who gets fired up about things. 

So this shift isn't about muting who you are. 

It's about something quieter and far more doable.

Being honest with yourself, and giving yourself the same compassion you'd hand anyone else you love. 

Not calm. 

Honest.

Here's why we start inward. 

When your child's social life gets hard, you get activated. Your kid gets left out of the birthday party, and suddenly you're not a 45-year-old parent anymore — you're 12. 

You're back at your own lunch table. 

Your own exclusion comes rushing up out of nowhere. 

Most of us know this already. 

We say things like, "Middle school was brutal for me, so this is really hitting me hard." 

And I want to gently complicate that because I think it's a bit of a red herring. 

Here's what I've come to believe: it's usually not the event from your childhood that's driving your reaction. It's the meaning you made of it. 

Two kids can get left out of the exact same party. 

One walks away thinking, "Huh, that stung," and moves on. 

The other walks away and quietly concludes: "I'm the kind of person people leave out. There's something wrong with me." 

Same event. 

Completely different meaning. 

And it's the meaning, not the event, that they carry for 30 years. 

So when your child's social pain lights you up inside, the work isn't just "manage my old wound." 

The work is to realize: I once made meaning out of a moment like this, and that meaning shaped me. 

And right now, my own child is standing in front of me making meaning out of their moment . . . in real time. 

That is enormous. 

Because it means you're not powerless. 

You are standing next to your child at the exact moment they're deciding what their pain means about them. 

And you get to help write that meaning.

It's an incredible opportunity, but here's the part nobody tells you, and it's where the actual work is: 

You cannot do that from a foggy place. 

You can't help your kid sort out their story while you're tangled up in yours and pretending you're not. 

So the move, the first real tool I'm giving you today, is this: be honest with yourself first. 

And I mean specifically honest, not vaguely honest. 

Because when your kid tells you they ate lunch alone, "I feel terrible for them" is not honest enough. 

It's too blurry to be useful. 

Get precise. 

Are you scared that this is who they're going to be? 

Are you angry at those kids, or at their parents? 

Are you embarrassed and then ashamed of being embarrassed? 

Are you grieving for the little kid who had a best friend down the street and didn't need anything from you but a snack? 

Is some of it just annoyance because it's the fourth night in a row and you are tired?

All of that can be true at once. None of it makes you a bad parent. 

It makes you a person who loves someone.

And then the second half, after you've been honest with yourself . . . 

Sort it. 

And here's the question that does the sorting, it's the one I want you to actually carry out of here: 

When your kid's friendship stuff comes up, are you talking to the middle schooler in front of you or the middle schooler you used to be? 

Because those are two different children. 

There's the 12-year-old at your table right now and there's the 12-year-old you were, who still lives somewhere in your chest. 

When you haven't sorted them out, you end up parenting the wrong kid. 

You respond with the size and shape of your old pain, and your child feels the intensity of a wound they didn't cause and can't understand. 

That's not a small thing. 

That is the difference between reacting and leading. 

And notice . . . you don't have to resolve your old story. 

That's not today's job, and honestly it's a longer piece of work. 

You just have to know it's in the room. 

Named, it's information. 

Unnamed, it's the thing driving the car. 

So let's actually do it. 

Think of the last time friendship stuff for your kid stung you. 

Type into the chat the specific feeling that came up . . . 

Maybe scared. 

Furious. 

Embarrassed. 

Sad. 

Tired. 

Worried 

Irritated. 

Try to be specific with whatever it actually was.

Look at that list. Every single one of those is written by a parent who adores their kid. 

And every one of you just did the thing most people skip entirely. 

Because here's what you've just bought yourself: an opportunity. 

Right here, in this ordinary, hard little moment, you get to help your child write a truer story about who they are.

And now you can do it steadily, because you know what's yours and what's theirs. 

When your kid comes home and says "nobody likes me," our instinct is to fix the fact: "that's not true, what about so-and-so." 

But the deeper move is to interrupt the meaning. 

To make sure that "I got left out today" does not quietly harden into "I am unlikable." 

One is a Tuesday. The other is an identity. 

Your steadiness is what keeps the Tuesday from becoming the identity and your steadiness is what your kid has that maybe you didn't at their age. 

That right there is what I promised you at the start, keeping one hard moment from becoming the whole story. 

That's what this is. 

This is how it's done.

So far we've been talking about the meaning you make when your kid's social life gets hard. 

But your child is making meaning too in real time, right alongside you. 

There's one story they make that's among the most painful, and I want to flag it because it hides in plain sight: 

Sometimes the kid who needs you most is the one who shoves you away the hardest.

Something shifts in adolescence: 

Your child becomes acutely aware of rejection in a way they weren't before. 

Social pain at this age is new, and it's hot, one of the most intense things they've ever felt. 

And that bigness makes them feel exposed. 

So the very moment they most need someone to help them carry it, it feels like too much to hand over. 

If I bring this to my mom, she'll worry. She'll make it a thing.

And so it stays inside, where a story starts to form: 

I'm too much. 

If they saw how much I need them, they'd know I'm a burden.

I want to be clear: you did not teach them that. 

You've spent their whole life telling them they're wanted. 

This is the developmental age doing it . . . not you.

So when your kid is prickly, or shut down, or slamming the door, that's the story underneath. 

And a kid pushing you away is going to bring something up in you. 

So I want to say what most people won't, you can most certainly take it personally . . . 

Of course it hits you personally.

This is your kid. 

Just don't take it too seriously (unless safety's involved).

Because the version slamming that door is not the final word on anything. 

You name what came up, you sort it, and then you don't have to chase them down or pull away from them in these moments when what they're carrying feels too vulnerable to share. 

You just stay. 

Which is the one thing that quietly tells them: 

You are not too much for me.

That's the whole of Shift One. 

Before you tend to their world, tend to what's coming up in yours. 

Be specific, name it to yourself, sort what's yours from what's theirs. 

Name it. Sort it. Then lead.