I Genuinely Don’t Understand Why This Is a Crisis (when your middle schooler gets completely stuck on something small)

When your middle schooler is melting down over a stained sweatshirt, a messy room, or something that seems objectively small, it can be hard not to think: Why is this such a crisis?

And then the parenting questions start.

Is this anxiety? Am I making it worse if I help? Should I be teaching them to tolerate the discomfort? Could this be something like OCD? Or am I overreacting by even wondering?

In this episode of Middle Years with Bridget KerMorris, Bridget walks through how to take your child’s distress seriously without rushing to explain, minimize, or diagnose it.

You’ll learn:

• why behavior is information, but not yet an explanation
• how the Steady + Connected Parenting™ “filing cabinet” helps us understand the meaning kids may be making from an experience
• what happens when your child’s urgency becomes your urgency
• how to use the discernment dials to track intensity, flexibility, frequency, and interference over time
• what A.R.E. Parenting™ can look like in the actual hard moment
• how to get CURIOUS later, when your child is able to reflect
• how to REPAIR when the pattern turns into a fight
• what OCD actually is, how it differs from simply wanting things “just right,” and when it makes sense to seek professional support

Most importantly, this episode offers a middle ground between dismissing your child’s distress and letting their distress run the whole family.

The behavior is information. It is not yet an explanation.

You don’t need certainty in order to stay connected while you figure out what the information is telling you.

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

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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.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Middle Years. I'm Bridget Kermoris. If you're parenting a middle schooler, you're in the right place. Each week on this podcast, I'll answer one real question from a parent who feels stuck, has tried everything they can think of, and who isn't sure what to do next. Together we'll look beyond short-term fixes and focus on what matters most, your relationship with your child. Before jumping in, I want you to hear something. I'm not worried about your middle schooler because they have you, the best parent in the world for them. The person I worry about is you. I promise you, there is joy to be had in the middle school years, and I'm here to help you find it. There is a particular kind of parenting moment where your child is acting like a sweatshirt stain is a five alarm fire, and you are standing there thinking, I love you deeply, and I also genuinely do not understand why this is a crisis. And then because you're a thoughtful parent, your brain goes somewhere else entirely. Is this anxiety? Am I making it worse if I help? Is this something I need to worry about? That's exactly where today's question lives. Two quick things before the question. First, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. This show is coaching and education, not therapy, and nothing in this episode is a diagnosis of anyone's child. Second, if this show has been helpful to you, would you take two seconds right now and hit follow wherever you're listening? Following does two things. It makes sure the next episode shows up for you automatically, usually right when your week needs one, and it tells the app to show this podcast to other parents of middle schoolers, which means you're quietly helping a tired parent you will never meet. Two seconds, it matters more than you'd think. Okay, here's what this parent wrote. My middle schooler sometimes gets really stuck when something feels messy, out of place, or not quite right. It can be something small, a pile of things left out, or a mark on a favorite piece of clothing. Most of the time she can move on, but every so often it becomes incredibly urgent. She gets upset, wants it fixed immediately, and has a hard time doing anything else until it is. Those moments are hard for me too. I get pulled into the intensity. Sometimes I get frustrated, and then we both end up upset. I've wondered whether it happens more when other areas of her life feel unsettled, especially socially, and whether making something feel, quote, right gives her a little sense of control. Honestly, sometimes my mind goes to bigger places. Is this anxiety? Could it be OCD? And then I wonder if I'm overreacting just for thinking that. How do I support her without either dismissing how distressed she feels or getting swept into the urgency with her? And how do I know when this is something we can keep working with at home versus something I should get more support around? I love this question. Here's what I hope you take with you after listening to this episode: a way to read what's happening without diagnosing it, what to actually do in the moment, and how to know when it's time for more support. All right, let's go. The first move is to resist the urge to explain this too quickly, because from the outside, a lot of very different internal experiences look kind of identical. And we see the behavior and immediately tell ourselves as parents a story about it, right? Maybe she's anxious, maybe it's sensory, maybe there are obsessive compulsive symptoms, maybe she's just depleted today, and this is the thing her brain got stuck on. And I want to pause on the worry this mom was brave enough to say out loud, could it be OCD? Because so many parents carry that exact question quietly and then feel like they're overreacting just for having it. You're not. Wondering is paying attention, but wondering is not diagnosing. OCD is a real mental health condition, and we are not going to diagnose it from one story about, say, a stained sweatshirt. Not on this podcast and not in your laundry room. I'll come back to what OCD actually is before we're done. I promise. But with that said, we also don't want to wave away the intensity just because we can't explain it yet. That's the middle ground I want you to get comfortable occupying. I can take my child's distress seriously without becoming certain about what it means. Here's the line I want you to carry out of this episode. The behavior is information. It is not yet an explanation. Two kids can have the exact same behavior for completely different reasons. So instead of rushing from information to conclusion, we're going to get curious about how she is experiencing it. And this is where I want to hand you the first piece of my framework. I call it the filing cabinet. In Steady Plus Connected Parenting, the filing cabinet is my picture for how experiences become beliefs. Kids file every experience away with a little caption attached. What does this say about me? And in middle school, those files tend to land in one of three drawers, three big questions. Am I enough and do I belong? Am I safe? Do I have power here? The mark on the sweatshirt is what happened. The mark doesn't tell us what it means to her. Maybe it lands in the safety drawer. Something feels wrong. Off. I can't settle while this is like this. Maybe the power drawer. Life feels unpredictable. And here's one thing she can do something about. I can fix this. Or the enough and belonging drawer. What if somebody notices? What will people think? And hear me, those are possibilities, not answers, because we learn a compelling parenting idea and suddenly we're standing in the laundry room thinking, ah, yes, clearly the stain has activated her belonging wound. No, well, maybe. We don't know yet, and we don't have to. She can teach us over time. Same with this mom's hunch about friendships. Social stress absolutely makes everything else louder. That's worth noticing. But I noticed these happen around friendship stress. That's an observation. She's cleaning because she can't control her friendships. It's a conclusion. Staying in the space between them a little longer, that's what's going to be helpful here. We will get curious with her, but not while she's staring at the stain, feeling like the world has ended. So first, let's look at what happens to you when her urgency enters the room. Her urgency, it becomes your urgency. This is where update comes in. It's the pillar of my framework about a parent's inner world, noticing what's getting activated in you before you respond. So your own fear or history doesn't quietly drive the interaction. Because when your child feels like something has to happen right now, her urgency becomes yours astonishingly fast. She's saying, This needs to be fixed. Help me right now. And your brain is going, Oh no, is this anxiety? If I help, am I reinforcing something? If I don't, am I being insensitive? Suddenly you're not responding to a sweatshirt anymore. You're responding to everything you're afraid the moment might mean. Update is not asking you to be perfectly calm. Your child does not need an endlessly regulated parent speaking in a soothing voice while internally wanting to launch the laundry basket out the window. You are a human in a real relationship with your child. Her intensity affects you. Of course it does. Update isn't asking you to erase that reality. It's asking you to notice what walked into the room with you. Maybe your fear jumps 10 years ahead. If she can't tolerate a stain at 12, what does 18 look like? And when we respond to the imagined 18-year-old instead of the actual 12-year-old, our response gets much bigger than the moment requires. So update here might be one internal sequence. I can feel how urgent this is for her. And now I feel urgent too. I don't have to figure out the entire meaning of this right now. That sentence said to yourself internally, that matters because you cannot make a good discernment call while fear has the steering wheel. And your steadiness isn't only a service to your child. If you feel overwhelmed, that deserves compassion too. Now that you've given yourself the care you deserve and you understand internally what is coming up for you in these moments, we can ask a much more useful question. What kind of moment is this? Parents get trapped between two extremes. This is probably nothing, or something must be wrong. There's so much room between those two places. So instead of an on-off switch, I want to give you dials, degree, pattern, and impact over time. Okay, think of it this way. Literally think of a dial. Dial number one, intensity. Is she annoyed by the mess, distressed, or completely consumed until something changes? Dial two, flexibility. Can she hear will deal with this after dinner, even if she hates that answer? Or is there only one possible outcome and it has to happen now? Dial three, flexibility. Once every few months on a rough day, it's different from every day. Dial four, interference. Is this costing her sleep, school, friendships, getting out the door? Is she spending real time cleaning, checking, fixing? And dial five, the one parents missed. How much is the family reorganizing itself around this? Are siblings learning not to touch certain things? Is everybody walking around trying to prevent the next moment? None of these dials gives you a diagnosis. The point is not to turn you into a mental health clinician. The dials move us from is this normal or abnormal to okay, let me kind of explore how much distress, rigidity, and interference am I actually seeing. They also protect us from a subtle trap, minimizing something because we can explain it. She's sensitive, can be true, while this is still taking up a lot more of her life than you want it to. The reverse is true too. One dramatic moment does not automatically mean a mental health concern. Middle schoolers, they tend to run hot. Sometimes they're inconsolable at four in the afternoon, and by seven, they're eating cereal and watching a show. And so the family did not just survive an international incident involving a sweatshirt. That is also a very typical middle school experience. So we watch the dials over time instead of demanding a verdict tonight, which leaves the practical question okay, Bridget, she's standing in front of me upset right now. What do I actually do? And I always want to be practical and always want to give you tools. So, yes, when your middle schooler is highly activated, this is not the moment for the filing cabinet. Please do not stand beside the laundry hamper saying, interesting, I wonder whether this is in your power drawer or your belonging drawer. She will not appreciate your commitment to the framework. In the moment, we get much simpler. ARE parenting is a pillar of my framework about how your child experiences you. It's rooted in attachment science and it's three questions. Am I accessible to my child? Am I responsive to my child? Am I engaged with my child? Okay, what do I mean by these things? Being accessible means being emotionally reachable. And I want to be clear, this does not mean you are accessible, responsive, and engaged at all times. But these are things you can check in a moment that feels heightened with your kiddo. All right. So again, accessible means am I emotionally reachable? You haven't disappeared because her reaction feels unreasonable. And you're also not six inches from her face asking 17 questions. You're here. As simple as I'm here. I can see this is really upsetting you. Notice accessibility is about the relationship. You don't have to promise that you will remove the stain, right? Okay, so being responsive, what is this R part of ARE parenting? It means answering her actual experience, not the one you think she should be having or that she may be having. If you're looking at a tiny stain thinking this is ridiculous, you'll be tempted to say it's barely noticeable. It's just a sweatshirt. Okay, possibly true. And answering a question she isn't asking. Responsive sounds like, wow, this is really bothering you, or I believe you that this feels awful right now. You're not agreeing that the stain is a catastrophe, you're taking her distress seriously. Validation is not agreement, and we don't fact-check feelings. Okay, and finally, the E part of ARE parenting. You are engaged, which means that you are the parent and you see your kiddo for the experience that they're actually having. And so you want to learn more, you get curious about them. Because something clinically significant could be part of this, I won't hand you some type of blanket rule such as never help her clean it, make her sit with the discomfort. Honestly, we don't know enough to prescribe one response. And if obsessive compulsive symptoms are in the picture, you deserve guidance from a clinician who specializes in the treatment of OCD, not an improvised treatment plan from a podcast. So when we're talking about engagement, it might sound like I can see how hard this feels. Let's figure out what we need to do next. Maybe you help, maybe you don't. Maybe you just sit there and spend time with her while she's trying to figure out what to do. And certainly maybe there's a limit that you hold. ARE parenting doesn't hand you one magic answer, it gives your child a relational experience while you discern the answer. I'm here, I'm taking your experience seriously, and I'm still the adult who can stay steady, even when this feels really hard for you. Because we don't want your kiddo learning. My feelings are too much for people, and we also don't want her feelings deciding what the whole family does. She gets to be the 12-year-old having the experience. You get to be the parent steady enough to lead through it. Okay, quick pause before the second half because the best parenting in this whole situation happens after the moment passes. And I want you to have that part too. First, though, if this episode is landing for you, would you please send it to one parent who's in the thick of middle school right now? Not a big public thing, although you're welcome to, but just a text that says, This made me think of you. I hope it helps. This show grows almost entirely by one parent handing it to another, and that text is how the next parent finds us. Second, this month I'm teaching a free live workshop called Your Middle Schooler is Secretly Obsessed With You. Here's the idea: school is starting back up, and a lot of us are bracing for a season of eye rolls, one-word answers, and closed doors. It can look like you've stopped mattering. You have not. Underneath all of it, your middle schooler is paying closer attention to you than to almost anyone else on earth. And in this hour with me, I'll show you why that attention hides in these years, how to spot it and how to use it to stay genuinely close this school year. It's free, it's live, and the link to save your seat is in the show notes. I would so much love to see you there. Okay, this moment has passed. Now what? This is where curious relational parenting comes in. Another pillar from my framework. It's about helping your child understand herself through curiosity that has really no agenda. There's no interrogating, you're not diagnosing anything. This is not a family summit about how sweatshirts impact everyone in the family. Timing matters enormously. Mid-Meltdown, her capacity to reflect is limited. Ask why is such a big deal in the moment, and you'll get, I don't know, or stop, or can you not? That doesn't mean nothing's underneath. It means this isn't the moment she can access it. So later that night, the next day, even several days later, you can come back lightly. I've noticed there are times when something being messy or not quite right really gets under your skin. And other times it doesn't seem to bother you much. I'm curious what the difference feels like. Then, well, stop talking. I don't know. It's still information. Try again another time. Or when the sweatshirt got stained. What was the hardest part? This is where offering possibilities it can really help, as long as you offer them lightly. Was it that it looked different, that somebody might notice, or was it more like your brain just couldn't settle while it was like that? And then, or none of those. You can tell me if I'm totally off. I love that language because it says, I'm not handing you my interpretation and calling it true. Curiosity means offering possibilities lightly enough that your child can tell you when you're wrong. And sometimes she'll surprise you. You're convinced the sweatshirt is about what other kids will think. And she says, No, I just hate that it feels dirty. Okay, believe her. Either way, she is starting to notice her own internal experience. This is what urgency feels like in me. She'll need that skill far beyond the sweatshirt for friendship, school pressure, embarrassment, every big internal experience she'll ever have to figure out what to do with. And there's one more layer. While you're getting curious about her pattern, there's also a pattern happening between the two of you. The parent who wrote in said these moments sometimes end in a fight. Of course they do. Her child feels urgent, mom feels pulled, somebody gets sharp, and suddenly the issue isn't the mess anymore. It's a rupture between them. Ruptures are part of a real relationship. The goal is to recognize it and come back. That's repair. The pillar of my framework about how we return to each other after hard moments. And it goes both ways, parent to child and child to parent. So later, when things are settled, this mom might say, I've been thinking about what happens when something feels really wrong or messy to you and you want it fixed fast. I've noticed you get really upset, then I start to feel pressured and frustrated. And sometimes I end up talking to you in a way I don't feel good about. That part is mine, and I totally own it. I don't think you're trying to make the moment hard for me. I think something is genuinely hard for you. And I want us to find a better way through those moments together. Notice what this mom is not doing when she's saying something like that. She's not apologizing for having boundaries or promising to fix whatever bothers her daughter. She's owning her peace, responsibility without shame. Then she can get curious about her daughter's side. What do you wish I had understood? And invite problem solving. Next time, how could we help each other not get pulled into the same fight? Maybe they build a shared phrase. Mom, this is one of those I can't settle moments. They're putting language around a pattern that used to just happen to them. Now they're together walking around inside the pattern and trying to figure out how to disrupt it. One careful distinction repair is not taking responsibility for your child's distress. Mom doesn't need to say, I should have fixed the sweatshirt sooner. The repair is about how she showed up. I got sharp, I dismissed you. That's what keeps relational parenting from becoming a place where parents completely erase themselves. Both people stay human and the parent still leads. I want to end here because I don't want you leaving this episode either alarmed or falsely reassured. You don't have to know what this behavior means in order to be helpful. You can notice, stay curious, watch the dials, and if the dials keep moving, if she's spending significant time cleaning, checking, repeating, seeking reassurance, or trying to get things to feel just right, if it's costing sleep, school, or friendship, if family life is reorganizing itself around preventing the distress, that's when I'd bring in a qualified mental health professional. Not because you have failed in any way as a parent, because good relational parenting includes knowing when something needs clinical support. Asking for help isn't the failure of this approach. It is the approach. And since OCD specifically came up in the original question, let me define it accurately because it deserves that. OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, involves obsessions, compulsions, or both. Obsessions are recurring unwanted thoughts, urges, or images that are hard to control and cause real distress. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts a person feels driven to do, often in response to that distress. And a key piece is impact. The symptoms are time-consuming, genuinely distressing, or interfering with everyday life. In kids, compulsions can be visible, watching, checking, arranging, but they can also be mental, counting, repeating words silently, seeking reassurance over and over, trying to get something to feel exactly right. And children often can't articulate why. So OCD is not I like my room clean and one very upset afternoon about a sweatshirt does not tell us it's present. Understanding the actual condition helps us take it seriously without seeing it everywhere. And one more reason this deserves a professional's help rather than a do-it-yourself plan. With pediatric OCD, families understandably get pulled into helping a child complete rituals, giving repeated reassurance or changing routines to reduce distress. Clinicians call some of this family accommodation and it can become part of the OCD cycle. Now that does not mean you should go home tonight and announce Bridget said I'm accommodating you, so good luck with the sweatshirt. That is not what I'm saying. It means that if OCD is genuinely part of the picture, you want someone who knows pediatric OCD and its evidence-based treatment, usually a form of cognitive behavioral therapy called exposure and response prevention, making those calls with you. And here's the genuinely good news. OCD in kids is very treatable. Getting assessed isn't the scary outcome. It's often the relieving one. One more thing, because I'd rather say it one time too many. If your child ever talks about wanting to hurt themselves or you see any signs of suicidal thinking in this situation or any other, that is always the moment to reach out right away. In the US, you can call or text 988 The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline anytime. You don't have to be sure it's serious to make that call. So to the parent who wrote in, thank you so much for sharing this question with me. You do not need to decide today whether this is anxiety, sensory sensitivity, perfectionism, obsessive compulsive symptoms, hard middle school season, or some combination of things. You can say this is happening. It seems genuinely hard for her. I'm going to pay attention to how often it happens and how much it interferes. And I'm going to notice what happens inside me when it happens too. And somewhere in there, you might notice something tender. The two of you are reaching for the same thing. She's fixing the sweatshirt so she can feel settled. You're trying to figure her out so you can feel settled. Same reach and a lot of compassion lives in seeing that. The behavior is information, it is not yet an explanation. And you don't need certainty in order to stay connected while you figure out what the information is telling you. Before you go, if today helped you see your middle schooler a little differently, there are three small ways to help this show. Any one of them makes a real difference. If you haven't followed the show yet, hit follow. So a new episode finds you every week. If you know a parent who's standing in their own laundry room tonight, completely baffled, please send them this episode. And if you have one extra minute, leave a review. I read every single one, of course, and reviews are how podcast apps decide to put this show in front of the next tired parent who needs it. Last thing, my free live workshop, Your Middle Schooler is secretly obsessed with you, is happening this month on August 27th. The link to save your seat is in the show notes, and I'd love to spend that hour with you. Thank you for spending this time with me. I have so much admiration for the parent you are, and I'll see you next week. Middle Years is by Bridget Kermoris, produced and edited by Gwennie Kermores. I will see you next week.