It’s been a long time since I’ve been in middle school, but I still wasn’t expecting to have to help my child through heartbreak as a tween. I know kids have been maturing earlier than before (propelled by social media and the accessibility granted by technology). Still, one doesn’t generally expect things to get serious in middle school. That was my naïve perception, anyway.
My son had come home from school at the start of sixth grade, declaring that he had a huge crush. This young lady had been a frenemy earlier in life but somehow, through the magic of middle school, had suddenly morphed into a dating possibility.
As I did, you may wonder how anyone can even “date” in middle school. I laughed it off, thinking of it as little kids using big terminology. Tweens don’t date; they don’t even know what dating consists of! It can’t be anything more than a label that makes them feel grown-up and superficially self-assured.
That was very old-fashioned and gullible of me.
Kids see things in movies, television, YouTube, Instagram, or whatever your poison. But somehow, the things they see (and probably don’t fully understand the consequences of) can become the template for behaviors that they enact themselves. Suddenly, they’re sneaking calls or texts to each other late at night. They’re trying to get together at the movies or school events. They feed off of other peoples’ nosy questions about whether they’re dating, and before they even realize it, they’ve gotten themselves into a social position that they know little about and sure as hell are not ready for.
It seems that overnight, their “relationship” (to use the term loosely) became overwhelming for both. Emotions that used to be light and playful became too tied to the other person and too easily manipulated by the whims of someone outside of themselves.
I began seeing moodiness, dependency, and crashing reactivity that seemed way beyond what an “innocent” tween “relationship” should be. (Even in retrospect, I can’t reference it seriously despite its eventual impact).
Then came the first “breakup” that occurred because the young lady felt pressured to “perform” for a popular girl she was trying to impress and publicly broke up with my son in dramatic fashion. That night, I watched my son suffer in a way that, for him, was gut-wrenchingly profound and more than I could bear.
He cried for hours in his bed, tormented by the sense of loss (of both a best friend and a “girlfriend”), and my heart really and truly broke watching him cry himself to sleep. Nothing I said could ease him, and no amount of helpless comfort offered through my loving hands and many hugs could make it right.
My little trooper survived the night, the next night, and the night after until he could see straight again, but his bravery was fragile.
Back into his life, she came, with renewed promises, and swept him up like a tiny shell into relentless ocean waves. And he got carried along on that stormy relational tide (despite all my protests about what he had just been through and how cautious I’d be if I were him) until she dropped him again.
He carried the torch for her for another month, long after her parents and my husband and I got very serious about not letting them see one another, and long after, we enlisted the school to keep them separate as well. It wasn’t until the end of sixth grade that my son could finally move on, despite continual protestations, that he had long set aside his feelings.
I am flabbergasted that what I had dismissed as a minor tween crush has transformed into something that has profoundly impacted my child.
Watching your child go through heartbreak is devastating. When it happens at the tween stage, it’s even more so because they are still young enough to evoke the protectiveness you’ve given them throughout early childhood, but they are experiencing feelings that are the first stirrings of “growing up.” As such, it’s not as easy to comfort them as you did when they lost their first baseball game or broke their favorite toy. Now you’re venturing into the deepest territory of the heart and its emotions, and that is some scary real estate, I’ll tell you.
It’s the first time you’ll realize that you can’t solve it for them, and neither can you make it disappear. You will experience actual pangs as you watch them cry themselves breathless over something that you cannot change for them.
There’s no parent or teacher that you can enlist to set things right. This is suddenly between two small humans, and they have to work out this minefield all by themselves because you don’t know what they’re talking about on the bus or in the hallways or fields at middle school. And you have even less control.
That’s when you begin to rely on the things you hope you have instilled in your child over the years.
Their first heartbreak is something new. It isn’t quite the same as losing good friends through the ebb and tide of childhood likes and dislikes. It doesn’t hold a candle to other losses because it is unique to the development process. But if you can support them through it, you’ll gain perspective on what they can do and how they expect you to help them. You’ll learn it pretty fast, too.
, but one doesn’t generally expect things to get serious in middle school. That was my naïve perception anyway.){kind=link}