Middle School Culture Shock

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Settle in. It gets much worse.

What's next then?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember the exact same behavior in the 80s when I was in middle school and I attended a private school.

There were no phones so no distributing porn was happening. Weed maybe but that’s happening too.

I can tell you there were exchanging and distributing of porn magazines in my private school
DP

This porn are kids in the grade and another classmate filming them and then posting it on snap or showing the videos at lunch. Totally different.

[Anonymous]

Xanax, pain killers, alcohol, weed, sex at school with multiple people involved, videos of it - you name it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember the exact same behavior in the 80s when I was in middle school and I attended a private school.

Seriously doubt that people were treating teachers the same way. I certainly never saw it.

Many things happened that you never saw. This isn't a comment on you personally, it's a comment on the limits of one person's personal experience with respect to society.

+1 never saw anyone taking drugs in HS, but I know it happened because someone I know was completely high on coke when I met up with them, and I saw weed being sold in class once. Another person asked me where she could get some weed. I had no clue because I never took drugs, but I assume this person found some weed eventually and smoked it.

As for porn, please.. we had dirty magazines that could be passed around.

Oh, the porn is at a whole other level now.

Are you serious? Dirty magazines? LOL. That is tame. Ask your middle schooler about the websites the kids talk about at school. If your kid is honest, it will be eye-opening what they are exposed to.

You do know that there were pretty hardcore dirty magazines in the 80s right? And porn videos?

Anyways, I'm all for curtailing porn, but what do you want to have happen? Even if they ban phones in MS you realize that kids meet outside of school grounds, right? Unless you ban your kid from having a phone or hanging out with kids who have phones, your kid is going to get exposed at one point. Good luck.

Personally, I think some of the hardcore websites should be harder to get to. I mean, there is basically free, easy access to pretty questionable material.

I’m not against porn, but I am required to put in my birthday to verify my age before I look at alcohol websites. Hardcore porn? Free for all ages.

Maybe make the porn sites all require payment. Shut down the ones that offer access for free. Could be a start.

I don't disagree, but how are you going to prevent MSer right now from accessing those sites? You can't control the porn industry. I guess you could write congress to regulate that industry, but good luck trying to get a bunch of old guys who probably also visit those sites anonymously to do that.

The one thing that all parents can do is to check their kids' phones. You can also try to put parental controls in place. Also, for apple IDs, you can control your MSer's profile. They are not supposed to have their own Apple ID until 13. You can wait till 14 to give that control over. We still control our 13 yr old's Apple ID. You can do the same for Android phone with the Google ID.

However you can't control what other parents do or not do, so you still have to talk to your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bus language was very bad. 6th graders on the bus with 8th graders who had been raised by youtube influencers. I talked with the school administration and they said the bus drivers were supposed to police this. Ha!

We were told the opposite: bus drivers are not responsible for discipline. They can report fighting, bullying, or behavior that interferes with safe operation of the bus. They can report students throwing objects from the bus but not yelling obscenities at each other or passing vehicles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember the exact same behavior in the 80s when I was in middle school and I attended a private school.

There were no phones so no distributing porn was happening. Weed maybe but that’s happening too.

I can tell you there were exchanging and distributing of porn magazines in my private school
DP

This porn are kids in the grade and another classmate filming them and then posting it on snap or showing the videos at lunch. Totally different.

agree that part is totally different. It's horrible. So, what can we do about it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Settle in. It gets much worse.

What's next then?

I felt like things settled down after MS. We have experience with two different MCPS HS. Either my kids encountered less disturbing behavior or they were much less shocked about it. In HS, they have mostly told me about silly stuff like students dressing in full animal suits, bringing rodent pets in their pockets, a kid who brought and ate a full English breakfast, and small pranks on subs like pretending to not speak English or giving false names. Obviously distracting and stupid, but hardly pearl-clutching behavior. It seems that the really bad students stop coming to school altogether in HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember the exact same behavior in the 80s when I was in middle school and I attended a private school.

Rich kids behaving poorly.

Not like the public school kids. Not even close. They may be rich but private schools have discipline and standards.

Meh.... we had dress codes and the teachers thrashed the less than actually kids (80s also).

The actually rich kids got away with everything.

[Anonymous]

JW Parent here. Fights and language, sure. Have not heard about porn or vaping, but that doesnt mean it is not happening. DH does drop off and pick up of DS and and his best friend to avoid bus, but that's more for COVID reasons.
I am not necessarily worried about it, kids are growing up regardless of our desire to keep them "innocent" and they will listen to peers more and all that. My personal strategy is to listen and not judge, worked OK so far but who knows whats ahead.

[Anonymous]

Having graduated MCPS in 1987 I can remember middle school years as very rebellious time. I did like not like smoking so just would watch the bathroom for the smokers so they would not get caught. I remember skipping classes and failing my first classes. My parents did not freak out and I survived it just fine. I am very glad our school system still does not make stupid dress codes (that only get enforced on females). Middle school has not suddenly become a jungle it has always been years of exploration and rebellion. Yep very scary for parents and I have two boys in middle school right so I get the scary part. I do kind of like seeing them starting to figure out how to be an adolescent even if it involves challenging me more and more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bus language was very bad. 6th graders on the bus with 8th graders who had been raised by youtube influencers. I talked with the school administration and they said the bus drivers were supposed to police this. Ha!

We were told the opposite: bus drivers are not responsible for discipline. They can report fighting, bullying, or behavior that interferes with safe operation of the bus. They can report students throwing objects from the bus but not yelling obscenities at each other or passing vehicles.

To my knowledge this has been the case for a long time which (in my view) is a big part of the reason the behavior on the bus is so much worse than school.

[Anonymous]

It’s like none of you grew up watching John Hughes movies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The bus language was very bad. 6th graders on the bus with 8th graders who had been raised by youtube influencers. I talked with the school administration and they said the bus drivers were supposed to police this. Ha!

We were told the opposite: bus drivers are not responsible for discipline. They can report fighting, bullying, or behavior that interferes with safe operation of the bus. They can report students throwing objects from the bus but not yelling obscenities at each other or passing vehicles.

To my knowledge this has been the case for a long time which (in my view) is a big part of the reason the behavior on the bus is so much worse than school.

It SHOULD be the case. The bus driver needs to concentrate on driving the bus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:JW Parent here. Fights and language, sure. Have not heard about porn or vaping, but that doesnt mean it is not happening. DH does drop off and pick up of DS and and his best friend to avoid bus, but that's more for COVID reasons.
I am not necessarily worried about it, kids are growing up regardless of our desire to keep them "innocent" and they will listen to peers more and all that. My personal strategy is to listen and not judge, worked OK so far but who knows whats ahead.

Also a JW (and RM) parent. There is NO MS that doesn't have a lot of cursing. Doesn't matter if it's private or public. My kids almost never cursed at home in front of me, but I know 100% they cursed at school. I also cursed a lot in MS, but I try not to in front of my kids.

[Anonymous]

I HATE that some of the girls wear such skimpy clothing. Super short shorts and crop tops. I don't let my DD out of the house wearing that kind of thing, BUT, I can't control what she does when she leaves the house. I know she rolls up her shorts and ties up her shirt when she leaves the house. I'm not happy about it, but I can't stop it.

My older DS (now in HS) told me that a lot of girls dress that way in MS, and that the way DD dresses is not out of the ordinary and is also much more tame than some of the other girls in MS. I hate it. I do wish they wore uniforms. It would be so much easier, but when I think back to when I was in MS, I would've hated uniforms, so I don't blame kids who don't want strict uniforms. I just wish they didn't dress like that.