If you had one piece of advice to give to YOUR middle school girl...

[Anonymous]

Advice specific to middle school:

- Be adventurous and try new things. There are lots of extracurricular clubs and elective classes available at your middle school – find something that seems interesting to you and get involved.

- Your classes are going to be more in depth and more difficult than in elementary school. I know that you are a very intelligent young lady, and you will be successful in your new classes if you stay organized, work hard, and seek out help when you need it. Not understanding something is not something to be ashamed of; it happens to everyone sometime. The important thing is, do you try to do better by asking for help? There are lots of people who want to see you do well and are willing to help you if you ask for it – some examples are your parents, teachers, older family friends, etc.

- You can talk to me about anything. Over the next several years while you are growing up, you will probably find that you have questions about loads of things that might seem ‘embarrassing’ or ‘shameful’ – but you don’t need to be embarrassed to talk to me about something, and you never need to be ashamed to ask questions or talk about confusing feelings. Your peers might do or say stuff that you find confusing, or scary, or that you want advice on. Please feel free to come to me whenever you want to talk.

Advice I’ll have told my kids before middle school but that might be applicable:

- Nobody has the right to hurt you, to make you do something dangerous, to force you to lie or go against our family values, or to make you keep bad or scary secrets from me and your dad. You do not have the right to do these things to anyone else either. If someone tries to do these things to you, you aren’t obligated to listen to them no matter who they are and you need to tell us about the incident as soon as possible. We will not be upset at you, we will take action to protect you and deal with the situation.

- Always act in a way that shows that you respect yourself and others. Respecting someone is about acknowledging each person’s individual dignity and treating them in a polite way that is not purposefully cruel or harmful. It doesn’t mean that you let others mistreat you – part of respecting yourself is standing up for yourself when needed – but you need to do it the right way, with respectful behavior as a guideline.

- (similar to one the above) Always act with integrity. Things will always turn out better if you are trying to do what is right than if you act without regard for integrity and ethics. Bad or unpleasant things will still happen, but approaching each situation with the intent to act with integrity will result in the “least bad” of all bad options.

- Genuine effort is more important than achievements. If you have tried your best but did succeed, you should still be proud of yourself. If you would like help to do better at something, we will find a way to support your efforts.

- If somebody is in a bad situation and you don’t know what to do, getting advice from an adult is not betraying your friend, it is a good choice that will help find a way to fix your friend’s problem without letting somebody get hurt or end up in a worse or more dangerous situation.

[Anonymous]

Play. You aren't too old to do it. Get outside with friends. Ride bikes, go to a creek, play capture the flag, write, create things. Laugh, smell the fresh air. Interat with people, make a difference. ALL of those things are more important than a screen and guarantee it will make you feel happier.

[Anonymous]

Try not to give in to the Hierarchy system of values in MS. MSers tend to pick on person or group of people and define them as perfect, then follow everything they do. try to be your won self and not follow everything that the in crowd does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are just making it appear as if they are somehow different but nice and kind are the same thing.

For example "Nice, on the other hand, is not being cruel, or not being mean. There's nothing not nice about saying no, or disagreeing, or arguing, or speak up, or standing up for yourself, or rocking the boat -- as long as you're not doing it to be cruel"

See how that works?

Then why do so many women, and girls too, say, "I want to say no/I didn't say what I thought/I didn't want to stand up for myself -- I thought people would think I wasn't nice."?

I agree that there actually is nothing not-nice about saying no. But most people think otherwise, especially when it's a woman or girl saying no.