Anonymous wrote:This was me in middle school, except I also started hanging out with some kids who were making poor choices (drinking and smoking). My grades were still straight As, because I was smart, but I didn’t care about school at all.

Then I went to a different high school and got new friends. Everyone cared more about school/grades/college and I got excited to learn again.

There is literally nothing my parents could have done to make this happen. At that age, I was 100 percent peer driven.

I think if she is doing ok in school, you gotta wait out the rest of the middle school nonsense. Be there to listen, and don’t judge too harshly.

Anonymous wrote:You can’t force someone to be intellectually curious. They either are or they aren’t. She’s getting her schoolwork done with straight A’s. Let her alone to pursue her own interests and friends. They need downtime, too.

Anonymous wrote:She is in 8th grade!

You are in charge.

She must do something to be physically active. Hiking, yoga, it doesn’t have to be a traditional sport. Tell her she MUST pick something.

She likes makeup? Theatre, stage makeup. Art class.

Take away the phone at night. No electronics in bedroom.

Encourage in person meets ups.

Encourage some new friendships.

Btw I have an eight grade girl.

Anonymous wrote:Kids this age are really not self-motivated. Parents need to put in the same amount of their time to guide the kid that they expect the kid to spend. But, parents want kids to be on auto-pilot.

Be careful about the romance novels. Many romance novels nowadays are basically softcore porn with steamy or sextreame scenes. For your hormonal 8th grader it is not going to be easy to wean herself off of it, especially if every other friend in her group is already into boys too. This is a form of addiction.

I have no advice for you. Easy to prevent such behavior than to stop this. The only thing I will say is that in today's day and age, if you want your kid to make good choices, then you have to devote your time and make sure that you surround them with good choices.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused what the problem is. She does her homework and classwork well and completely and has a healthy social life. What else do you want her to do?

When she gets to high school, encourage her to join a couple clubs.

+1

You’re basically requiring her to want to volunteer to do more work. If there’s something specific you want her to accomplish, you can compel her to do it, but you can’t compel her to enjoy it. You can either compel her to do something or allow her to volunteer, but volunteering means that she is free to not volunteer. If you’re upset at her for not volunteering, then it wasn’t voluntary after all.

You can require her to do things you feel are important (whether it’s a specific activity, picking an activity just to be doing something, participating in a family activity, etc.) and expect her to do it without raising an unreasonable fuss (although she might respectfully comment), but don’t necessarily expect her to be happy about it or to be motivated to do more.

You can also seek out a wide range of opportunities to offer her and encourage any interest she shows in anything. There’s a lot of the world to explore beyond academics, music, and sports.

If she likes skin care, maybe you could see if she’d like to go to a spa or have a spa day at home. You could offer to get her a kit to create her own makeup. Here’s a website I just googled about combining cosmetics and science, if she’s interested. I’m sure if you look, there are probably lots of others, as well.
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-experiments/cosmetic-chemistry/high-school
Who knows? She could end up being a dermatologist or chemist someday.

Frankly, at this stage, learning to navigate social situations and relationships are important skills, themselves. Assuming her friends aren’t negative influences, it’s probably great for her to hang out with them.

As for the teen romances, as long as they don’t violate your family’s values, reading in general is positive. You might take her to the used book store before spring break to stock up, pick a tame romance to read to/with her, or pick out some chick-flick’s together for a movie marathon.

Don’t worry about what to tell the teachers. If she was disruptive to the class or struggling academically you would have a responsibility to help solve the problem. Your child is not a problem. The teacher’s primary focus may be on academics, but you have to balance the different dimensions of your daughter’s life for her overall well-being. If you put too much emphasis on achievement, the resentment she develops could ultimately be counterproductive. Moreover, burnout is real, even for teens. My eldest pushed herself too hard and ended up too stressed in high school. I was constantly trying to get her to relax and take a break. The trick is to find the right balance.

Good luck to you and your daughter. It sounds like she’s a great kid.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful answer!
We got her to try a lot of different activities when she was younger but once she is in middle school she just refused to do anything. She even hates PE and finds all kinds of excuses not to participate, but her teacher still gave her a pass for the class.

It’s mostly consuming nowadays, pop culture, influencers unfortunately. Long wishlist of skin care and clothes pushed by influencers. These days their “peers” are online.

I appreciate your perspective on the importance of social emotional learning at this stage. Hopefully that’s what’s going on. There seems to be a lot of talk about boys, friendship drama and gossips and I assume that’s normal for this age and maybe taking a lot of their bandwidth? I guess we will just have to wait patiently.