Chris Balme
speaker
238 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2023
last heard Mar 2023
Chris Balme’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
That you are recreating your whole self, your whole identity as a social person.
You can pick up all the things that are going on around you, who's in-group, who's out group, where status is, where hierarchy is.
And that causes you to have to rethink everything about yourself.
And for me to get to be with a young person who's figuring out what their authentic identity is, now that they can pick up all the things that you and I pick up as adults in terms of the social world, oh, it's such an opportunity to help them make sense of that and to be with them while they're changing that much.
So for me, if
If we can see it through that developmental lens of what are they really trying to do here, and how do we accompany them to meet those developmental needs, then I think you see kids who are just not the typical middle school story, not rolling their eyes and ignoring you, but actually very motivated people when you're helping them do what they need to do.
Exactly.
Well, it's one of the reasons I love your book, which is talking about how we adapt ourselves to a wider range of learning styles, is what serves neurodivergent kids, and it's also what serves middle school kids.
Because as they start to accelerate their development just based on brain changes, development does not have an equal, even pace across kids, even in, you know, quote unquote neurotypical, if that's even something that exists.
So I think that same spirit of following the kid and being more of a guide and companion to them versus expecting lockstep movements, it really serves for any population of middle school kids that I've seen.
Yeah, so in the book I talk about kind of three core questions that middle schoolers are driven to answer and then three stages they go through as they're answering it.
So maybe I'll start with that piece.
Ground zero for a good middle school experience is a sense of belonging.
When they first kind of arrive on the social scene and they because of brain changes, they're picking up all these details that they hadn't noticed before about friendships and groups.
Usually the very first thing that happens is a fear and a question of do I fit in?
Am I welcome here?
Do I belong?
And if they're not sure about the answer to that, it's really hard to go anywhere else.
That is kind of almost basic safety level security.
So that very first stage of identity development is you're willing to do almost anything to belong, willing to conform, willing to forget parts of yourself, willing to copy someone else.
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