TPP 321: Chris Balme on How Parents Can Navigate the Tricky Middle School Years
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
36 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 2 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why does Chris call middle school a magical and opportunistic time for kids?
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.
Welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I'm your host, Debbie Rieber, and I have a great episode for you today. Middle school may not feel like a very enchanting time in our lives. It definitely did not feel that way for me when I was living through it. But according to my guest, Chris Baum, middle school is a time of great magic and opportunity for our kids, and for us as parents, if we know what we're looking for. Chris Baum, an education leader and writer, is passionate about helping young people on their journey of discovering their human potential, which he writes about in his new book, Finding the Magic in Middle School.
In our conversation today, Chris explains the three stages of identity development a child goes through in middle school, how we as parents will want to adapt our parenting styles as our kids reach these stages, and how to navigate our child breaking our trust. We also talked about what individuation is and what it means to become a better companion for our kids, which is a reframe I really love. A little bit more about my guest, Chris Baum is the co-founder and head of school at Millennium School, a lab school in San Francisco embracing new learning methods for middle schoolers based in developmental science. He's also the founder of Argonaut, an online program to bring social emotional learning to more students.
And now here is my conversation with Chris. Hey Chris, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks Debbie. It's great to be here.
I really enjoyed your book and I want to really dive into that. But before we do, I always ask people to tell me a little bit about their personal story and their personal why. I know you have a really interesting background, so maybe you could just tell us some of the highlights about how you came to be doing what you're doing.
Yeah, thank you. I think maybe like a lot of people, I got into this by heading in the opposite direction and life turned me around. You know, I was an unhappy middle schooler and high schooler for that matter. I I thought school was boring. I didn't know how to connect with people. I just kind of marched through it. Went to college thinking, I'm not sure what I'll do, but it will not be education. That was the one thing I was. confident about. And so of course here I am through the course of business school and and other adventures, I realized It's hard to avoid the conclusion that if you want to do something good for the world, it's going to involve kids. And so I became a student teacher to try to test out if that was really for me and got placed in a seventh grade classroom.
Not my plan. Don't even know if that was anyone's planned or just random. And got hooked pretty quickly, partly because I think middle school is such a fascinating Time of life and so underappreciated. And partly because the school I was in and the system I got exposed to was so dysfunctional that I felt like I could contribute here somehow. And then, you know, 20 years went by, and here we are. And I've been a teacher, run a nonprofit working with middle school kids, and then started a middle school, and then of course finally wrote this book about. those adventures and what I've learned about middle schoolers along the way.
That's great. Yeah, I do agree middle school is such an interesting time. Before I started Tilt, I spent many years writing books for Teenagers and tweens, mostly because I uh too had a terrible experience as a middle schooler as a teenager. I considered myself to be a recovering teenager and I really wanted to support those kids.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does Chris call middle school a magical and opportunistic time for kids?
0:00–5:03
2
What are the three stages of identity development that middle schoolers go through?
5:03–10:20
3
How should parents adapt their parenting style as children move from belonging to achievement to authenticity?
10:20–15:30
4
What does ‘individuation’ mean and how can parents support it in differently‑wired children?
15:30–19:57
5
How can parents help a child who breaks their trust without resorting to punishment?
19:57–24:11
6
What is ‘companioning’ and how can parents act as guides on their child’s adventure?
24:11–28:10
7
What is the Essential Experiences project and how can it reshape middle‑school learning?
28:10–32:20
8
What single piece of advice does Chris give parents to navigate the magic of middle school?
32:20–36:20
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
TPP 266a: A Conversation with Poet and Advocate LeDerick Horne
TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids