Middle School Is Terrible Everywhere
If no one else wants to say it, I will.
Summer sucks.
Summer is my nemesis. It has always been, but my fervent dislike has grown as my children have grown older. Too old to want to go to camps, and not quite old enough to let them be feral teenagers.
Or maybe they are, and my own anxieties prevent me from letting them figure out summer all on their own.
When the kids were little, I’d send them to local vacation bible school programs, take them to the library, and spend our evenings at the park. Sometimes we’d go to Target and wander, visit my mom in Kentucky, make trips to the zoo, or we’d just stay indoors and read until the temperatures were cool enough to enjoy the outdoors again. Our neighborhood pool became an almost daily routine.
This is our first summer in Valencia, and lucky for us, we’re experiencing an unusual June record heatwave. (I hope you hear the sarcasm dripping from my voice.)
While I nurse my cold Sprite Zero and hide from the 97ºF (36ºC) heat (humidity 41%), it’s time to share some lessons we learned this past school year as parents raising preteens abroad. (You can find my original Instagram post here.)
Without further ado and in no particular order, here are some of the important takeaways from our 2024-2025 school year at an international school in Valencia, Spain.
Academic expectations are higher, so getting by without studying won’t cut it. My kids are bright and generally good students, so they were in for a bit of a shock when they realized they actually had to study to make the passing grades.
Choosing an international school instead of a public school can be a great option, but it comes with its own set of challenges. Communication styles are often cultural, and this can impact how much or how little you should be hearing from your school. Grades may look different, and you’ll have to interpret what a new set of standards means.
No matter where you live in the world, middle school is universally awful. 🥴 Truly. It was terrible when my husband and I were in school, and it’s terrible now. International school, public, or private, middle school is always middle school.
Making friends is hard anytime kids change schools, but doing it internationally can be especially difficult with language barriers and cultural differences. While my kids are learning in English every day, the playground language is predominantly Spanish. They also hear a lot of Russian and Ukrainian.
We’re teaching our kids they get to choose their hard. Life is full of surprises, and when you get the opportunity to take a different path, it’s okay to take the unknown one. It often leads to the best and most satisfying rewards.
Moving kids to a new country with a new language and a new school is asking a lot. Kids are resilient, but they also need a lot of support on this journey. Throw in the added universal trauma of puberty, and it can potentially be a recipe for disaster. Only you know your kid(s) and what they can handle.
Give them as much stability as you can. If they’re in extracurriculars, find something similar or a new interest they can participate in. It’s a great way to find new friends with similar interests. These activities also give kids a fun way to learn the language they’re living in.
I don’t know if we’re getting everything right on this journey. This past school year was rouuuuuugh in a lot of ways. There are things I might do differently if I had it to do over, like putting my kids in language lessons a year before we moved rather than relying on something like Duolingo to get them started. We might have moved them a little bit younger. Maybe we should have dropped them into a public school rather than a private.
Like all parents, we’re just trying to figure it out as we go. Clearly, we don’t have all the answers, but I will say that by the end of this past school year, our kids seem pretty adjusted and happy for the most part. We’ll still face challenges, but we feel better equipped to face them going into the next school year.
If anything, this year reminded me that change doesn't get easier. It only gets more familiar. And maybe that's enough.