When I was in middle school, I made a promise to myself to never forget what it felt like to be a kid. I remember adults telling me that how I was feeling and what I thought wasn’t important. They said it would all pass. They said one day I’d learn that all this “middle school stuff” wouldn’t matter in the bigger picture of my life. I swore at that early age that I would do things differently than my parents.

Because it did matter. It mattered a lot to me. It felt like everything, not “nothing”. And those experiences still impact my life in big and small ways. That promise I made to myself has stuck with me and has inspired me to try new ways of parenting in an attempt to be a different kind of adult.

It’s been many years since I was in middle school. I’ve traveled a long journey, raising two of my own children through their experiences of the middle school years. I didn’t have any mentors or positive examples to...