From the desk of Tammy Hayes, Middle School Principal:

#3 in a series of 5 Noticeable Qualities of Well Rounded Kids

One thing I have always loved is a good slogan, and one of the best ones I’ve seen in a long time is this little ditty from Walgreens: “at the corner of happy & healthy.” They reached into their bag of creative genius and pulled out one for the record books. I can only imagine that their sales have tripled since finding this lovely combo. Why is it so effective? I believe they tapped into the two most wanted commodities on earth…humans want to be happy and they will go to great lengths to live a long life, which definitely requires healthy.  If we do our research, we find that the common interrupter of both these ideals is stress! Stress is a word that has infiltrated every part of our American culture, but I believe it has become most dangerous to our children, especially our teens. And I believe we as adults must bear the burden for bringing it on our kids.

You may be thinking, “Stress, what do kids have to be stressed about?” In many years of education, I can always say that students have had a certain amount of “normal” student-oriented stress factors going on in their lives like having to stay up late and study for a test, forgetting important assignments at home the day they are due, getting ridiculed for being too smart, or trying to win a spot on the school’s basketball team. But, now, the pressure is on to raise a renaissance man or woman, and the timeline is backed up to pre-teen. Parents have gone bonkers trying to “produce a prodigy” so much so that they will impose a very unrealistic agenda on their children and risk everything, even financial ruin.   Years ago, the trend was to focus in on one thing, like being an Olympic gymnast, setting up a schedule that would guarantee such.  The scary thing for today’s teen is that the new wave of parents will visualize having a child who could win a beauty pageant, be the top academic scholar, and the softball teams’ best pitcher, all at the ripe old age of twelve! Of course, this would definitively prove to all that their child is in fact a Greek goddess, towering over everyone with her beauty, brains, and brawn. Well, that might sound absurd, but we have definitely had a shift in that direction, if not quite that drastic, in what we expect our kids to do, manage, keep up with, and excel at over the past few years.

What I’ve noticed in middle school world is that students who are still very much a child and don’t feel the pressure to be an adult are usually more likely to excel and be successful in their relationships with their peers and teachers. They are enjoying being a kid – playing some, studying some, waiting on privileges to come with age, and their pressures are minimized to such questions as what’s for lunch or where did I leave my backpack? They aren’t trying to be older, worrying about a boyfriend’s approval, or meeting over coffee to discuss the impending bad weather. They aren’t running every evening to soccer, then piano, then karate, with no time to study for tomorrow’s test.   Likewise, they aren’t having to deal with parents who are making them choose, or figure out how to survive mom’s mood swings or be solely responsible for their sibling’s care. They are kids getting to be kids.

As middle school principal, I tell students all the time that at Brook Hill, “All the good stuff is in the middle,” like an Oreo or a Rolo. I do this to remind them as children to slow down and enjoy the middle years while they don’t have the same stresses that they inevitably will in high school or even  as an adult.

At Brook Hill, we want our middle school students to do what kids should do– play hard, learn much, honor God, and have fun!  Hopefully, with this expectation, we will find a bunch of great kids playing just around the corner of happy and healthy!