Several of my youngest clients are heading back to school in the next couple weeks. The topics we’ve discussed in our sessions have revolved around their class schedules and their friend groups and will they or won’t they like their teachers and who will they sit with at lunch and should they try out for the team. It’s big stuff for these small people – and most of us remember being exactly in their shoes.
In my junior high school years, I remember mostly spending time with my neighborhood friends and my church friends and my brother. I was friendly to people, but not necessarily outgoing. I was pretty well liked, but not necessarily popular. And I was confident in my studies, but not at all confident in my social skills.
Somewhere toward the end of 7th grade I had a class with this really nice, really popular girl named Julie. She was happy and funny and cared about what I said, and – because she had a bunch of older brothers – she knew how to be normal around boys.
We didn’t become best friends at first. That came later. But we did become friends. Real friends.
Mitch Prinstein, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina says this: For tweens, “spending time with their friends isn’t just a pastime, it’s actually something that they need for their brain development and identity formation. They don’t know who they are until they see themselves through their peers’ eyes.”
They don’t know who they are until they see themselves through their peers’ eyes.
An article about seeing ourselves through others’ eyes by Mark Sherman, Ph. D., recounts a poem by Robert Burns (in the original Scottish) that says: “O wad some Power the giftie give us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” Or, in modern English, “Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.”
Mr. Sherman goes on to say, “The main point of the poem, and those timeless words, is how good it would be for us to see ourselves through the eyes of others. … What a gift it would be, says Burns, to realize how we look to others, how silly pretension is, and how we are all just vulnerable and equal human beings.”
My friendship with Julie at that critical time in my life made all the difference in how I saw myself.
I am very, very fortunate that she still – more than 40 years later – is someone who helps me see myself more clearly. I can love myself better because of how she loves me.
I can’t wait to hear about who is helping you see yourself more clearly. And how maybe it’s helping you love yourself a tiny bit better. And if you need anyone to lend a hand with that lens, I’d love to help.
PS Good Luck to E, J, A, L, and C!! They know who they are! And middle school is lucky to have them.
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