Book #24: Not Much Just Chillin': The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers by Linda Perlstein

This might seem like a random book for someone my age to be reading, because I think it's more aimed at parents with middle-school-aged children. But I was listening to a podcast (Stuff You Should Know) about middle schoolers and they mentioned this book and I thought it sounded interesting enough to take a look at. I was kind of disappointed when I first started reading it to see that it was published in 2003 (so it is definitely not up to date on the latest things middle schoolers are doing, like with social media and smartphones and all that), but that actually means that the kids she was interviewing and writing about are my own age--I was in middle school myself the same year she was writing this book. Perlstein does all of her research/writing in the school year of 2001-2002, the year of September 11, when I was in eighth grade (the same age as several of her subjects).

Perlstein follows five specific middle school students and closely watches their lives and interviews them and their parents, incorporating current research and information about this age of kids and the social, physical, and mental changes that are going on. It was fascinating to see these kids and their insecurities and the things they hooked onto and what were their interests, but it was also incredibly TERRIFYING. I honestly must have been so sheltered in middle school, because I had no idea that things like sex and drugs went on (or if I did, I must have blocked it out because I don't remember it at all). Not that all the kids do that kind of stuff, but it is definitely there, even on school grounds. It is totally terrifying to imagine having a kid this age. I liked how Perlstein included some of the parents' perspectives as well, how they are utterly bewildered by their children's changes and don't know how to relate to them or help them and how it's not that they are angry at them or anything.