Junior high, in effect

They say that junior high contains some of the worst times in a person’s life.  I didn’t really hate junior high, so it’s not like I’m biased or anything, but I do teach high school, so I hear the stories about how awkward junior high is.  And I watch the freshman walk in at the beginning of the year and act like total heathens, because they don’t know any other way to act, apparently.  It’s reflex and hormones in action.

But my youngest child just crossed the threshold of junior high.  She was kind of irrational before, but in the last five days, she has turned into a monster.  Raging hormones plus peer pressure plus imagined versions of how things should be plus asinine social media apps that require no brains and lots of over-sharing.

Currently, she is not speaking to me because she needs money tomorrow for FCS to make pillows.  She doesn’t have an exact dollar amount because she couldn’t remember to bring a piece of paper home.  For five days in a row.  It’s a fucking piece of paper.  One.  I’ve heard a hundred stories about who likes who and who said what, but I haven’t heard a single thing about school and what’s required of her, because in her brain, those things don’t matter. 

How does a person talk (rationally) to a person who is hormonally irrational?  It seems like I forget the symptoms of adolescence every time one of my kids hits that particular threshold.  Perhaps it’s evidence that people should just have all their kids at once?  I have no idea.  All I know is that in addition to the 150 hormonal kids at school every day that I have to try to teach something, I come home to irrational children of my own, who have a hard time thinking through seemingly simple tasks like “bringing home a piece of paper.”