Middle Years with Bridget KerMorris
The middle school years look like the years your kid pulls away from you. What nobody says out loud is that parents quietly start pulling away too. This is not because parents (or kids) stop caring. For parents, it's because the stakes feel higher, the rejection hits deeper, and so we start editing ourselves. We stop saying the true thing. We manage, we worry, and we hold onto what we want to say, waiting for a better moment that never comes.
This is the podcast where we stop waiting.
Each week, Bridget KerMorris answers a real question from a real middle school parent, submitted anonymously from her coaching community, using Steady + Connected Parenting™, the only parenting framework built specifically for the middle school years.
This is real moments with real families and at the end of every episode, one simple invitation: say what is true for you. Say it to the person who needs to hear it most . . . while the window is still open in these middle years because it will not stay wide open forever.
Bridget is a Stanford-trained lawyer with thousands of hours of education and experience as a marriage and family therapist specializing in family systems, neurodivergence, and relational trauma. She is also a mom of seven currently parenting her fourth middle schooler. She has an Instagram page, @bridget.parentcoach, with over 100k parents where she posts daily helping middle school parents "say what's true for you."
Middle Years with Bridget KerMorris
Episode 0: Welcome To Middle Years
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Most parents of middle schoolers are trying so hard to get it right. We want to stay connected without hovering, help without overreacting, and raise a kid who feels deeply loved and also capable in the world.
Even with the best intentions, these middle years can be tough and it can start to feel like everyone else got a parenting manual you somehow missed.
In Middle Years, Bridget KerMorris answers real parenting questions from parents of middle schoolers with honesty, humor, thoughtful insight, and deep respect for the parent-child relationship. Each episode explores what is happening underneath the behavior and how parents can stay steady, connected, and relational through some of the most emotionally intense years of family life.
Bridget is a Stanford-trained lawyer, parenting coach, mom of seven, and creator of the Steady + Connected Parenting™ framework. Drawing from thousands of hours studying and engaging in clinical work around family systems, neurodivergence, relational trauma, and middle school development, she helps parents build rock-solid relationships with their kids without perfection, fear, or constant power struggles.
Middle school is not the beginning of losing your child. It's an opportunity to know them more deeply than ever before.
Welcome to Middle Years. I’m Bridget KerMorris.
And if you’re parenting a middle schooler, I want you to hear this right away, you are not losing your child.
I know that’s what people say about these years . . . that middle school means distance and attitude and disconnection but, that’s simply not true. I see middle school as one of the biggest opportunities we get to deepen the relationship with our kids.
And, trust me, I know these kids are suddenly sending the most confusing mixed signals of the entire parenting journey.
They want us close . . . and then they want us gone.
They want independence and reassurance.
Privacy and attention.
Connection and space.
And because of that, so many parents start second-guessing themselves. We get caught up in behavior.
The eye rolls.
The shutdowns.
The moodiness.
The screens.
The worry.
Meanwhile, underneath all of it, middle schoolers are quietly wondering:
Do you like me even as I grow and change?
Will you come back for me when I’m prickly and hard to be around?
That’s what this podcast is about.
Every week, I’ll answer one real question from a real parent of a middle schooler. Questions about friendships, disrespect, anxiety, motivation, siblings, screens, ADHD, Autism, major emotions, and how to build a relationship with your child that actually stays strong through high school and into adulthood.
I’m Bridget KerMorris, mom of seven, parenting my fourth middle schooler right now, and creator of the Steady + Connected Parenting (the only framework created specifically for parenting during the middle school years).
I’m really glad you’re here. Welcome to Middle Years.