She Was a Force. She Was Also Completely Unprepared. (Sound familiar?)

I’m back.

My mom passed away in early February. For a few weeks, life — including this blog — stopped entirely while I tried to be the best daughter, sister, mom, cousin, niece, and friend I could be. (Spoiler: you can’t be all of those things simultaneously at 100%. I tried. I ate a lot of casserole and cried in parking lots.)

These outsized life moments have a way of making you stop and ask: Am I doing the right things? Am I on the right track? Does any of this matter?

For me, the answer kept circling back to: yes. And also — Mom.

Because here’s the thing. My mother’s death is, in many ways, directly related to the work I do here at Parenting Genius. She was my first, last and most formative parent. The model I had when I became one myself. And that model, bless her, was... a work in progress.

The Woman. The Myth. The Well-Intentioned Chaos.

Let me be clear: my mom loved us fiercely. She was brilliant, curious, passionate, and ahead of her time in ways that were genuinely impressive — and genuinely mortifying, depending on whether you were her peer or her middle schooler.

She was also, to put it gently, not exactly equipped with a deep understanding of adolescent development. She had no roadmap for it, no research to draw from, and — thanks to a childhood of her own that was shaped by trauma and the unique experience of being an only child — not a lot of instinctual “I remember being 12” wisdom to fall back on.

She gave us what she had. She responded to our behaviors and needs with the very best of intentions. And sometimes — often — there was a mismatch. A big one.

In the days and weeks after she passed, my sister, brother, and I sat together and revisited so many memories. Some were beautiful. Some were hysterical. And some made us cringe so hard we had to immediately follow them up with, “But she LOVED us. She really did.”

Because she did. And she also had absolutely no idea what we needed.

Exhibit A: The Embarrassment Olympics

Now, I want to be fair. ALL middle school parents are embarrassing. That is not a bug — it is a feature. If your very existence hasn’t caused your tween to dissolve into the floor at least once, you are not trying hard enough. A little parental mortification is basically a developmental requirement.

But my mom? She was not competing in the local embarrassment league. She was at Olympic level. Going for gold. In multiple events.

My mother was unapologetically, enthusiastically, spectacularly herself — at a time (the 1980s) and in a world where “herself” was, shall we say, an acquired taste.

While other moms were swapping casserole recipes and cheering from the bleachers in sensible sweaters, my mother was passionate about:

♻️ Recycling and sustainability (in 1984. Before it was cool. Before it was even a word people used at dinner.)

✊ Women’s equality (loudly, publicly, without apology)

🌍 The plight of American Indians, world cultures, ancestry, genealogy — basically any topic that required a slideshow

She was, in other words, a TED Talk before TED Talks existed. And she had the AUDACITY to show up to school events.

“Why can’t Mom just be normal?” we’d whisper to each other. “Like — bring orange slices to the game. Gossip with the other moms. Follow a trend. Any trend. Just one.”

But no. Mom showed up. Boldly. On her terms. Leaning into life, refusing to be constrained by what anyone else thought she should be.

Which was incredible. And absolutely catastrophic for my 7th-grade social life.

What She Didn’t Know (And Why It Wasn’t Her Fault)

Here’s the thing my adult self understands that my 12-year-old self could not articulate: every cell in my middle school body was screaming that I was in danger. Not actual danger — but the very specific, very real, neurologically-driven terror of being different.

Because here’s what the neuroscience now tells us: in early adolescence, belonging isn’t a preference. It’s a survival signal. The middle school brain is wired — literally wired — to monitor for social exclusion the same way it monitors for physical threat. “Standing out” doesn’t just feel uncomfortable. It feels unsafe.

So when Mom would cheerfully dismiss our pleas to just blend in — “Oh, that’s just silly. Why would you want to be like everyone else? That’s boring!” — she wasn’t being cruel. She genuinely didn’t understand. She couldn’t.

That right there is Exhibit #1 in What Not to Say to a Middle Schooler. Frame it, put it in a museum, label it: WELL-INTENTIONED. DEEPLY UNHELPFUL.

This is the research that wasn’t available to her generation. The neuroscience of early adolescence — the discovery that the middle school years are a distinct, critical, and wildly misunderstood developmental stage — simply didn’t exist then, let alone in a form that parents could access. Scientists needed another 10+ years and the fMRI to figure it out.

If she’d had that research? If she’d had support, a framework, a community of parents navigating the same wilderness?

She would have understood why fitting in felt like survival to me. She would have known how to sit beside me in that discomfort instead of dismissing it. She would have been my companion through the wilderness instead of the confusing, well-meaning force of nature who kept accidentally making the journey through this wilderness harder.

The Pendulum Problem

When my own kids became tweens and teens, I knew I wanted to do it differently. But I also knew I didn’t want to just do the opposite. Parenting by reaction — swinging the pendulum hard the other way — doesn’t actually get you to what your kid needs. It just gets you to “not that.”

I didn’t want to just avoid my mom’s missteps. I wanted to understand what my kids actually needed. And that meant finding the research.

Enter: the neuroscience revolution.

By the time my kids hit middle school, researchers had made extraordinary discoveries about early adolescent development — the years between roughly 10 and 14, that critical and chaotic passage from childhood to everything else. And what they found was, to use the scientific term, kind of mind-blowing.

But there were two problems:

First, none of this research was reaching parents. It was sitting in journals, being discussed at conferences, referenced in textbooks, … and doing absolutely nothing for the mom sitting across from her kid who just slammed a door for reasons no one fully understands.

Second, researchers kept lumping everything from age 10 to age 28 into one giant “adolescence” category. Which is a bit like calling everything from a seedling to a full-grown oak tree “a plant phase.” Technically true. Completely unhelpful.

Early adolescence — middle school — is its own distinct, urgent, misunderstood developmental stage. And parents deserve to understand it.

She Was a Force

At Mom’s reception, her friends and admirers came in waves. They’d find me, take my hands, and tell me stories. About her intellect. Her generosity. Her willingness to show up, fully, for the people she loved and the causes she believed in.

And I understood completely. Because she was. A Force.

(And the middle schooler in me, who apparently still lives rent-free in my brain, would occasionally pipe up: Yeah, but she was SO EMBARRASSING. The good kind, though. Mostly.)

She could have written “How to Not Give a F**k” — but that would have been at least two decades ahead of schedule. Like most things about her.

She was bold. Curious. Unapologetically herself. She pushed boundaries and pursued her passions with a kind of joyful ferocity that I am still, honestly, a little in awe of.

She didn’t have the research. She didn’t have the support. She didn’t have a community of parents saying “yes, this is hard, here’s what your kid actually needs right now.”

But she had heart. Enormous, sometimes overwhelming, always genuine heart.

I’m taking the latest research and my mom forward with me. The boldness. The curiosity. The refusal to be boring. The commitment to showing up — even imperfectly — for middle school parents and the work that helps you understand and meet your kid’s changing needs

Be Bold. Speak Truth. Be Curious.

Push Boundaries. Be Kind. Have Fun.

Never stop pursuing your dreams.

Onward, Mom. And onward, Rookies.