Welcome to the Awesome Marriage Podcast, a place for honest conversations about marriage and how to have the relationship that God has designed for you.

I am your co-host, Christina Dodson. On the show will be our host, Dr. Kim Kimberling and Nill Smith.

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This small awesome marriage, we've been talking about parenting and just what that looks like in your marriage in different seasons with specific

ages of children. So today we're going to be talking about marriage must when you have kids in

middle school. How fun middle school can be like the hardest age, I feel like sometimes.

But I do want to go ahead and throw that caveat out there that we wholeheartedly believe that

children are a blessing from the Lord. So we're going to be talking about some of the challenges

of having middle schoolers and the challenges on our marriage when we have middle schoolers in

the house. But we absolutely, that's not to say that we believe

that children are burden because we don't. We absolutely believe that they're a blessing from the

Lord and that when you parent the right way, God's way, it can actually deepen and strengthen

your marriage. And so that's kind of what we're trying to do today is just give you tools to do that

and to show you how to parent the way God intended for the good of your marriage.

Yep, absolutely. Definitely. So Dr. Gamma, what are the unique challenges that often come with having

middle school-aged children? And then on top of that, what specifically are challenges that you see in

marriages of couples who have middle schoolers? Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think with that

middle school, when our kids get to be middle schoolers, you know, I know a lot of parents that

thought, we are, this parenting deal is so easy. It is, man, we are hitting home runs all the time.

And then all of a sudden they hit this middle school age and things change. And it's because

their kid changes. I mean, they physically, they change. They change outside. They change inside. They become, they want to be more independent, which is really part of God's plan that they begin to pull away and establish their own identity more. Their peers become more important. So then you're thinking about who are their friends. And, you know, some of the friends, all of a sudden, they're in a middle school and it's a bigger school.

And you don't know all their friends like maybe you did back when they were in grade school.

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