The life of a middle school student can be fraught with hormones and quests for independence.
The changes are drastic enough that they left one mother — one of many, no doubt — wondering if her child had been beamed down from another planet.
And around the time things start to go haywire for the kids, parents tend to become scarce at schools.
In 2000, the National Assessment of Education Progress reported that 90 percent of schools had half of fourth-grade parents attend parent-teacher conferences. By the eighth grade, only 57 percent of schools reported at least half of parents attending conferences.
For more on this story, check out Wednesday’s Family section.