My sister said that after junior high she never had trouble fitting in at a new school. She smoked. All it took to get in with the smokers was a pack and a lighter.

Funny how they never mention that kind of information on any website devoted to moving teenagers. Not that we parents would want a website to state such a bald truth. Instead we like the websites that offer ideas that we can buy into: buy your child an address book, a journal for their feelings, cell phone minutes, or allow them to decorate to their new room to their heart’s content.

Our parental theory seems to be if you purchase the proper environment, then, by golly, your kids ought to be back on their feet after a move in two weeks.

That isn’t the way it works. It takes a hard six months for teens to fit in at a new school. But we parents don’t want to know that. Maybe that is why there is so little solid advice available to teens and parents about moving.

Recently, a parent sent me an address for a Department of Defense website called MTOM — Military Teens on the Move (www.dod.mil/mtom). “There is a difference between the information kids want, and the kind adults think they want,” she wrote.

So I checked out the site, encouraged at first that the DoD spent some coin on our teens. MTOM is organized, colorful, engaging and … empty — so empty. If every military kid was a 13-year-old female soccer star with all the right clothes and a sparkling personality, this site might even be helpful. I know some kids like that, but not many. Certainly not most.

Instead the website is a check-in-the-box for someone’s job performance review, not a useful tool for real people. I can’t imagine a teen using this website without feeling a lot worse about themselves and their experience. The underlying assumption is that all a kid needs to fit into a new school is a positive attitude and a lot of eye contact. Does anyone believe that anymore? Does anyone believe that high school is more like “Happy Days” than “Mean Girls”?
 
For example, MTOM recommends that teens stay in touch with their old friends by cell phone, e-mail, IM. But when friends stop returning calls, these experts advise that the friends are probably just busy and not to take it too personally.

But that isn’t always true. Teens have told me that two or three weeks after moving, they notice that their old friends aren’t interested in them anymore and start to drop them.

Even if the kid is trying to be really positive, their buds read the underlying reality: I have no life. I’m bored. I miss you. I’m lonely.
 
What no one tells these teens is that their friend’s lives back home heal faster. They just do. The guys back home are like a mouthful of teeth with one extraction. The teen who just moved is a tooth looking for a new home.

I don’t see why it would hurt to include a bit more reality in our advice to teens. Why don’t we talk about cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, sex and other risky behaviors teens sometimes use to fit in? Why don’t we talk about strategies to get through lunchtime and that soul-sucking emptiness of a weekend?

The reason teens need their own website to deal with a move is because they are not children. Parents can’t fix what is wrong with them, but we can’t leave them out there with no support. We have to commit ourselves to providing information that acknowledges the reality of moving a teen — and stop doing whatever it takes to make ourselves feel better.