Can intervention save middle schoolers from "mean tweens"?

"Relational forms of aggression are known to increase during the middle school years..."

... and if that's not the most "no duh" sentence you've ever read in a research abstract, we don't know what is, because let's face it: Everybody knows that "tweens" can be downright mean.

But here's the enlightening, insightful, promising — and perhaps even surprising — part of a paper published this month in School Psychology Review: When we give students the tools to understand the deeply harmful nature of malicious gossip and social exclusion, they respond in meaningful and compassionate ways. 

In fact, the researchers found, the Steps to Respect program resulted in a 72 percent drop in malicious gossip. An earlier study found a not-quite-as-jaw-dropping 31 percent drop in bullying and victimization associated with the program. Either way, however, the program had a notable effect on the lives of some young, vulnerable students.

That's worth celebrating and implementing, particularly since we're not just talking about helping kids weather the storms of middle school — we're talking about helping them survive middle school.

Literally.

When the rate of suicides among children and young adults rose sharply in the mid-2000s, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control advocated focusing suicide prevention programs on girls as young as 10 years old.

These aren't kids who traditionally have to fear the sort of physical bullying associated with most anti-bullying campaigns. These are kids who suffer the sort of covert abuse that Rosalind Wiseman brought to the forefront of the bullying discussion in her book "Queen Bees & Wannabes."

We know, of course, that the vast majority of students — even those who are brutally bullied — will make it out of middle school alive. But we also know that many — even those who have previously been good students — will begin to disengage from school in order to avoid the fear and pain. They'll skip. And when they skip they'll fall behind. And when they fall behind they're likely to stay behind. And when that happens, they're more likely to drop out.  

It's not just victims who suffer the consequences of unchecked bullying, either. Young bullies are also more likely to drop out of school — and more likely to have at least one criminal conviction by young adulthood.

And, of course, all of that makes the problems faced by middle schoolers problems that face us all.

The more ways we address those problems — right now — the better. 

"No duh," right?