Middle school is a horrible age.
The weird thing is that my homeschooled 7th grader and the other homeschooled middle schoolers I know are pretty happy kids. My 7th grader doesn't understand why I say middle school was so horrible. He goes to lots of other events and classes with other kids (home schooled, privately schooled, publicly schooled) and it seems to be pretty uniform that middle school just isn't nearly as horrible when you're homeschooled.