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Parenting
with Gary & Anne Marie: Elementary / Pre-Adolescence
The 8 Transitions of Preadolescents
Let's face it: Your child
is changing. She doesn't watch Barney anymore. She doesn't want your help quite
as much. Her emotions are exaggerated. And she's suddenly realized that not
everyone is her friend just because they're in the same class. She's begun dealing
with deeply felt issues like freedom, friendship, peer approval-even fashion.
Wait! Maybe you're not ready
for this. You're still quite comfortable setting out Disney plates and chicken
nuggets. Now she wants tossed salad with low-cal dressing? Your middle-years
child, that eight- to twelve-year-old, is changing.
The middle years are a period
of great transition-a developmental phase when a child moves from where he has
been to where he needs to go. During this phase of growth, you are still his
first choice as a guide, and he needs your leadership. Take advantage of that.
Below are eight critical middle-years transitions. Help him through them well,
and the next leg of the journey just might be crash-free.
1. Transitioning away
from Childhood and Childhood Structures
On the first day of kindergarten, you followed her bus all the way to school
just to make sure that she remembered to get off, that she was smiling when
she did, and that she didn't evaporate in the few miles from here to there.
You laughed; you cried; you chatted with the other half-dozen teary adults who
all did the same silly thing. Guess what? It's time to back off. From now on,
wave good-bye from the porch. Finding relational equilibrium with your maturing
child is one of the more difficult tasks of parenthood. But by the end of this
growth period, a healthy restructuring of relationships needs to have occurred
for both you and your child.
This isn't your four-year-old
anymore. This is a young person on the verge of adolescence. You need to begin
treating her like a responsible individual. You may be surprised to find that
that's what she has actually become. During the middle years, children begin
the long process of metamorphosis toward healthy independence. They move away
from childhood structures, dependencies, and interests. There is a shift from
a world centered largely on relationships with Mom, Dad, and siblings to a world
in which relationships with peers, friends, and real heroes begin to draw their
focus.
This particular transition
is demonstrated by the way a child attempts to distance himself from early childhood
structures. While certain terminology didn't bother your child at age five or
six, at eight or nine that same boy or girl will object to conversations that
describe him or her in childish ways, such as "He's my little guy"
or "Yes, she's my princess."
Young Ryan couldn't wait
for his week at camp the summer he was nine. Upon arrival, he began unpacking
the tidy bundle his mom had prepared. To his horror, he discovered the pillowcase.
There was Superman striking a bold pose, much to his campmates' delight. Ryan's
week at camp turned into one very long bad dream. The endless ribbing left him
wishing he could disappear into a phone booth. At eight or nine, your child
has already done an enormous amount of learning. Contrast him with the nearly
helpless toddler of a few years ago, who needed the structure of Mom and Dad's
direct companionship, love, and supervision. A guiding parent or other supervising
adult orchestrated all wake time, naptime, mealtime, and playtime. Your child's
friends were limited to the kids in the neighborhood or his playgroups. He lived
in a world predominately structured and made secure by you.
Consider the child who at
five held your hand everywhere you went and at six advanced to crossing the
street by herself. Now she is notably less dependent on you and the sheltering
structures you created for her protection (and your comfort). A driving sense
of her own self-sufficiency is replacing your preadolescent's longstanding preoccupation
with personal caretakers.
Early in the middle-years
transition, children begin to reject all sorts of minor childhood-related associations
that they previously found comforting. The little girl who once was consoled
after an injury by sitting on Mom's lap may start going to her siblings for
comfort instead. The young boy who once would not go anywhere without his stuffed
animal now buries it in his closet toy box. This is just the beginning.
2. Transitioning to Knowing
the Facts
"You're out! I touched the base."
"No, I'm not! You have to touch me."
They can barely swing the bat, but they brandish their knowledge of the rules
as if they had a deep and abiding understanding of the game.
Your middle-years child
now relates to other children as peers and to other adults as something more
than parental substitutes. During this period, boys and girls demonstrate a
need to organize, categorize, and play by the rules. It is important to them
that they get their facts right (although they have an oversimplified notion
of the correctness of their own assessment during this phase).
Perhaps you're having a
conversation with another adult in which you describe an incident that occurred
at the store today. You aren't even two sentences into your story when you hear
from the only other eyewitness to the event, your nine-year-old daughter. "No,
Mom, that's not how it happened. The man with the shopping cart bumped the manager
and then.…"
Don't be surprised when
your attempt to abbreviate a conversation is met by a challenge from your middle-years
child, who suddenly seems to have a desperate need to get the story right, as
if one fact out of sequence will cause the universe to instantly implode.
Now add birth order to this
mix. Because the eldest is born into a world of adults and not siblings, she
tends to have an increased need to be "right" about all things. If
another child breaks the rules, she is relentless in her efforts to straighten
that child out or bring justice to bear on a situation. "Mom! That's not
fair! When I was Billy's age, you never let me ride to the corner by myself."
Look for these verbal declarations-they're all part of the transition process.
3. Transitioning from
Imagination to Reason
With the middle years comes a distinct shift toward logical thinking. Logic
and reason now help your child to begin overcoming the unknown. Consider how
small children deal with fear of the unknown or unexplained circumstances. A
nighttime shadow on the bedroom wall becomes the villain from their favorite
cartoon. A loud noise in the distance is a monster on its way to the house!
Because their imaginations develop more rapidly than their reasoning skills,
and because they're aware of their own smallness, younger children often interpret
anything they don't understand as something to be feared.
But everything changes during
the middle years. Reason rises to challenge imagination. This means your eight-year-old
will begin to appear more daring and adventuresome and less restrained by fear
of the unknown.
4. Transitioning to New
Emotional Patterns and Expressions
Every healthy child comes into this life with the potential for experiencing
the full range of human emotions. Obviously, these emotions influence the way
we think and act. Though all humans have the same emotions, each of us responds
to these feelings differently. Some responses are constructive; others are detrimental.
In the latter case, it is not the emotions themselves that get us into trouble,
but the manner in which we deal with them.
The more we respond to an
emotion in a certain way, the greater the likelihood that it will develop into
a habit. Developing positive habits is particularly important during the middle
years because this is the season of life in which a child's moral knowledge
(moral truth taught by parents and teachers) combined with his emotions can
help establish patterns of right behavior.
For example, the child who
learns early in life that "honesty is the best policy" is likely to
carry that teaching into adulthood. Your four-year-old can understand the principle,
but your eight-year-old can make it a way of life.
Do not miss this important
point: You and your home environment will play a dominant role in shaping your
child's profile of emotional responses, especially during the middle years.
A child who observes Dad returning wrong for wrong by walking the dog on a neighbor's
lawn as payback for a similar disservice will learn that paybacks are okay for
peers. If right responses are not learned during the middle years, wrong ones
will most likely characterize the teen years. Now is when you need to check
out your own attitudes.
The middle years also bring
about a shift in a child's outward expression of emotions. A young child's emotional
outburst lasts a few minutes, and then it's over. Contrast this response with
that of the socially sensitive middle-years child, whose short-lived outbursts
have given way to drawn-out periods of moodiness. What all this demonstrates
is that your middle-years child can now exercise cognitive control over his
emotions. A few years earlier, this was not the case. The decision of how to
behave is, in the end, your child's. However, you still play a significant role
in shaping how your child develops his or her responses. Take advantage of this.
5. Transitioning to Hormone-Activated
Bodies
Perhaps you have found yourself thinking, My child is only eight or nine-it
can't be hormones yet. Yes, it can. Most people think hormonal changes don't
begin until just before a child reaches the teen years, when they naturally
set into motion a series of defiant acts and rebellious mood swings.
But the truth is that hormonal
changes in a child's endocrine system begin at approximately age seven, not
twelve or thirteen. You may have already begun to see the effects. Yes, your
middle-years child is hormonally active. From this point on, he or she will
experience greater emotional highs and lows. This may, in turn, affect behavior.
But wait: The fact that your child is undergoing these changes does not provide
an excuse for wrong behavior.
Have you ever wondered why
your nine-year-old daughter can change moods overnight? She may go through phases
of discouragement and break into tears over minor details. Someone looked at
her wrong. She looks all wrong. She's not sure what is wrong. Her face becomes
a little oilier, and she is sure everyone is noticing. For a few days she becomes
more snippety toward her siblings. Then, just as quickly, she returns to being
the stable child you knew before. Hormones at work. While hormones play their
part, the moral environment in which your child is raised also plays a significant
role in shaping her perception of her changing body and the sexual tension natural
to growth. Clinicians have noted that children who come from differing domestic
moral climates will have very different sensual experiences.
For example, young girls
weaned on MTV are more likely to express their budding sense of womanhood according
to the images promoted by the sexual image-makers of MTV. In contrast, pubescent
daughters coming from homes that do not allow this influence tend to direct
their budding sexual awareness into channels of innocent romantic thought.
Have your ever watched Anne
of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea? It took Anne, the main character of this
drama, eight hours (in film time-eight years in story time) to realize that
it was Gilbert, her old school chum, who she really loved. While such romantic
portrayals are entertaining for a sixty-year-old woman and perhaps confusing
for a six-year-old girl, a ten-year-old girl enters into eight hours of romance
by identifying herself with the heroine.
Why is she hooked while
her six-year-old female cousin and her eleven-year-old brother find something
else to do? Because hormones active in her body have brought about a burgeoning
sense of romance. Her body awakens her mind to a vague but real awareness that
someday perhaps there will be a Gilbert for her, too. Endocrine changes awaken
a sense of romantic sensitivity in girls much earlier than they do in boys.
Your ten-year-old daughter is asking, "Mom, how did you and Dad meet?"
or "Where did you go on your first date?" Meanwhile, a boy of the
same age is asking, "Mom, have you seen my football?"
Valiant knights prance their
white steeds dreamily through your daughter's thoughts. But it will be another
year or two before the neighbor boy of the same age starts to consider your
daughter more than a decent right fielder or someone to torment with his plastic
spider. But in time, preteen boys, too, succumb to the powerful effect of hormones
on their views of the opposite sex.
6. Transitioning to the
Growing Influence of Peers
The middle years are marked by a greater sensitivity to the differences between
self and peers. Any slight deviation in growth or secondary sex characteristics
from what is common in the group will cause the middle-years child to worry.
Such an occurrence is natural
and quite unavoidable. The young girl who begins to develop prematurely will
measure herself against other girls. The boy who starts to show hairs on his
chin or to grow disproportionately in height will become self-conscious about
his differences.
This awareness leads to
a growing interest in the opinions of others in a child's peer group. What is
the group wearing, listening to, doing? Where are they going? And what does
all this mean to me? The effects of this transition will be felt for quite some
time.
7. Transitioning to a
Sense of Morality
Morality is more than a checklist of good choices one makes in the interest
of preserving self. Moral maturity means considering others-respecting the feelings,
needs, hurts, and hearts of those with whom the child interacts.
We believe that clearly
defined morality is the only foundation upon which healthy relationships and
strong families are built. Only moral maturity enables us to get along rightly
with others in our families and communities.
Because the middle years
are typically far less traumatic than the "terrible twos" or the tumultuous
teens, parents tend not to have a sense of moral urgency during this time. Yet
if there is ever a time of ripening, when a child seeks moral knowledge, it
is during these precious middle years. This is the time when you as a parent
can encourage and shape the development of moral consciousness in your child.
During the middle years,
children not only understand the wider scope of moral truth; they can begin
to use it to regulate their lives. Soon they will be able to conform their outward
behavior voluntarily, apart from the fear of reproof that so often accompanies
a younger child's moral decision-making process. The middle years are when your
child will strike deep moral roots-for good or ill-with or without your guidance.
Younger children live off
Mom and Dad's values. But during the middle years, children begin to take personal
ownership of their values. Are you ready to help your child make the transition?
8. Transitioning from
Being Reminded to Being Responsible
The middle years are a time when your child should be transitioning from simply
obeying the rules, on the one hand, to taking personal responsibility for tasks,
chores, and behavior, on the other. When only obedience is at stake, your child
will comply when reminded. When responsibility comes into play, your child does
the right thing without being reminded.
As soon as a middle-years
child understands what you're asking of her, she should be expected to take
ownership of that behavior. This may be a change for her and you. If you don't
make it a priority to teach her self-generated initiative now, you'll still
be asking if she's done all her homework and picked up her room when she's in
college. In the pages that follow, we'll show you how to teach your middle-years
children to take the initiative.
Article
by Gary Ezzo / Anne Marie Ezzo
