The 11-year-old you once thought you knew is drifting away. Your laughing, silly daughter has become unapproachable. She doesn’t want to confide in you. Your son tells you Family Night is stupid.
His symptoms flare up and his grades are slipping. He’s stopped doing homework. There’s a little streak of blue in her hair this morning.
What happened? How did your sweet grade-school kid become a garden troll?
These problems are not unusual for kids 10 to 12 years of age. These “tweens” — no longer children and not yet adolescents — have stopped caring about what you and other grownups think of them. They’re focused instead on what their peers think. They have become so eager to fit in that they’ll avoid doing just about anything that makes them appear different from their classmates.
They’re not trying to be difficult. They’re only trying to protect their self-esteem. While you’re becoming concerned about changes in their behavior, you can be sure they’re probably feeling more so — an important point to keep in mind the next time your tween does something that defies logic. So it’s important to understand what is motivating this changing child. The primary goal of most tweens is to be accepted as one of the gang. Pleasing parents doesn’t matter so much anymore. This doesn’t mean they don’t love you as much as they always did; rather, their values are changing.
This is a time to begin relaxing some of your disciplinary tactics by shifting some of that responsibility outside the home. From here on, as long as you continue your role as primary disciplinarian, you will close some avenues of communication. This is not the time for you or your tween to become adversarial.
Meet with teachers at the beginning of the school year to discuss alternative consequences for school-related transgressions such as missed assignments or talking out in class. The schools have effective approaches for dealing with these things. And once you have agreed on some guidelines, don’t re-involve yourself unless you feel that the school’s approach is wanting.
Watching your tween struggle in school, especially when he had previously been doing well, is not easy. Criticizing academic performance or going ballistic over a report card will only broaden the chasm between you at a time when it least needs to happen. Maintaining the closest possible loving bond through these years is more important than high grades, unless both can be had.
It goes without saying that your opinions about hair styles, music and choice of friends must only be expressed in a caring and gentle way. Then back off.
Think of the tween years as your boot camp for what’s to come — adolescence. If you can maintain an acceptable loving bond at this time in their lives, you’ll have an easier time together when you really need it. It’s not easy to contemplate, but the challenges are just beginning.
Robin C. Harris, an 18-year resident of Lake County, is the author of “Journeys out of Darkness, Adventures in Foster Care.” A retired educator, he is a substitute teacher for Lake County schools and has recently completed two works of fiction for children and teens. He is available for tutoring in first through eighth grades. Harris can be contacted at harris.tke@att.net.
