~ How to Survive Raising Your Tween ~

“Tween,” short for tweenager, is a preposition, a contraction of between. It is a noun, tween, a youngster between 10 and 12 years of age, considered too old to be a child and too young to be a teenager.

*Tip One: the most important thing you can do for yourself and your child, as the parent of a “tween” is to give them limits.

The power that is contained within my twelve-year-old son’s weedy body is enough to fuel a small power station. He comes home from school and bursts in the door, sparks shooting in all directions, talking to a friend on the phone in a voice booming through the rafters at similar decibel levels to a sonic jet. Without guidelines set and clearly known, chaos will ensue.

My tween is a constant whirl of movement punctuated by long pauses at his device of choice, accompanied by phone conversations with his friends, newly-coined slang and laughter. He frequently bursts into song. He’s full of stories. He has yet to reach the stage of closing off and shutting himself away, or needing to oppose me.

*Tip Two: Don’t get lulled into easing up on the rules of your household. KEEPing guidelines in place now will help you through the storms to come.

The dreaded teen years lurk ahead like a thundercloud on the horizon. I know from experience the sudden leap kids do, especially boys, where they jump into these growth spurts and seem to morph before your eyes into alien beings with strange new bodies and voices. They become gripped by a hormonal whirlwind. But, that’s in the future. The teen’s adult preoccupations, like dating, fashion, and socialising haven’t kicked in yet. The tween still plays handball in the living room and soccer in the hall with his brother. For now, I just want to enjoy this sweet, kooky, joyous boy. For now, we dwell in the fields of daisies and carefree walks of the in between.

I can still see the child in the outline of the face. The innocence is still there, and I guess because he is my last, and the end of his childhood looms near, it seems all the more precious and fleeting. His way of thinking is still pure, of another world we adults can’t inhabit.

A delightful side of the tween is they seek to communicate everything that happens in their day, especially the wounding injustices which have been inflicted upon them.

Tween’s retain this engaging, heart-warming need to turn everything over under the powerful gaze of their parent. They still want to figure out what happens and whether or not it is “fair.” They probe and prod for answers, for varying views on why things are the way they are.

*Tip Three: Let them talk, don’t stifle them or cut them short. Establish the communication and trust between you. This will help in future “negotiations.”

He’s at that age when everything is funny. It’s adorable in parts. Yet, at the same time, exasperating. He often finds jokes so funny he laughs until he cries. Then, he falls about coughing and gasping for breath, until by the end of his enjoyment of the joke, I’m ready to strangle him with my bare hands to make it stop. He finds things too funny, if there is such a thing.

*Tip Four: take a breather from them when you need to.

Tweens and teens will go through one of the greatest growing periods of their life between twelve and seventeen. In a sense, so do we, as their parents. It’s stressful for all concerned.

Their limbs lengthen. Our resolve strengthens. His voice deepens. Our back straightens.

It takes a lot of effort raising a tween. Their absentmindedness is both frustrating and hilarious. They become like gangly newborn fawns falling over themselves, ploughing into solid obstacles they claim they just “didn’t see.” Full control over their cognitive abilities seems to veer between heightened and non-existent. The next minute, they can withdraw into their own shell and go deaf, dumb and blind.

My tween ran straight into a post the other day. I’m the adult in the situation, so I’m not allowed to laugh!

As his guide, I only get to steer sometimes: I remind the tween to watch his head, eat a meal, get some fresh air, and so on (and laugh later, when I tell my friends about it).

*Tip Five: Repeat this after me, my main role as the tween parent is to stay calm and keep the rudder of the household on course, thereby providing a secure base for them to come back to. By staying in that centred place, through the storms in my household, I become the leader my children need me to be.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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It is your job as the Tween Parent to preserve the magic for as long as possible and make crabby pants more live-able and hopefully, leave yourself with a little bit of sanity. ~ “BluntGuest” on BluntMoms.com

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My latest releases:

The Or’in of Tane Mahuta

Book One, the Chronicles of Aden Weaver http://amzn.com/B015K1KF0I

The Sasori Empire

Book Two, the Chronicles of Aden Weaver http://amzn.com/B075PMTN2H