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Your Middle School Student
The period from preadolescence to early adolescence is so turbulent. Children are experiencing rapid physical, emotional, and social development. It is often confusing, sometimes frightening and rarely easy. Parental support is increasingly important during this period and into young adulthood. During this time, you can expect:
- Children are becoming very aware of how they are perceived within their social network.
- Physical changes are increasingly evident as they mature from a child to a young adult.
- The management of these physical changes, as well as the accompanying hormonal changes, lead to a need for more than eight hours sleep and more than average amounts of exercise and fresh air.
- Young adults begin to demonstrate more common sense in their thinking and apply principles of formal logic to their world. They begin to see and identify hypocrisy: the difference between what parents say and what they do.
- They begin to demand authenticity from the adult world and quickly identify those that are not supporters.
- Young adults have a need to be noticed and cared about as a unique self.
- At 12 years and15 years the areas of the brain that are still not receiving stimulation are shut down. This affects their ongoing development in critical skill areas.
- Young adults still need high levels of parental support.
- Young adults also need a peer group which further develops their sense of identity and self and there is an increased interest in spending time with other young adults of similar interests and cultural backgrounds.
Suggestions for parents, caretakers and family:
Families of young adolescents need to balance maintaining and balance clear and appropriate parental authority with social, caring relationships. As their young adolescents grow physically into young adulthood, they need individualized attention and support. They need responsibilities with recognition for achievement, from their parents and other adults even if they are uncomfortable acknowledging or asking for it.
While young adults can seem to be pushing their parents away, parents need to assume and be confident that they are needed. They need to be available at unpredictable and spontaneous times for intense conversations. Parents need to provide lots of information about the adult world, without seeming to be teaching.
The challenge to parents is to truly hear what their youth is really saying. Too often, the words young people use are not reflective of the thoughts and feelings behind them. Parents need to maintain caring relationships, while also beginning to renegotiate respectful relationships around shared governance and shared power.
It is important that a young people have the support of more than one adult at this stage in their life. They need perspective on the adult world from more than just their parents. Parent-youth conflict can often escalate into serious threats, physical violence, runaways, and complete breakdown of relationships during these years, so parents should not be afraid to ask for help from other community members. In adolescence, raising children really does take a village!
Monitoring of young people is very important at this age. It is critical you know where your children are and who they are spending time with. Parents are almost always challenged to juggle personal demands on their time with the necessity of being available to their young during these years. This is made even more difficult because teenagers often are uninterested in spending time with the parent and/or are in conflict with their parents. Don't be intimidated. It is still critical to be a key presence in your child's life.
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