Howyou parent your child early on will have an impact on whether their tween years will be terrific or turbulent.
Parenting tweens or preteens can be quite challenging. It is usually between the ages of nine and twelve that your cute little children, once so fond of cuddling into your laps and sharing their secrets, suddenly want little or nothing to do with you. To smoothly make it through the tween years of your child with a firm foundation for the upcoming teen years, it is essential to maintain a firm and strong bond with them while offering age-appropriate freedom. Here are some positive parenting tips that you may apply to raise your tween.
Do not feel neglected due to their newfound independence
At this age, it is appropriate for kids to turn away from their parents and rely more on friends, but many parents fail to accept this withdrawal from their tween and view it as rejection. Often parents misinterpret the distance and consider it an oppositional behaviour or willful refusal and tend to alienate their tweens by asking too many questions.
Stay Connected
Try having dinner together every night. Kids who eat with their parents tend to perform better in school and are less likely to experience anxiety or depression. Check on them every day by spending some private time together.
Re-think and re-model previous discipline idea
Power-based punishment strategies lose their effectiveness when children are in their preteen age. At this age, any kind of punishment compels tweens to become better liars. You can never beat your kids in a power struggle. Thus, try to re-model your discipline strategies.
Do not neglect hormones.
Your tween’s body is changing, triggering mood swings, creating competitiveness and distractibility. Tweens often find themselves throwing full-blown tantrums without understanding how it happened. Be patient and tell them that you understand how upset they are and ask them if they want to be left alone to calm down.
Do not be overly judgemental.
Your tween at this age is observing you closely to figure out how judgmental you are. They take their cues on how you talk about other’s children when they get into trouble — and they are observing and deciding whether you are critical or harsh or judgmental.
If you successfully win your tween's trust, you can provide them with a safe place to come back to irrespective of what happens in the new world that they are inhabiting.
