Stuck in the middle with you: How parents and children can get through the 'tween' years

As they negotiate the developmental stage between young childhood and the teenage years, tweens can struggle to come to terms with the complexity of life 

Pre-teens begin to see the good and bad in people — the ones they’re friends with can be fun, but also mean and nasty. Picture: iStock

Not long ago, she got invited to Paw Patrol-themed birthday parties. Now, your 11-year-old is receiving invitations to pamper parties with beauty treatments. Only a few years ago she watched Shaun the Sheep — now she’s making TikTok videos.

The tween stage can catch parents off guard. And it can be equally disorientating for children — that nine to 12-year-old cohort who are on a bridge between young childhood and the teens. It’s a steep trajectory and child psychotherapist Colman Noctor says children can be at different stages of it. “Some will enter it much quicker. They’ll be racing towards the teens, while others will cling to childhood — hold onto the Lego, the stuff they enjoy that’s no longer deemed cool by the others.”

Noctor says as children approach the teens, they can struggle to come to terms with the unpredictability of people. “In primary school, friendship is very territorial — ‘you’re my best friend, I’m yours’ — it’s very contractual. Pre-teens begin to see the good and bad in people — the ones they’re friends with can be fun, but also mean and nasty. They see another side of people and their social world becomes more complex.”

They’re also beginning to anticipate — with some anxiety — the organisational autonomy that will be expected of them. Noctor sees this starting at about age 11 or 12 when secondary schools come to pitch their schools to sixth class pupils. “The impending change plays on their mind. They’re hearing about timetables, lockers, different classrooms, and they’re thinking ‘crikey, how am I going to cope with this?’”

Brain flux

Joanna Fortune, psychotherapist and author of 15-Minute Parenting 8-12 Years, says the pre-teen stage is one of significant growth and development across cognitive, social, emotional and physical faculties. “Their brains are in a constant state of flux. This process of intense change can feel confusing for parents,” she says.

Tweens are gradually capable of greater degrees of logic, their pre-frontal cortex is still very immature, she says. “So we see evidence of emerging maturity, self-regulation and capacity for greater responsibility. But it’s mixed with flashes of temper and emotional meltdowns that seemingly come from nowhere. And it is all part of this stage of middle childhood.”

At this age, children start pulling away from parents and family as their hub of social development, and towards peers. “They become very focused on what they think their peers are thinking about them,” says Fortune.

Noctor says parents can struggle with seeing children become less communicative with them. “Tweens need to retreat. They start spending more time on their own, being a bit more private. It’s part of developing their sense of self.”

Relationships

Jenny Fahy is CEO of social enterprise, Life Connections, a programme to educate pre-teens and teens on developing healthy social/emotional relationships. She says parents of tweens can be surprised by a feeling of fast-diminishing control over who their children interact with. “Parents can be surprised when they see the friends’ opinion become more important when they see the influence start to come from peers.”

Fahy sees parents having a crucial role in holding guidance and boundaries for children as they start to express themselves outside the family.

Children at this stage are grappling with an increasingly pronounced sense of fairness, says Fortune. “They’re more likely to hold parents to task for what they perceive as inconsistencies in rules and consequences.”

It’s a challenging scenario for parents who often struggle with children finding their own voice. “When children start to question, to challenge authority, to be a bit cheekier, parents can find it hard. But it’s an utterly healthy, normal developmental leap,” says Noctor, adding that the parent’s job here is about coaching kids to express their opinion assertively rather than aggressively.

Fortune advises encouraging your pre-teen’s “questionings and wonderings” – plus double-checking and second-guessing of parents. “This stage of middle childhood is peak question-asking time. They’re not trying to catch you out – they’re gathering information to begin to draw their own conclusions about what they’re learning. It is the beginning of a new learning pattern.”

Independence

Parents at the receiving end of a push-pull in the relationship with their pre-teen can be unsure about what children want and need from them. And with the child showing increased capability and stronger independence alongside flashes of temper and immaturity, it can be hard for parents to figure out what they’re really ready for. “So parents might give them additional independence and then remove it when they see them stumble. The balance is hard to strike,” says Fortune.

Children at this stage still need playful connection with their parents. While play patterns change at this age – moving towards more structured, peer-based play like scooters, rounders, gaming – children will still engage in imaginative play when it’s made available and appealing to them, says Fortune. “As parents see play patterns change, they think children have outgrown imaginative play. They stop engaging and connecting at this more playful level. But for children, not being able to engage in this kind of play is associated with more negative emotions, including anxiety.”

Noctor urges parents not to rush children through the tween stage. “Childhood is shrinking. Children are expected to be older younger. That’s not good. Many in your child’s group may want to progress — others may not be ready for it.

“So if everyone in your child’s class has TikTok and you’re the unpopular parent who says no, there’ll be a social cost to that for your child. But there’ll also be an emotional benefit — your child isn’t catapulted into a world they’re not ready for.”

Parenting a tween may require more nuance and imagination than we’ve been used to if we want to get the balance right. And that’s OK, says Fortune. “As our children grow up, so must our parenting.”