How Pre Teenage Years of your child Could Make You A Better Parent

The funny thing about kids is, they are the reason we loose it, and they are the reason we hold it all together.

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Once you have a child, as a parent you can never be relived, I don’t know till what age. But during these past decade there have been a lot of teenage problems highlighted in the social media.

Where were these teenage problems hidden 30 years back?

Why are parents more stressed now when their child steps into teenage years?

Why there is big distance on both sides, the child and the parent have the feeling that they don’t know each other?

Can we really control the situation getting out of our hand?

When and what should we do to make an emotionally strong and mentally healthy adult?

I am going to share all these answers based on the psychological factors done by various researchers and some of my own research on this subject.

As soon as your child starts loosing his/her milk teeth, it’s a sign that the child is making permanent memories, this means the child has some in depth memories which he won’t forget till his lifetime.

So imagine your child 7 or 8 year old asks your permission to do something and you deny it, thinking its risky for the child to try but think according to the child’s point of view, you didn’t make the child understand the risk but you denied it and child has made a mental imprint of trying that thing when he/she grows up and might not tell you.

This is the first step where we have to correct ourselves. If the child wants to try something then just simply saying a No and not telling the child why you said no, is where you are creating a separation of thought as an adult and then child wants to be an adult but instead when you explain the child why you said no, the child feels like you both are equal.

What does your child like when they are between 4 to 12 years old? Cartoons, video games and outdoor play. At this age they idolise cartoon characters. But idolising doesn’t stop even when they are on the pathway of becoming an adult.

But as they head towards the age of 13 or 14, the idolising increases and they start making a set of goals for themselves to become like the actors or characters they idolise or adopt their habits, like they wear clothes like those characters or may be they want that haircut like that character. They may demand to buy the products those characters endorse.

But they typically fail to understand that those actors were just playing that character and in the real life they may not be like that.

As nowadays the actors are available on social media, the teens may have a reality check and their idols may not be of the same character as they expected to be and then the rebellion behaviours comes into the the teenage life….

Today its very difficult to change the influence of their idols they idolise, as due to sudden surge of hormones kids become very stubborn and they don’t give up.

These teenage hormones gives them a strength and courage to try all the things they thought were difficult in their life. These hormone surge to a peak when they try something that they haven’t tried before, like hiking, they feel a sense of satisfaction(adrenaline effect).

They tend to spend more time away from parents, they feel exploring the world without their parents gives them a raw feeling about how their parents see the world but they often don’t know what actually their parents world is.

They often seek for happiness outside their home rather then spending time with family and getting to know their parents.

These days parents do try all the methods available on internet to handle teens but there are so many tricks and hacks available, but what to do and what not to do is the real confusion in the parents.

There is too much to handle as a teen parent and actually the amount of actual confusion going on as a parent in your brain is equal to the same amount of confusion in your kids mind.

Do you think kids start changing their behaviour suddenly, the answer is NO.

If you think kids start changing their behaviour once they hit 13, No its not true, they change when they reach their first double digit birthday, yes it is when they hit their 10 birthday, their bodies start to crave for food and information for the dramatic changes their brain and heart is undergoing.

So a easiest way to understand this is, you don’t know that you are pregnant till you miss your period or take a pregnancy test but your body is into the pregnant state as soon as the sperm and egg unite but the process takes 15 days to let you know that this biological process has happened.

In the same way kids around the age of 10 starts observing, absorbing their atmosphere and their minds are in a lot of hustle to why and how things happen and change. They start making the plans for future what they want to become or like whom they want to become.

There are some really cool things you can do at this stage:

1. Divert them towards reading their age appropriate books(their crave for information will be satisfied)
2. Make an Q & A conversation with them, over a weekend dinner or while playing games with them.
3. If the child is interested push them to training towards any sport they like.
4. Play one game with them every weekend
5. Talk about people you idolise and may be discuss with them how sometimes influence can go wrong
6. Reduce saying No to everything they ask and justify your NO’s if you do say No
7. Even on the toughest day say good night to your child before bed and do let them know that you love them ‘in words’.
8. Please make a point on checking what your child is watching on Television or any device he or she is on because all kids grow at a different pace and if your child has some bad influence at school or class, then they might watch the contents on their reference which they should not be watching.

This age of 10 to 14 is a age includes lot of thinking. They think deeply about everything they have heard or seen and they want to dig out more information on that. Internet is accessible to kids these days for studies and they might absorb wrong information also on the topics that they have newly discovered.

So its important to have light conversation so they might just to give you a hint of information they want to retrieve from your side.

As parents it is our responsibility to inculcate the components on how to become a good human being in a society, but always remember that each of us as adults are good and we ourselves are trying to be good each day. So don’t expect your child to be good everyday, we all are learning RIGHT!

But there are few ways we can try to build a strong characteristic in a child and teenage years are hard because the kid has a choice every where he/she goes,

1. The child has a choice between choosing his peers(some of them may be friends for life)
2. The child has a choice when someone offers them any new substance to consume( smoking, drugs, alcohol)
3. The child has choice of expression( should he hide his weaknesses in front of his peers/parents)
4. The child has choice of opinions ( should he or she not stand for wrong things their friends do)
5. The child has a choice of personality ( introvert or extrovert)
6. The child has a choice of being at academics and the list goes on

Speaking your mind as a parent is very important, because when you discuss your feelings with them from a very a young age with your child, the child will also speak up his mind.Then making the above choices would be a little bit easy for your child if you have discussed these topic about choices.

You cannot build a personality in one day, its tiny small changes you make each day with your child is what makes our personality.

This blog is for the pre teenage years(10 to 14)

The next blog will be about the What are changes that happen in teenage years? How to handle those red flags your child might be showing? HIDING< LYING>FAKING(common teenage things) .

See you all in my next post. Healthy parenting until next time.

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