Parenting and homeschooling an early teen
January seems to have been a very difficult month for some families. I've had multiple conversations online with homeschooling families, often with middle schoolers, who are feeling beaten down and defeated. Whenever I find myself writing the same thing over and over again to different people, I take it as a sign that I need to write a blog post about, if only to save myself from endless typing.
First, let's just talk about junior high and the ages which correspond to it, which would be approximately 12, 13, and 14 years old, though you could go a year in either direction as well, depending on the child. I want you to think back to when your adorable, sweet babies became toddlers. I'm sure that nearly everyone has a moment when they look at their toddler, who is probably crying because they cannot do something they want to do, and wondered where that sweet, sweet baby went. Raising an early teen is exactly the same thing, and perhaps you even wondered where your sweet child went and when are they coming back.
Children in their early teen years are doing the exact same emotional and physical work that toddlers are. They are growing rapidly. Their brains are developing and suddenly they are aware of so much more in the world. They want (though probably need is a better word) to develop their independence and be able to do things on their own. But at the same time that they are feeling this drive to be independent, they are also still a baby or child and need the nurturing that comes with it. For the early teens, you can also add in a heaping dose of brand new hormones beginning to saturate their bodies. Is it any wonder that any child at either age is a bit of a unpredictable mess? There is a lot going on in there! And more than half the time, if you were to ask the child what is wrong, they don't actually have any idea themselves, which can also feel upsetting and disturbing.
This is why you end up with a child who one moment is acting as though they know everything in the world and having little patience with a parent, then at the next moment have burst into tears and are sobbing in your arms, but they have absolutely zero idea why. It's a little crazy making for everyone. And if you happen to have a child who has experienced trauma, then just multiply all these feelings and behaviors by at least a factor of two, if not more.
So if you are a homeschooler who is home together and also trying to squeeze in some education, what on earth do you do with this age? How do you get anything done? Are they always going to be like this?
I jokingly tell people that my one and only goal for parenting this age is just to like my child by the time they are through it. (And they will come through it.) I joke, but there is more than a little bit of truth in this. There is so much going on inside a child this age, that some days there is just no room in that head or margin in their emotions to manage anything else, including schoolwork. So we work with that. Some days are better spent regrouping than butting heads over something that is, in the long run, rather inconsequential. Is a page of division problems not done one day really going to doom a child to a life of poverty and despair? No, I didn't think so.
Really, to parent and teach this age well, you just need to go back to those toddler years. Think of this as a chance at a do-over for those toddler years which were so frustrating. So what you are going to do is think naps, snacks, and nurture.
Naps. All that growing is exhausting... and sometimes painful. Darn growing pains. It makes for a very tired child much of the time. I cannot tell you the number of times that K. has disappeared for a while in the afternoon and I discover that he's taken himself to bed and taken a long nap. He is growing so much, he's just plain tired. If your child is acting a bit over the top, ask yourself if some sleep wouldn't help. (Maybe you can ask this of yourself, too.) As we mothers know all too well, when you are exhausted, not very much in life looks good nor is it very easy to try new things.
Snacks. All that growing means energy is needed to fuel it. Welcome to the beginning of the eating years. My usual benchmark for feeding children from hard places is protein every two hours. With a growing early teen, even this might not be enough. It's can be a budget killer, but try to keep high protein, easily accessible snacks on hand. It really does help.
Nurture. Sometimes this is the most difficult one of the three, especially if your child has been less than pleasant to be around. It can really feel that a parent's love and care is exactly what they do not want. But remember, they have no idea what they want at this point, and this is what they need. They may act (or try to act) all grown up on the outside, but they can still be very young on the inside. Your job as parent is to find ways to provide the nurture your child craves while supporting their need to grow independent. If reading together at night has been your family's tradition, don't stop because your children are older and can read on their own. Use this to provide some nurture. Sit together while you read. You can do the same with watching movies together. Sit next to each other watching the same thing instead of in separate rooms on separate screens.
Finding out what they are interested in and being interested in that is another way to provide nurture. I listen to a lot about Star Wars. Far more about Star Wars than I really care to know, and frankly, I don't remember a lot of it. But K. wants to talk about Star Wars, so that is what we do. I also try to tailor school around his interests. If I can use Legos to help teach something, by golly, we're using Legos.
This is also the age that their brains are starting to discover that there are areas of grey in the world. I did junior high youth ministry for quite a few years. There is nothing that a group of junior high students love more than to ask about exceptions to rules. This is the age where you are convinced every last one of them is going to become a lawyer, if only because they debate constantly. Use this new found awareness to your advantage. Ask questions that are not always easy and have them debate a side, then have them switch sides. Start having them think about what is right and good and why. If you can't beat them with the debating, and you can't, then join them and make it constructive.
So these are the three important things that the child needs, but there are three important things that you as the parent need. A sense of humor, a long view, and a little bit of your own emotional work.
A sense of humor. If you take anything away from this post, be sure to take this. A sense of humor, or learning to take life a little less seriously, will get you through a lot. As I've written before, even the simple act of smiling sends signals to your brain that things are good and your body reacts accordingly, ratcheting down from Code Orange (or whatever level you were at) to something less dire. If smiling does that, what do you imagine laughing does? Find the humor in things. Smile at your child. Take yourself less seriously. But to clarify, keeping a sense of humor does not mean laughing at your child. It means laughing with them, helping them take life a little less seriously as well. Because truly, there is very little a junior high student can do that will cause the world to end. We need to stop acting as if a bad attitude or a stupid mistake is the end of life as we know it.
A long view. Just as the toddler stage ended, so too, will this. In fact, you probably won't even notice it passing as your child turns becomes 15 or 16. Things will just seem a little more settled; behavior more expected. This is not to say a 15 or 16 year old won't or can't do stupid things. They will. It's more that the often emotional roller coaster of those early teen years flattens out a bit. The growing slows, the brain has made a few more connections, the grasping for independence and the fear of it have stopped battling each other. Before you know it, the teen years will be behind you and you will find yourself parenting an independent young adult, a phase which comes with it's own challenges, and you wonder why you made such a big deal out of some things, because now you would totally laugh them off. Just because life is like it is at this moment, does not mean it will stay like this forever.
Your own emotional work. It's at those early teen years that parents really start to realize that their child is growing up and their time at home is becoming extremely limited. If a child decides to go to college at 18, then a 13 year old only has five years at home left. We all know how fast five years can go. It can be a bit panic inducing. Have I taught them enough? Will I have enough time to teach them everything? What if I ruined them?! First, we need to let go of these worries. They serve no good purpose and don't really change anything except perhaps to steal our joy in the moment. The early teen years are also the signal that our child doesn't need us to do everything for him anymore. That's actually a good thing. It means our child is on the road to independence which has been the goal of parenting from the beginning. Just as our child needs to begin to develop independence from us, little bits at a time, we also need to develop independence from our child. We need to begin to rethink what our role in life is and will be. This can be particularly difficult for a parent who has stayed home to raise children. More than other jobs, this one can be so all-encompassing that it is difficult to picture who we are outside of it. Now is the time to start pursuing other interests. What have you always wanted to do but having young children made it impossible? Start to figure out how to do that. Besides, this will be a wonderful example to your children about how to go about learning and exploring new things; to not be afraid to try doing something. If you feel as though there are other things in your life, you will be able to laugh about and take the long view when things feel hard.
Very little of this has to do with actual homeschooling. That's because if you can get these aspects of parenting an early teen, then adding in the homeschooling is not that tough. This is actually true of all homeschooling. If you get the relationships right, it is easy to add in the learning. So much about what people have difficulties with in homeschooling is not actually about the homeschooling but about how their family is or is not functioning. Because homeschooling is such an intense process... you are around each other a lot, doing all of life together... it merely serves to highlight where family life isn't really working. You just can't avoid it because it is right there in your face.
That's true of just about every part of life, isn't it? Get the relationships right first, and the rest of life will fall into line.
First, let's just talk about junior high and the ages which correspond to it, which would be approximately 12, 13, and 14 years old, though you could go a year in either direction as well, depending on the child. I want you to think back to when your adorable, sweet babies became toddlers. I'm sure that nearly everyone has a moment when they look at their toddler, who is probably crying because they cannot do something they want to do, and wondered where that sweet, sweet baby went. Raising an early teen is exactly the same thing, and perhaps you even wondered where your sweet child went and when are they coming back.
Children in their early teen years are doing the exact same emotional and physical work that toddlers are. They are growing rapidly. Their brains are developing and suddenly they are aware of so much more in the world. They want (though probably need is a better word) to develop their independence and be able to do things on their own. But at the same time that they are feeling this drive to be independent, they are also still a baby or child and need the nurturing that comes with it. For the early teens, you can also add in a heaping dose of brand new hormones beginning to saturate their bodies. Is it any wonder that any child at either age is a bit of a unpredictable mess? There is a lot going on in there! And more than half the time, if you were to ask the child what is wrong, they don't actually have any idea themselves, which can also feel upsetting and disturbing.
This is why you end up with a child who one moment is acting as though they know everything in the world and having little patience with a parent, then at the next moment have burst into tears and are sobbing in your arms, but they have absolutely zero idea why. It's a little crazy making for everyone. And if you happen to have a child who has experienced trauma, then just multiply all these feelings and behaviors by at least a factor of two, if not more.
So if you are a homeschooler who is home together and also trying to squeeze in some education, what on earth do you do with this age? How do you get anything done? Are they always going to be like this?
I jokingly tell people that my one and only goal for parenting this age is just to like my child by the time they are through it. (And they will come through it.) I joke, but there is more than a little bit of truth in this. There is so much going on inside a child this age, that some days there is just no room in that head or margin in their emotions to manage anything else, including schoolwork. So we work with that. Some days are better spent regrouping than butting heads over something that is, in the long run, rather inconsequential. Is a page of division problems not done one day really going to doom a child to a life of poverty and despair? No, I didn't think so.
Really, to parent and teach this age well, you just need to go back to those toddler years. Think of this as a chance at a do-over for those toddler years which were so frustrating. So what you are going to do is think naps, snacks, and nurture.
Naps. All that growing is exhausting... and sometimes painful. Darn growing pains. It makes for a very tired child much of the time. I cannot tell you the number of times that K. has disappeared for a while in the afternoon and I discover that he's taken himself to bed and taken a long nap. He is growing so much, he's just plain tired. If your child is acting a bit over the top, ask yourself if some sleep wouldn't help. (Maybe you can ask this of yourself, too.) As we mothers know all too well, when you are exhausted, not very much in life looks good nor is it very easy to try new things.
Snacks. All that growing means energy is needed to fuel it. Welcome to the beginning of the eating years. My usual benchmark for feeding children from hard places is protein every two hours. With a growing early teen, even this might not be enough. It's can be a budget killer, but try to keep high protein, easily accessible snacks on hand. It really does help.
Nurture. Sometimes this is the most difficult one of the three, especially if your child has been less than pleasant to be around. It can really feel that a parent's love and care is exactly what they do not want. But remember, they have no idea what they want at this point, and this is what they need. They may act (or try to act) all grown up on the outside, but they can still be very young on the inside. Your job as parent is to find ways to provide the nurture your child craves while supporting their need to grow independent. If reading together at night has been your family's tradition, don't stop because your children are older and can read on their own. Use this to provide some nurture. Sit together while you read. You can do the same with watching movies together. Sit next to each other watching the same thing instead of in separate rooms on separate screens.
Finding out what they are interested in and being interested in that is another way to provide nurture. I listen to a lot about Star Wars. Far more about Star Wars than I really care to know, and frankly, I don't remember a lot of it. But K. wants to talk about Star Wars, so that is what we do. I also try to tailor school around his interests. If I can use Legos to help teach something, by golly, we're using Legos.
This is also the age that their brains are starting to discover that there are areas of grey in the world. I did junior high youth ministry for quite a few years. There is nothing that a group of junior high students love more than to ask about exceptions to rules. This is the age where you are convinced every last one of them is going to become a lawyer, if only because they debate constantly. Use this new found awareness to your advantage. Ask questions that are not always easy and have them debate a side, then have them switch sides. Start having them think about what is right and good and why. If you can't beat them with the debating, and you can't, then join them and make it constructive.
So these are the three important things that the child needs, but there are three important things that you as the parent need. A sense of humor, a long view, and a little bit of your own emotional work.
A sense of humor. If you take anything away from this post, be sure to take this. A sense of humor, or learning to take life a little less seriously, will get you through a lot. As I've written before, even the simple act of smiling sends signals to your brain that things are good and your body reacts accordingly, ratcheting down from Code Orange (or whatever level you were at) to something less dire. If smiling does that, what do you imagine laughing does? Find the humor in things. Smile at your child. Take yourself less seriously. But to clarify, keeping a sense of humor does not mean laughing at your child. It means laughing with them, helping them take life a little less seriously as well. Because truly, there is very little a junior high student can do that will cause the world to end. We need to stop acting as if a bad attitude or a stupid mistake is the end of life as we know it.
A long view. Just as the toddler stage ended, so too, will this. In fact, you probably won't even notice it passing as your child turns becomes 15 or 16. Things will just seem a little more settled; behavior more expected. This is not to say a 15 or 16 year old won't or can't do stupid things. They will. It's more that the often emotional roller coaster of those early teen years flattens out a bit. The growing slows, the brain has made a few more connections, the grasping for independence and the fear of it have stopped battling each other. Before you know it, the teen years will be behind you and you will find yourself parenting an independent young adult, a phase which comes with it's own challenges, and you wonder why you made such a big deal out of some things, because now you would totally laugh them off. Just because life is like it is at this moment, does not mean it will stay like this forever.
Your own emotional work. It's at those early teen years that parents really start to realize that their child is growing up and their time at home is becoming extremely limited. If a child decides to go to college at 18, then a 13 year old only has five years at home left. We all know how fast five years can go. It can be a bit panic inducing. Have I taught them enough? Will I have enough time to teach them everything? What if I ruined them?! First, we need to let go of these worries. They serve no good purpose and don't really change anything except perhaps to steal our joy in the moment. The early teen years are also the signal that our child doesn't need us to do everything for him anymore. That's actually a good thing. It means our child is on the road to independence which has been the goal of parenting from the beginning. Just as our child needs to begin to develop independence from us, little bits at a time, we also need to develop independence from our child. We need to begin to rethink what our role in life is and will be. This can be particularly difficult for a parent who has stayed home to raise children. More than other jobs, this one can be so all-encompassing that it is difficult to picture who we are outside of it. Now is the time to start pursuing other interests. What have you always wanted to do but having young children made it impossible? Start to figure out how to do that. Besides, this will be a wonderful example to your children about how to go about learning and exploring new things; to not be afraid to try doing something. If you feel as though there are other things in your life, you will be able to laugh about and take the long view when things feel hard.
Very little of this has to do with actual homeschooling. That's because if you can get these aspects of parenting an early teen, then adding in the homeschooling is not that tough. This is actually true of all homeschooling. If you get the relationships right, it is easy to add in the learning. So much about what people have difficulties with in homeschooling is not actually about the homeschooling but about how their family is or is not functioning. Because homeschooling is such an intense process... you are around each other a lot, doing all of life together... it merely serves to highlight where family life isn't really working. You just can't avoid it because it is right there in your face.
That's true of just about every part of life, isn't it? Get the relationships right first, and the rest of life will fall into line.
Comments
I wonder if she was telling herself not to kill us in the process...