Parenting Children Ages 5 to 12

Excerpted from
Caring for Your School Age Child: Ages 5-12
By Edward L. Schor, M.D., The American Academy of Pediatrics

When their youngsters reach the middle years of childhood, many parents breathe a sigh of relief. Finally, the period of their offspring's infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool years-a time when children grow so dramatically and require constant attention-is behind them. At the same time, adolescence and its perceived turmoil seem far off in the future. At least for the moment, these parents reason, they can relax a little. The middle years, they say, is a time when nothing much happens. But, in fact, that is hardly the case. Families remain extremely important, and parenting can become even more challenging.

The middle years of childhood are years of enormous social growth. Between the ages of five and twelve, children's intellectual competence develops dramatically, and they become noticeably better at logical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving. With these skills in hand, they begin to try out what they have learned at home in the outside world. These years offer children opportunities to see how the skills, behavior, beliefs, and values that serve them at home can work in the company of new friends and strangers.

The middle years are complex years, when children's self-esteem is tested and (it is to be hoped) is reinforced daily. Children must "find themselves" and become more independent while simultaneously gaining acceptance among their friends and retaining a secure place within their families. Most children find excitement and personal gratification during these years; some do not. Some children spend these years trying to manage or avoid problems-problems with friends, feelings, school, or within the family; they may not have the opportunity or the energy to succeed with the developmental tasks of this period of their lives.

The habits and behavior patterns that children develop during these years will strongly Influence their later health and well-being, their successes at school and work, and their relationships. This book is written to assist parents, teachers, and others to help children take advantage of the experiences these years provide-to build a firm foundation of healthy behavior, emotional well-being, and academic and social skills for their adolescence and their adult lives.

Since you have chosen to read this book, you already have some of the characteristics-namely, awareness and interest-necessary to guide a child through the middle years. Children seem to have an innate desire to explore, to learn, to grow, and to do their best, whatever the situation. Parents have that same determination as they go about raising their children, but sometimes, just like their children, parents need information, advice, and encouragement in order to succeed. It is one of the great myths of our time that parents should be self-sufficient and have the correct instincts and wisdom to solve all the problems that arise during childhood. Trial and error, learning from experience, is how most parenting takes place.

Still, there is a role for the advice of experts and of those who previously have traveled the parental path. The information in this book is provided by pediatricians, members of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who are national experts in their fields. They have studied child health and development, watched and learned from the tens of thousands of families for whom they have cared, and are parents themselves.

Families Today

Everyone knows that a child's experience within his or her family today is different from what it was a generation ago. Grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts are as likely to be many miles away as they are to be living around the corner. Today, fewer children live with both of their parents, many live with only their mothers, and some live in households with stepparents. Moreover, the number of siblings in the home has decreased. Daily routines are dictated as much by the work schedule of the parents as by the needs and wishes of the family, and there seems to be less time just to be a family-spending time together simply to enjoy each other's company.

Growing Up in a Family

The changes and complexities in family life demand that we pay attention to families, for they remain the place where children grow up. During the preschool years families are like incubators, providing children with a safe place where they can feel loved and cared about and discover who they are. In the middle years families provide a working model in which children can observe and practice relationships with other people. Families also provide a supportive environment in which children can find help in understanding, coping with, and finding their place in the world around them. This is quite a task to accomplish for a social institution like the family, which is barraged by outside pressures, many beyond their control.

Children's relationships with their parents change forever during these years. You and your youngster will spend much fewer of your waking hours together now. Monitoring your child's activities and behavior, and teaching him new skills, will become more of a hands-off process for you, and your child must struggle to develop strategies for controlling and managing his own behavior.

A Brave New World

During the middle years, children first venture into the world alone, physically unaccompanied by their families. Schools become of great importance in the lives of children. They are the site of new social contacts with both adults and other children, as well as new expectations for the child. By participating in school activities and organizations, children develop friendships unrelated to their families for the first time. In so doing they face a confusing array of unfamiliar and sometimes unfathomable social behaviors.

Children will discover that other adults do not communicate directly with them and are not as easily understood as are their parents. Sometimes children have difficulty understanding the meaning and intention of what adults say. They will observe and be confused by the differences between spoken values and adult behavior. School will challenge the way they use their time, control their impulses, and measure their self-worth. Middle-years children develop their first intimate friendships and learn the essential skill of working things out to accommodate others. While friendships are extraordinarily important, they also can be marred by rivalry and jealousy.

To succeed and grow amid shifting interests and allegiances, children must learn about themselves as players in a social game and must discover how-best to get along in this new arena. Their expanding self-awareness becomes increasingly stable and comprehensive. They develop standards and expectations for their own behavior, and become more independent and self-sufficient. While they try on new roles and attitudes in order to learn about themselves, they still will need to be able to turn to their families, especially to their parents, for guidance and stability.

Recurring Themes

There is no magic formula parents can apply to guarantee that their children will have a happy and successful life during the middle years. There is, though, much that parents can do and say that will be helpful. First and foremost, parents will need to model the values and behavior they wish their children to adopt, and direct their children into situations that reinforce and reward them. Whether it is responding to people less fortunate than themselves or choosing what foods to eat, children's behavior is in part an imitation of behavior they have observed.

Second, parents need to learn how to communicate with their children and to find opportunities to practice these skills. Simply listening is a fundamental communication skill. Parents must listen to their children, actively trying to hear what messages they are attempting to convey. The better that parents understand their children, the better able they will be to work together to meet challenges and solve problems when they arise. Good parents are those who have made the effort to know their children well, and have succeeded. Children whose parents know and understand them will have fewer personal and social problems.