Tag Archives: Preteen

Children sitting in playground with backpacks

How was school today? Using Special Time to get the answers you need

When our kids first start school, it can be so infuriating that they often aren’t interested in telling us much about their day. (And as the parent of a teen, I can tell you that it is often the same when they get older!)

Patty Wipfler, founder of Hand in Hand Parenting, explains why you don’t get much of an answer when you ask the question “How was school today?”. She explains how to use Special Time to reconnect – with young children, and those heading into adolescence. Continue reading

Helping Your Angry Pre-Teen

More on the topic of Pre-Teens.  If you have Pre-Teen children, you will know that things start to change.  Special Time can be a great tool for parents and children to stay connected through times of change, including times when we don’t feel we really understand each other.

Special Time – a dedicated period of time where we put aside our pre-occupations and concerns, pay full attention to our child, and delight in them – begins to change as your children’s interests change.  But the magic that it works still applies:  it builds emotional safety into our relationship with our children at a particularly important time.

And when we do this, children will start to show us their upsets.  By the time they are 8, 9 10, some of those upsets will be about us, and much will be about what it has been like being a young person for 10 years or so, in a world that does not treat young people with much respect.

We need to listen warmly at these times, giving our children all the attention we can muster.  Inevitably, the upsets will tend to be scrappier and less direct than using the process with younger children.  When they were little we could being them onto our lap and hold them as they sobbed out their sorrows, but now they are more “defended” and their sorrows have hardened into anger, and we are working hard just to keep our foot in the door, before it slams (literally and metaphorically!).

But every bit of warm, non-judgemental hanging-in-there with our Pre-Teens makes a difference.  They notice EVERYTHING we do, and it all still matters to them.

Here’s a great article by Hand in Hand  Founder, Patty Wipfler, on just what is going on for our Pre-Teen children, and for us:

http://www.handinhandparenting.org/article/helping-angry-preteens/

 

Five Tips for Parenting your Pre-Teen

Guest Post by Julie Johnson, Parenting by Connection Instructor, Berkely, CA, USA

Pre-Teen sisters smile at the camera.

Sisters, by Jenn Durfey, [CC-BY-2.0], https://flic.kr/p/997BZr

My colleague, Julie Johnson and I both have pre-teen children.  We recently recorded a Teleseminar for Hand in Hand Parenting called “Navigating the Preteen Years Without Tearing Your Hair Out”.  You can find details of how to listen for free at the end of this article.

Over the next few months, Julie and I are planning more work with parents of Pre-Teens. Today I’d like to share her recent post about some research into just what Pre-Teens and Teens want from us, each other, and the world. Continue reading