No one tells you what to expect.
Your 9 year old that loves school suddenly takes 3 hours to get math done. Don’t even ask about everything else.
The 11 year old that loves to run errands now can t remember the one thing you told them to bring you long enough to get out of the room.
And the 13 year old…
EMOTIONAL TURMOIL
Change your shirt before you leave, you tell your son, but he explodes.
You don’t care about me! This is my favorite shirt! You’re always criticizing me!
Or, you walk in to find your daughter sobbing and ask, What s wrong, honey?
I don t know! she wails.
They climb on an emotional rollercoaster and invite you to join them.
Don t get a ticket for that ride.
A TIME OF TRANSITION
What s happening? They re changing! The tweens or preteens, whatever you want to call it, are the beginning of the transition to adulthood.
Hormones are flowing. Things are changing. Emotions are high.
School is a struggle, all of a sudden.
And spiritual questions pop up where there were none before.
THE STAKES ARE HIGH
Most parent-child relationships are broken during the tween years. When they are, the teens often just get worse and worse.
If you can get through the preteen years with your relationship intact, though, the teen years tend to get better and better.
Lay a foundation to make the teen years great!
HERE’S HELP
Practical help. Real encouragement. Just what you need to cope with emotional meltdowns, motivate them to get school done, answer their spiritual questions, and most of all, protect your relationship with your eight to fourteen year olds.
No Longer Little: Parenting Tweens with Grace and Hope
Hal and Melanie Young, authors of Raising Real Men and My Beloved and My Friend, both awarded Christian Small Publishers Book of the Year, are your guides on this challenging journey through these critical years of parenting…so that the years to come get better and better.
