Book Two: Your Twelve-Fourteen-Year-Old

Introduction

This book, like the others in the series, is not meant to tell you how your child ought to look and to behave in these years. Children develop at very different rates in body, in mind, and in feelings. Each child has his own rate of growth and his own possible pattern of growth, and our job as parents and as educators is to do the best we can to provide the right conditions to let that take place.

Some of the things talked about here may well seem to fit your eleven-year-old, some may not apply to your child until he is well over fourteen, and some may not seem to apply at all, but that need not necessarily worry you. The aim of this book is to help you in thinking about your own unique experience and opportunity to observe your own child, and hence to be in a better position to decide for yourself whether you need to worry about him or not, and when it is useful to do so. For it is not in the nature of children or of ourselves not to worry at times; if we never do, then surely we are missing out on something. The important thing is to worry usefully in a creative way that helps you to understand yourself and your child a little better.

Growing up for your child also means growing up alongside for you as a parent. This twelve- to fourteen-year-old period of early adolescence is the second most rapid period of physical growth in the life of most children. This entails comparably rapid mental and emotional adjustment, both for the child and for the parents. If it is your first child who is entering this stage, you are going to meet for the first time the challenge of adapting from being the parent of a child to being the parent of a young person who is straining towards greater independence, is touchy about being treated as an equal, and yet may be experiencing states of mind secretly bordering on panic when he needs extra protection and comfort without feeling free to say so easily. If it is your last child who is now at this stage, you may have had s