What Has Surprised Me About Preteens

here is what helps me emotionally navigate life with my new preteen: i picture kids from 0-11 as metaphorical dogs, and from 12 up as cats. pups are eager to please, mostly come when they’re called, are food and fresh-air motivated, love to play, and get into sometimes mischief that they can’t help. cats are still loving pets, and, when they are in the mood are the most affectionate fluffballs ever. but they are more unpredictable, mysterious. they value their independence, and sometimes need to curl up in a cupboard, alone. or they get the “zoomies” that no one else understands. or they turn on you for just a moment for reasons even they don’t fully understand, before they shrug off the mood swing and gaze at you once again with gratitude, dependency and adoration. i literally look at kids and preteens as totally different animals, and it helps me so much because i love both.

My best friend is a middle school teacher, and I absolutely love listening to her talk about her students. We were on a girl’s trip this summer getting some work done at a library, and I came back to our nook after a bathroom break to find her talking with a mom of a pre-teen about her son. The mom was also on a vacation and she was really anxious about her son turning into a different person than the sweet kid she had always known and starting 8th grade. My friend had a nice conversation with her about middle school age and was able to reassure her that her son was totally normal. The mom looked visibly relieved, and I think found some comfort in hearing from a teacher that she was doing all the right things. One thing my friend always says is that “the kids are alright.” Each generation is always going to bemoan the generation that comes after them, but my friend is adamant that the world is in good hands. Kids growing up today are kinder and more accepting than they ever have been, and I think that’s really nice to know.

This one choked me right up. Also a mom of two boys, I feel deeply the seasons past and the ones ahead. The present always seems to be the most challenging, but that’s life! I’m so looking forward to a modicum of more peace as they grow (1.5 and 4 currently). I have loved reading your experiences in motherhood and watching those sweet boys grow!

My daughter is almost 12. I love parenting more now than ever. It’s trickier in a sense but I am (admittedly to her) a much better tween parent than I was a little kid parent. She is really her own person now, although I do know she always was. We can have actual conversations and she now has thoughts and opinions to contribute to day to day life. Watching her become more independent and mold herself into who she is becoming is fun. However, it’s all just something I get to witness though, not really be an active participant in anymore. In my teens, my parents always played me “Tangled Up Puppet” by Harry Chapin and told me that made them think of me and I now get what they meant. Tweens are so much fun but heart wrenching at times.

I so love this.
I have a great friendship with my 10 year old son. He tells me school gossip and teaches me cool slang words like “bussin” and I tell him how exciting his school life is and how he is living my dream school life as he is involved in their morning school TV show, chorus and is trying to run for the Treasury Secretary of their school’s ambassador club. I am sad to think that he is not the cutest 3-5 year old anymore but I am awed and bursting with pride and gratitude because he is growing up to be so himself and so unscripted by us.

Reading these is making me so emotional. My boys are 1 and 3 and we’re all home recovering from covid right now. Everyone is sick, feverish, cranky and clingy but I keep telling myself it won’t always be like this. In a few years we will sit and enjoy movies together when they’re not feeling well and they’ll be better at telling me what’s wrong and how I can make it better. I know I’ll miss sweet baby snuggles one day but I also can’t wait to have real conversations with my kids.

This was such a warm read. My kids are three and one, and it is nonstop all day. I love them to bits, and would travel to the ends of the Earth for them, and it’s also exhausting being on high alert all day. Getting anything else done is challenging (when did I last dust those blinds?), sleepless nights get old, and constantly checking to make sure the little one isn’t getting into anything dangerous is so tiring. But we’re coming out of the baby years now, and it’s only getting more fun. We’re excited to adventure through these next chapters as a family. I love watching them grow and become people. I can’t wait to discuss movie night over dinner.

While I understand your appreciation of how your boys are less work now, enjoy their childhood. It is so fleeting. Don’t hurry them into being “preteens”.

I’m a 60 year old single mom of a 20 year college junior son. Because I was 40 when I had him, I made a very intentional choice to not miss anything. It’s been easy to show up for his growing up because I knew this was it for both of us, but it surprises me the phases and stages I liked the most. Infancy rocked but toddlerhood nearly did me in. The pre-teen years have been my favorites so far. The adventures, the books (we read aloud to each other), the jokes, the general gusto for life was such fun. The teens were smoother than I expected, but the pulling away that’s part of the path to adulthood was and is hard. This summer, I was talking to my son about a small change to his childhood bedroom when he looked at me warmly and said “You can do what you want, mom. I don’t really live here anymore.” Whew, out of the mouths of babes…

I have to say I find this very encouraging. Your boys are clearly just lovely humans. Our daughter is 10. I admit I still find parenting to be hard a lot of the time. She has difficulty with boundaries. Asking for chores often results in much whining or a full-blown fit. Her emotions seem so close to the surface, always ready to blow. If it’s like this now, I ask myself, what will it be like when she’s ACTUALLY a teenager?? We are trying to equip her with emotional intelligence and validate all of her emotions while trying to be firm with the boundaries. Of course there are sweet moments and she is also a lovely human in so many ways — but it often feels tough.

One of my sons is in college, and the other one just got his undergrad. What I never once considered is that one day, my kids will look at me through a different lens. It’s a tough transition, and if you’re open to learning, it can be cool. But it also stings to hear things like, “Well, you were grading papers at every game and not really watching.”

I find myself pivoting and reversing roles. I want to impress them, rather them me. When we talk, I’m listening for any clues on what to read or play so they find our next conversation stimulating. Right now it’s Lou Reed’s memoir because, “It really changed my life, Mom.” We have a book club, he just hasn’t realized it.

I have an 11-year-old son. I love watching him grow and become independent! And he says the funniest things, like the other day when he randomly turned to me and said, “You know what I think wouldn’t be a very good dog name? Pablo.” (No offense to any people out there with dogs named Pablo).

This is so lovely to read. My dad has a habit of saying how much he misses young me, and how he wishes I stayed 5 forever, and how much more fun/manageable/less difficult I was back then. We get along well and I know that what he is saying is influenced by his own deep trauma from his childhood/young adulthood. But nevertheless, I loved reading about how some parents feel about their kids growing up and the pleasure they feel in their kids maturing :)

My daughter is 9.5, and she’s going through so many emotions I do not ever recall experiencing at her age. There’s a constant 0 to 60 shift from wanting cuddles to stomping into her room. I kept hearing these days would come, so early on I tried to proof and preserve the sweetness in a couple of ways that might be helpful to those of you with much younger kids. 1. We have a house elf that lives under the stairs, and she and the elf have written notes and left gifts for each other for years. She has those notes in a binder. In the last year, this has dropped off to almost no communication, and soon, he’s probably going to find another new baby on the block. 2. I started telling her a story every night about a wizard that echoed her own emotions. When her dad and I split up, the wizard’s parents got two towers. She would listen to this wizard when she wouldn’t listen to me. I finally took the time to write down these stories and put them into an audio book so that she would always have a record of these times. I highly recommend creating a history of these early years because as my daughter is changing into someone entirely new, I am so relieved that she’ll have these remembrances as we both grow older. And for anyone who is interested, the wizard audio book is free online. I posted it during the pandemic for any kid who needed a free story and you can listen to it here: https://www.vivaleap.com/aquarius

I absolutely love parenting my 14 year old son but not necessarily for the reasons people would expect. It’s because I also have a little guy who is 4.5 and he has a rare genetic disorder. He uses a wheel chair, has a feeding tube and has a cognitive disability. We all adore him of course but he has also made me realize the beauty of watching a child grow and move through the hard/fun/quirky childhood stages because his experience will be different than my oldest son. I now cherish every mile stone because I now know they are not all guaranteed ❤️

My kids are 19 and 21, and while I desperately miss their sweet toddler faces sometimes, no one tells you how fun it is to see your children become adult(ish) people. I watch them decide who they want to be, make mistakes, grapple with decisions, find joy in music and friends, express themselves in various ways, make plans for the future, feel lost and insecure, try new things. They’re just really living life and it’s such a privilege to be a part of it.

My kids are 6,8, and 11. I have always loved babies and I still do but I am SO GLAD I DON’T HAVE ANY BABIES. I am so glad to not tote around a diaper bag or a stroller. There are plenty of challenges at every stage but I am so glad that I can send them outside to play and I don’t have to watch them every minute….or even every few minutes. My 8 year old is selling popcorn for Cub Scouts and he can pretty much do it himself! Yahoo!

I love the way you write about parenthood, Joanna! My son is two and reading this makes me so hopeful :) I love so much about him as a toddler- thanks for sharing your perspective from farther down the road. lots to look forward to!

My Dad always tells a story about talking to a coworker about his kids’ ages (something like 6-15…there were 4 of us) and saying something like “so this is the good stuff”. His coworker said “Oh yeah, those are great ages but I just went to a concert in Europe with my 21-year-old son and that was pretty great, too.” It served him (and now us) as a reminder to enjoy every age and stage.

My girls are 2, 4, and 6. I keep catching myself thinking ahead to when my youngest will be 4 or older because I know they’ll all be more manageable in general. I try to remind myself that I won’t always have mg snuggly youngest lying horizontally in the king bed, asking for the bumblebee song every 5 seconds, and wanting me to hold her when I really, really need to do the dishes. It’s tough to savor the hard moments because they may be all we get, but hopefully we get decades and decades of this sweetness.

I can relate in many ways. The conversations my 12-year old is capable of having now, and the activities we can do and experience together are more emotionally rewarding and fulfilling than lamenting the loss of the baby or toddler years for sure. However, if I miss the early years, it’s just that I miss being seeing the joy my very young child felt at simpler activities. I miss the acorns he used to bring home in his pockets and the leaves and sticks he gathered when we walked. I miss him telling me and his dad that we were his bests and we’d always be invited to his parties. I had cousins much younger than I am, and I still miss them fighting over sitting next to me. My sister’s children are a decade older older than my son and I still miss providing entertainment during long family dinners. It’s not that I wish I could go back. Just that I enjoyed that time in their development. With that said, seeing them all as adults, and seeing my son grown is also profoundly satisying as well. I often think about how much longer our children will be adults than they will be children. But even still, they will always still be our children. They will always need us to be present to offer love, wisdom and support. Even when they’re 20, 30, 40, etc… And so if you spend too much time looking back, you will definitely miss out on the magic of each age.

The only thing I will add which has not been said here, or if it was, it was in a comment that I missed. My son and a few of his best friends are not neuro-typical. For them, becoming tweens has had surprising behavioral setbacks, regressions, and struggles with self-regulation in settings many of their peers don’t seem to have. I will never know if this is a by product of the pandemic restrictions or whether it would have happened any way. And I say this without any poitical agenda but it would be impossible not to factor that in. So some of the ease many feel with their 12-years olds in terms of behaving appropriately at restaurants, at doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping, some parents of children with special needs may not share.

This is not to say they don’t share the joy of watching their wonderful children as they mature and age. But their challenges still exist in realms that might surprise you if you don’t have children with special needs. There is a lot more I could say, but I realize this is also fairly subjective and personal. I simply wanted to offer an additional perspective to round out the discussion.

I had to come back here to read through some more comments after a particularly rough morning with my 3 and 4 year old sons over wearing pants. I love them and I’ve loved each stage (while also disliking parts of each stage), but it’s reassuring to hear it gets better :) I love seeing my sons grow into their own individual selves. Getting to know them is a great joy

My son recently turned 8, and it’s such a huge difference from 7! Yesterday we discussed his shopping budget for the day (first time at Toy Tokyo – a serious conversation!), he traded cans in for money at our local recycling machines, ate AND enjoyed cucumbers for the first time, and purchased items at a store all by himself with his own money. Then, as we’ve been working through the Women’s World special fall issue, consulted “the Halloween manual” for the next recipe we’d be making.
I told him how proud I was of him and how grown up he’s becoming. Inside, I’m hoping he never stops slipping his hand into mine when we cross the street.

The other night, I was putting my son to bed and I asked him what he thought about me. He took a second and then he said, “You’re so smart. You read so much. You can make anything grow, and you’re the best mom in the world for me.” My heart melted and was reforged ten times stronger in that moment. He’s eight. I am a green thumb and have a big garden. I love to read and research things in my nerdy spare time. He saw me.

I went downstairs and told my husband that if he’s ever feeling slightly down, ask the kids what the6 th8nk of him.
Truly after the butt wiping ends, the real fun begins.

My father told me when my first child was born to always remember that we are raising them to become adults. Childhood is wonderful and so important but it is fleeting by definition. Mine are now in their thirties, and the challenging moments were brief, while the joy and profound connection just grows and grows.