Staying the Course – The Pre-teen Years

Increasing responsibility in the area of chores around the house continues to be a great training tool for older children. Tasks such as dusting, cleaning bathrooms, helping with the laundry, lawn-mowing, and doing the dinner dishes are opportunities for our children to contribute to the family’s general well-being. The completion of these tasks is basic to a well-functioning household and should be viewed as a child’s responsibility as part of the family. These tasks need not be compensated with an “allowance”. The concept of an allowance can be introduced, but as a benefit of sharing in the family’s financial blessings from the Lord just as we share in the responsibility to keep the household functioning well. As the child matures, other opportunities for earning money around the house can be created through special projects or needs that arise that require special effort.

As children mature, they also need to be given more freedom and opportunity to think through and make more of their own choices under parental guidance. To train wise decision-making, we can ask “What do you think you should do in this situation?” As our children grow into older teenagers, the question becomes “What will you do in this situation?” These types of questions provide the opportunity to hear the child’s reasoning process and to gently direct it toward a wise decision if one is not presented by the child. Too often we underestimate our children’s ability to reason and make a good decision if given enough time and space to reflect. This approach also communicates that we value our child’s thoughts and respect his ability to make good choices.

Additionally, while chores and choices change with growth in age, so should our forms of correction. While a young child will experience time-outs or corporal punishment, an older child will benefit much more from experiencing the natural or logical consequences of their behavior — another skill that will be essential to good decision making later on. Natural consequences are the expected results of choices like burning your hand if you touch a hot object or getting a traffic ticket if you speed. Logical consequences are those that must be created in relation to the misbehavior or offense, but have some basis in the action. For example, when our daughters were preteens and were having trouble getting themselves off to bed one night, my husband told them that he would be setting their alarm clocks to go off in the morning fifteen minutes earlier than normal since they didn’t seem to need their sleep. Their mouths hung open and they replied, “Wow, that was a good one, Dad!” and proceeded to bed.

Another important habit to establish in the preteen years is family time. Life provides enough opportunities for our families to be separated and disjointed. As parents, we need to establish regular times for our families to share together — Friday night game and movie nights, ice cream nights, etc. Spending “be” time together, as well as chore or project time, solidifies relationships and will increase our children’s desire to be together as a family instead of choosing negative peer relationships later in their teen years. These times together also help build positive sibling relationships. Next time we’ll explore how to encourage good sibling relationships and to maintain a peaceful household.

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