There are times that I try to connect with my tween, but her headspace is somewhere on a planet far, far away. She’s not interested in engaging with someone in the same room, let alone her *insert dramatic eye roll* mother!

And do you know what I do? I leave her be.

Sometimes she needs the room to breath, the room to get her head around her own feelings and the space to reconcile the emotions coursing through her hormonal little body. Can you remember what it was like to feel as if you needed to escape your own skin? I certainly can, and I try to take myself back to that time in order to help my tween.

It’s so important to give your children the space to grow and embrace the changes that are going on in their lives when they need it.

Sometimes she will spend an entire Saturday morning watching youtube videos of seemingly random teens doing seemingly random acts of craziness. Other times she’ll immerse herself in a book and I won’t see her surface until meal times. Other times she’ll crave our company and will crawl back into the warm embrace of her little family, because she knows we’ll always be here, waiting.

It was incredibly hard the first time I noticed that my daughter wasn’t coming to me with her woes. I had always been her sounding board and all of a sudden she had other outlets, other fonts of wisdom (scoff) and  other ways to deal with her issues.

All I wanted was to go back to a time when I was the problem solver for my girl.  A time when I advised and guided her through the minefield of friendships and a difficult schoolyard experience.

Then I remembered reading an interview with Dr Michael Carr Gregg who said: “This generation of parents just push all the obstacles out of the way and try to make life as simple and as easy as possible for their kids.” He was referring to a generation of snowplough parents: those parents who are time-poor and over-compensate with gadgets and pushing all the barriers out of the way for their coddled child.

The consequence is a generation of kids who never learn to deal with things on their own .

Referring back to that article, I think about the ways I can step back and just give my tween space. It’s vital that she learns to handle her emotions in her own way.  Of course my motherly instinct is to smooth the path ahead of her and make it as easy as possible – but does that really help her in the long term?

Of course it doesn’t!

Dr Michael Carr-Gregg has some simple ways that we as parents can give our tweens some space and some responsibility:

• Never do for your children what they can do for themselves
• Put your child on a bus/bike or public transport to get to school
• Give your tween regular chores and have consequences for when they’re not done
• Implement and enforce strict rules around technology: saying something and doing something else does not teach them boundaries
• Teach your tweens to wash and iron their own clothes – NO, they are not too young!
• Have your children clean their own room
• Get your tween to help you cook, and teach them lifelong skills
• Make sure they get enough sleep – this may seem like common sense, but one thing I’ve learn recently is that common sense is not so common!

Do you have any ways that you can add to this list? Ways in which we can all help our children to grow and learn on their own?

One of the toughest things I find (to date) with my tween daughter Bella is finding age-appropriate fashion. She’s too young for the teen gear, and thankfully she’s not in a huge hurry to grow up and start flashing the extra skin that the teen style seems to favour!

However, she’s also past the cutesy dresses and prints I used to find for her from work-at-home-mums on Instagram and Etsy.

She’s at an awkward in-between phase.

I remember sitting outside the cinemas with her recently and a tween birthday party turned up.  The girls were all dressed beautifully.  And by that, I don’t mean they were dressed up, but they were certainly in age-appropriate styles. One girl had skinny jeans and a black quilted bomber jacket with flats. Another girl had some silver leggings with a long-sleeve tee and a cute scarf. None of them looked as if they were trying to look older than their age – I’d love to give their parents a virtual high-five! That is winning at parenting tweens in my books.

At eleven years old, my Bella is nearly as tall as me, and has a keen sense of what she likes. She helped me choose the pieces below and although there were things that she flagged as not being ‘her style’ she conceded that they would be perfect for an eight or nine year old.

I know that some of these pieces are at the higher end of the budget, but if you buy one or two key pieces, they can easily be mixed and matched with basics from Target, Big W and Kmart. I also find that when I invest a little more in jeans and jackets from stores like Country Road or Seed, they will last more than a single season.

 

Shop the look: 1: Seed sweater 2: Collette earrings 3: Seed jeans 4:Target scarf  5: Seed boots

 

Shop the look: 1:Seed boots 2: Seed top 3: Country Road tights 4: Spotted skirt 5: Country Road tote

 

 

Shop the look 1: Seed pants 2:Pumpkin Patch scarf 3:Target jacket 4: Milkshake shoes 5: Target tee

We haven’t forgotten about the little men, because I know quite a few who take a lot of care in their own personal style. I’ll cover the boys fashion next month.

What is your tween’s style and do you know of any labels nailing the tween age group you can share?