During pre-adolescence and into puberty, children experience more changes than at any other time. Their bodies are flooded with hormones, which leads to rapid physical maturation but sometimes their emotional development can lag behind. This can cause tremendous frustration and bewilderment for them and also those around them.
Known as Tweens* (8-13), it’s a wild ride and whilst they’d probably vehemently argue that they don’t, Tweens need their parents (or carers) more at this stage of their lives than at any other time.
Which is why we’ve created Life With Tweens.
Kim, Renee and Caro are parents living with a primary-schooler, a handful of Tweens, the odd Teen, two grown children, three grandchildren, seven dogs, 15 sheep, 120 cows, six fish, two cats and a fat rabbit. Each day is an adventure, to say the least.
We want to provide an insight into our experiences, offer some tips and ideas on how to guide Tweens effectively and with love into adulthood. We hope Life With Tweens will become a go-to resource for parents and carers, but are also keen to offer a place where people can share their own experiences and ideas.
We’ll regularly seek comment and advice from parenting experts, educators, child psychologists and importantly, other parents.
Welcome to the world of Tweendom. Come meet the team…
Meet Kim Abbate… Kim is a working mum with a passion for digital marketing and PR. By day she is the marketing manager for baby brands, by night she wrangles Bella who is a tween, and six-year-old Charlie, as a single parent. She is afraid of spiders and jeggings in equal measure.
With a passion for blogging, Kim started back in 2004 and is in the process of starting her third blog, which will be about recreating herself after her life recently changed – it will be entitled Creating Kim. Stay tuned…
Meet Renee Bugg… Renee probably drinks too much gin, spends too much time on social media, is passionate about politics and social justice and will almost always judge you for bad grammar. She is also mother to Poss, her 10 year old daughter, who happens to have high functioning Autism and generalised anxiety disorder, as well as a fat rabbit, two dogs and a cranky old cat.
When she’s not working full time in social media marketing or juggling (often poorly) between being a wife, parent, sister, friend and daughter, Renee is blogging over at About a Bugg, an award winning blog, where she has been dumping her thoughts since 2011.
Meet Caro Webster… Caro is a freelance writer, author and blogger who founded the award-winning blog Caro & Co. A dedicated free-play advocate, she regularly writes about helping children find wonder in the everyday. You’ll find posts on engaging Tweens with cooking, food sources and sustainability, gardening, animals and encouraging independent discovery and fostering resilience and responsible risk-taking. She freely admits that raising a Tween and Teen is the most challenging thing she has ever done. Give Caro a pen, camera, garden, time to cook, her kids, politics and she’s at her happiest. She often appears on national television and radio programmes and is always available for interview.
