Tween-hood THE GUIDE

Recently one of my children celebrated a milestone birthday for she entered the treacherous years of “TWEENHOOD”. Not yet a teenager and still lingering on to her baby sweetness, but unable to handle the complexities of mental maturity, a tween is indeed a conundrum. What is a tween you ask in perplexation? A “Tween” is not a new intergalactic race discovered on Mars, infact if you have children over the age of 10, you are living with a Tween and I fear for your dwindling sanity. The tween, in my opinion represents the misunderstood years of childhood, too old to be a child but too young to be a proper teenager. It’s that “I am lost” phase between 11 and say 14 when suddenly your sweet, pink cherubed, butter won’t melt in their mouths child turns in to an indomitable mess.

The Tween does not just melt into their surroundings, in fact they are loud, cantankerous and quite vindictive always holding, you the parent, responsible for something or anything that goes wrong. How does one know whether your child has turned into a tween? Having survived, two tweens already, I am now going through my third “Tweenhood” years, here is what I have found:

1. Silent, morose, displays inability to make polite greetings, utters just monosyllabic sounds when prodded for a response like “Ha” or “Hmm”. So much for the expensive private education you are sending them to.

2. If the tween does speak then, the vocabulary is extreme, certain phrases used over and over again are “Whatever”, “Ewww” (at just about everything), “MOTHER, I am almost an adult”, “Everyone is SO lucky, but ME”, “It’s not FAIR”, “You are RUINING my life .... you get the gist, even Willliam Shakespeare in his tragedy writing period was not able to articulately describe despondency or grief as a tween can..and just because they might be having a bad hair day.

3. Sudden bursts of unnecessary bouts of temper, everything will be argued upon .... not of course if you barter obedience through promises of materialistic objects, like Iphones or future NCT concerts.

4. Constantly and annoyingly attached to your phone (because you won’t buy them their own as their façade argument), communicating with friends through symbols called “emojis”, rather than using actual words and speaking volumes, and when you actually do get to use your phone you are bombarded with at least 300 catfaced, love heart face emoji messages, since the friend tween was just saying HI.

5. A new finding my most recent tween has which the others did not, is a form of interpretive dance called TIKTOK dances. Every new tween is a dancing queen, and it is sooooo cool, in their words emphasis on the “O”. I would find my tween suddenly in corners, jumping and swaying to a repetitive, dance number with organised moves representing some secret code that only tweens understand…by the way its so uncool if the parent tries to join. So don’t even try.

6. A given symptom in all tweens, especially the girl kind, is the constant lament that nothing in their closet is nice and you are just making them wear baby clothes.

Have you noticed such migraine inducing behaviour in your house? Do not be alarmed, don't be too hasty to ship them off to boarding school or better yet decide to go on a holiday for one by yourself for the next four years. Here are some tips on surviving the “TWEEN” years:

1. Know your child. Remember, they might think that now they have reached the double digits they suddenly need privacy. Yes give them their privacy but be aware of who they hang out with, where they are at certain times and so forth. You are the Parent after all and you have every right to do so. 2. Punishments: Whether a tween or not, you are still allowed to dole out punishments if need be. Be careful with tweens this might be a constant predicament. Reevaluate the types of punishments given. No more are the timeouts or the naughty step scenarios going to work. Instead of going into a war of words, take away privileges, show them that they are wrong, teach humility and give them a chance to prove themselves.

3. Space: Not physical but more personal. Tweens are going through a difficult stage, understand this. Society is out to get them, they want to be cool but still like things they did as kids, they want to fit in with their peers, it's a crazed battle of emotions that they are going through. There will be a shift of more emphasis on being with their friends, rather than the family.

So dear parents, at some point you will be entering this indeed trying phase, put your virtual parenting seatbelts on, hold on tight to each other, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, but you’ve got this!

If the tween does speak then, the vocabulary is extreme, certain phrases used over and over again are “Whatever”, “Ewww” (at just about everything), “MOTHER, I am almost an adult”, “Everyone is SO lucky, but ME”, “It’s not FAIR”, “You are RUINING my life ....