Parenting During the Preteen Years

During the ages of 9 to 12, children change in significant ways. Their thinking patterns and mental abilities go through major developments. Personality, character, and a worldview are being formed and molded for the long term.

Cultivating Responsibilty is a handbook for parenting the older elementary child. In particular, you might like Chapter 7 that outlines 12 Tasks Of Responsibility for this age. Your child can use it as a self-report card producing some awareness of the importance of responsibility in these areas.

If you’re not seeing internal motivation at this stage, it’s important to focus on it in particular. Children ought to be able to get up in the morning on their own, complete their homework with a lot of parental management, and remember to do their chores on their own. Transferring responsibility to children to manage themselves more and more is the focus of the book Motivate Your Child.

Furthermore, if you’re seeing a particular challenge in your child that makes you feel uncomfortable, then you’ll want to develop a plan now to address it. The book Motivate Your Child Action Plan is designed to help you develop that individualized plan. It comes with 12 audio sessions as well as tips for how to present the changes to your child and establish accountability.

We have a lot of resources to help you work with your child between the ages of 9 and 12 years.

This page will guide you through the many resources we offer so you can find the best ones to suit your needs.

1. Discipline Strategies

Keep in mind that training goes much further than correction when bringing about change in a child’s heart. That doesn’t mean that correction isn’t important. But it does put a heavier emphasis on training a child to develop life-skills. Every child needs training and we’ve developed several specific training exercises in the Heart Work Training Manual with 8 Audio Sessions.

This set of eight lessons provide you with practical solutions for helping children learn to follow instructions, receive correction, deal with attitudes, accept no as an answer, understand repentance, and help you connect on a heart level. One of the chapters in that Training Manual provides you with seven categories of consequences to use with your children. Most importantly, that lesson shows you how to use those consequences to help your child grow toward maturity using a map-mentality. Your child is at point A on the map and needs to get to point B by developing a particular heart quality. This lesson teaches you how to use consequences to move your child along the path to point B.

We have two family video training programs you’ll find helpful at this age. The Thrive! Family Program has 12 lessons focused on the heart, what it is and how important it is for your child to understand. Each lesson contains a 15 minute video for parents and young people. Dr. Turansky and Mrs. Miller speak directly to young people for a portion of each video. Discussion questions help you draw out the truths taught. A family activity is suggested to drive the truths home in fun ways.

The second video training program is called the Family Toolbox. It contains 8 lessons, each one showing a family in action, challenged by a common problem in family life. After you and your child watch the video you can continue to hear Dr. Turansky and Mrs. Miller teach practical lessons from family life to help you in common areas. This series is excellent for enhancing communication with your child and talking about tension that exists in many homes.

The book Good and Angry, Exchanging Frustration for Character in You and Your Kids identifies seven things that make parents angry. These are things like, “My kids don’t listen or follow instructions,” “They keep doing the wrong thing and nothing seems to help,” “They lie,” “They’re annoying,” “They won’t accept no for an answer,” and “They always grumble and complain.” We then provide specific solutions for these common problems. This practical book helps reduce anger by giving you plans to address the problems you face. We know that parents who don’t have good plans use anger to solve problems so we’ve given you the parenting strategies that will work.

2. Growing in Honor

If you want your children to fly straight, teach them to obey. If you want them to fly high, teach them honor. Children learn honor at home but the lessons will be used for the rest of their lives. The book Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes, in You and Your Kids explains honor and shows you how to teach it to children. Not only do children learn to honor you as parents but they learn what honor means in practical terms.

We define honor as treating people as special, doing more than what’s expected and having a good attitude. Those three components of honor address many of the challenges faced in family life. The children’s curriculum called the Kids Honor Club will help you teach the concept of honor to your children in thirteen lessons. Kids will learn how honor deals with selfishness, anger, and foolishness. They’ll learn through activities, Bible stories, crafts, and games how to add energy to family life instead of draining it out. The Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining and Bad Attitudes, in You and Your Kids audio series contains eight audio sessions of Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN teaching these concepts to parents. You might want to play these in the car and talk about them with your children.

3. Understanding the Heart

If parents rely only on too much reward/punishment to get things done, children develop a selfishness and demandingness about life. When receiving an instruction, children want to know what’s in it for them. When being corrected, they look for ways to blame and rationalize and not take personal responsibility. A heart-based approach to parenting is different.
The book Parenting is Heart Work is the result of a study of the 750 times the word “heart” is used in the Bible. Nine functions of the heart are revealed in this study and then applied to parents who want to touch their children’s hearts. You may want to listen to the Parenting is Heart Work Audio, eight sessions taught by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN on practical ways to develop a heart-based approach to parenting.

The book Family Heart Moments is the result of a contest in 2007 where parents were asked to submit Heart Moment Stories. We took the best 70 stories and wove them together with teaching to provide you with a tool that will show you in practical, hands-on ways how to develop or take advantage of heart moments in your family.

The Treasure Hunters Children’s Curriculum was written to help you teach these concepts to your children. Eight lessons provide Bible stories, crafts, activities, science experiments, and games to teach children about how to follow instruction, receive correction, accept no as an answer, have a good attitude, and several more common family themes.

You may also enjoy listening to the MP3 by Nyla Rayburn entitled, Personality Style + Learning Style = Reaching your Child. This is a fun look at how personality and learning styles affect the family and ways you can reach your child best by understanding what makes him or her tick.

4. Spiritual Training

The language of children is activity. When you use activities to teach your children biblical truth, you’re following what Christ modeled when he taught his disciples. He took common, easy to understand objects and stories and used them to teach his disciples about the kingdom. You can do the same thing by using activities and object lessons that capture a child’s attention. We’ve put together several books to help you. The Family Time Activities books give you fun activities together with Bible stories to teach spiritual truths to your children. You may download a sample activity here. There are six books altogether, three for children of all ages, two for families with preschoolers, and one for families with teenagers.

Get motivated to develop a Family Time in your home by listening to the author of these books, Kirk Weaver, teach about Fun and Effective Spiritual Training. Or, listen to Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN teach a similar session entitled, Having Fun Teaching Spiritual Truths. Also, Rob Rienow’s MP3 God’s Grand Vision for the Home will inspire you to be the primary spiritual trainer of your own children. This one area of parenting is foundational and has ramifications for everything else you do as a parent.

5. Teaching Children about Sex

It’s not sufficient nowadays to have one conversation about sex when kids are eleven or twelve. Frequent, honest dialogue about this subject is essential for children to understand and manage this area of their lives. After all, they’re continually bombarded with messages from the media and our culture, parents need to help children process what they’re hearing and seeing.

We recommend the book How to Talk Confidently with Your Child About Sex. This book helps you understand what’s appropriate to teach at what age and how to dialogue about relationships, privacy, reproduction, boy-girl relationships, and sex. In addition there are five books written for children, developmentally appropriate for each age group, from preschool right on up to young adult. These books are designed for parents and children to be read and discuss. We suggest having a discussion at least once a year to address new interests and questions your child might have. Parents need to take the initiative in the area; otherwise children may go elsewhere seek out the facts.

6. Specific Issues

Maybe you’re running into some specific problems with your preschooler. Click on a categories below to learn ways to address the problem you’re facing. Some of these links will lead to resources already mentioned above but may help you by pointing out what chapters or which MP3 might best address your concern.

7. Additional Support and Help

We know that parents sometimes feel overwhelmed or feel lost when it comes to the challenges they face. You’re doing the best that you can but you know that the particular problem you’re facing needs some additional wisdom. We offer several tools to help you.

First, please take a moment to sign up for free email parenting tips. They come into your inbox a couple times a week and provide you with ideas and encouragement to parent your child’s heart.

We have a closed, personalized group focused on heart-based parenting. It’s made up of coaches and parents who are committed to raising their children from a biblical, practical approach. We encourage you to checkout Thriving Kids Connection to learn more.

Another resource would be to attend a live parenting seminar in your area. The National Center for Biblical Parenting offers three different parenting seminars that can help you grow. These professional teachers provide training for you in specific areas. See if there is a seminar scheduled in your area or encourage your pastor or church leadership to host a seminar. You might email your church leader the link to hosting a seminar.

Parents often benefit from individual, one-on-one help. Dr. Scott Turansky and his team of coaches offer phone coaching for parents across the country. It’s during this stage of parenting that parents often benefit from the 8-week Biblical Parenting Coaching Program. It’s a powerful parent training mentorship program under the leadership of a coach whom you meet with each week over the phone.

At the National Center for Biblical Parenting we’re continually looking for new and helpful ideas and strategies to support you in your parenting. We have new products coming out regularly and we’d love to keep you informed about them. Please stop by often to see what’s new or sign up for free email parenting tips to hear about the latest developments.

Cultivating Responsibility

Parenting Wisdom for Ages 9-12 Years
by Dr Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN
with Julia Raudenbush

Learn what a heart-based approach to parenting looks like for the later elementary age child.

The later elementary age years are among the greatest times to build responsibility in children. Heart transformation takes place when parents use other tools than behavior modification. Sometimes though, bad attitudes, disrespect, and a lack of cooperation can muddy the waters. You’ll want to learn from the experts how best to navigate these years. Your children are making significant developmental leaps in their cognitive, social, emotional and spiritual growth. Understanding how best to help children through these years is essential.

You will learn:

How to build spiritual values that will last forever
Ways to address homework, mornings, and bedtimes
Tools for developing internal motivation in your child
Practical suggestions for advanced social development
How to have an age-appropriate conversation about sex
How to provide tools for anger management
Specific strategies for bad attitudes and disrespect
and much more

Busyness often gets in the way so having concise, practical tools will help you effectively equip your child to handle adolescence with success.

Order eBook Now $9.99 Order Paperback Now $14.99

Here are other resources targeted for specific ages

Parenting During the Preteen Years

This page will guide you through the many resources we offer so you can find the best ones to suit your needs.

1. Discipline Strategies

2. Growing in Honor

3. Understanding the Heart

4. Spiritual Training

5. Teaching Children about Sex

6. Specific Issues

7. Additional Support and Help

Cultivating Responsibility

Here are other resources targeted for specific ages

Infants

Toddlers

Preschoolers

Elementary Age

Pre-Teen

Teens

Adult Kids

HANDBOOK

FOLLOW AND CONNECT

DIVISIONS OF NCBP

CHURCH RESOURCES

PARENT RESOURCES

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