We will continue to take up the subject of Middle Years parenting by looking at the next two transition phases in a child’s growth and development. The role ‘facts’ now play in their life and the increase of reason over childhood imagination.

2. Transitioning to Knowing the Facts

“You’re out! I touched the base.”
“No, I’m not! You have to touch me.”

They can barely swing the bat, but they brandish their knowledge of the rules as if they had a deep and abiding understanding of the game.

Your middle-years child now relates to other children as peers and to other adults as something more than parental substitutes. During this period, boys and girls demonstrate a need to organize, categorize, and play by the rules. It is important to them that they get their facts right (although they have an oversimplified notion of the correctness of their own assessment during this phase).

Perhaps you’re having a conversation with another adult in which you describe an incident that occurred at the store today. You aren’t even two sentences into your story when you hear, from the only other eyewitness to the event, your nine-year-old daughter. “No, Mom, that’s not how it happened. The man with the shopping cart bumped the manager and then.…”

Don’t be surprised when your attempt to abbreviate a conversation is met by a challenge from your middle-years child, who suddenly seems to have a desperate need to get the story right, as if one fact out of sequence will cause the universe to instantly implode.

Now add birth order to this mix. Because the eldest is born into a world of adults and not siblings, she tends to have an increased need to be “right” about all things. If another child breaks the rules, she is relentless in her efforts to straighten that child out or bring justice to bear on a situation. “Mom! That’s not fair! When I was Billy’s age, you never let me ride to the corner by myself.” Look for these verbal declarations-they’re all part of the transition process.

3. Transitioning from Imagination to Reason

With the middle years comes a distinct shift toward logical thinking. Logic and reason now help your child to begin overcoming the unknown. Consider how small children deal with fear of the unknown or unexplained circumstances. A nighttime shadow on the bedroom wall becomes the villain from their favorite cartoon. A loud noise in the distance is a monster on its way to the house! Because their imaginations develop more rapidly than their reasoning skills, and because they’re aware of their own smallness, younger children often interpret anything they don’t understand as something to be feared.

But everything changes during the middle years. Reason rises to challenge imagination. This means your eight-year-old will begin to appear more daring and adventuresome and less restrained by fear of the unknown.

More to come in a couple of days.

Don’t forget to read Part 1 if you missed it.