Brayden Preteen Summary: 8.5 Years Old

8.5 year old life and daily schedule. Learn about this child’s daily schedule and how to handle things that come up with eight year olds. Learn about tween starting to eat more, chores for 8.5 year olds, school, and get a list of great chapter books for this age.

8.5 year old Brayden at the corn maze

This is a summary for Brayden from 8.25 to 8.5 years old.

EATING

The big story in eating these days is purely the amount of food he eats. Brayden has always eaten an impressive amount of food for any child his age. But he is really entering that point when his eating makes a big impact on the amount of food consumed at each meal. He has done this during growth spurts, but it is now just who he is. He just eats a lot more food.

The completely funny thing to me is watching my husband and Brayden at a meal. My husband has up to this point in life been the person who got leftovers (so far as his memory serves him). He grew up with no brothers and three sisters. With our kids, he has always gotten to eat whatever they don’t.

Now, however, he has competition. I seriously sometimes feel like I am watching two animals (civilized animals, but animals never-the-less) when we eat a meal. Before the first bite is taken, Brayden is asking about who is going to get the extra whatever it is. My husband looks at him like a lion looks at a new male who has just shown up in the pride lands.

This is crazy here. I don’t think any mother would feel competitive toward her children for food. If my kids want my food, they get my food (much less the leftover food). The only time they don’t is when they ask for it and my husband tells them no, it’s mom’s food (well and let’s be honest, I sneak around with my sweet treats–I am not interested in sharing those so much). 

My husband is stepping back and letting Brayden have the extra food. He is, after all, a growing child. It isn’t like we don’t have other food that can be eaten, either. But I find the entire thing simply hilarious. 

SLEEPING

Sleeping is really good. Nothing new or noteworthy to share.

CHORES

We are really in a good rhythm with chores. I have my kids do their chores before school in the morning. We have plenty of time between the time they wake up and the time they leave for school. This way the chores are done and after school is less work and more play. PLUS I don’t get impatient and just do the chore. That is the problem I was getting into last year–I didn’t want to wait until the end of the day for the chore to be done so I would just do it, but that doesn’t teach the kids how to work. So this system is working well for us.

this is my husband and Brayden on Halloween

>>>Read: Age-Appropriate 8 Year Old Chores

EXTRA ACTIVITIES

During the last three months, Brayden has taken piano lessons consistently. He is also still doing scouting. He played a fall soccer league. We also continue to do swimming lessons as a family through private instruction. 

SCHOOL

The last three months have been during school. Brayden is in third grade. He is really enjoying it. Brayden has been put into the gifted and talented program. They start the program in the third grade here.

I couldn’t help but feel a little vindicated when he was put in the program because of all of the CIO haters out there who claim doing so with damage your child’s brain function. Of all of my children, Brayden cried the most through sleep training, and yet his brain survived well enough for him to be declared gifted and talented (sense the sarcasm going on here).

SCRIPTURES

I have my reading children do personal scripture reading each day before school. The other day, Brayden told me, “It’s weird mom. Whenever I read my scriptures as the first thing I do in the morning, I get everything done faster.” I loved that he made that connection, and I shared with him I had always found that to be true in my life as well.

EVEN MORE HELPFUL

The older Brayden gets, the more helpful he gets. It seems every week he surprises me when I walk into a room and find him just taking care of something for me (like last week was him just getting a load of laundry out of the dryer and starting to fold it and the week before was him getting Brinley’s breakfast for me in the morning so I could finish getting the other girls ready). 

BOOKS

Here are some books he loves (you can see more and keep up on books he reads and loves on my Chapter Books for Boys  board. I also have one for girls):

>>>Read: 27 Fantasy Books for Middle Readers

8.5 YEAR OLD SCHEDULE

Brayden’s Schedule:
7:00 AM–wake up. Eat breakfast. Get ready. Pack lunch. Practice piano. Do morning chores. Read scriptures. Do daily chore.
Then go to school.
Come home from school. Do homework if he has it.
5:30 PM–Dinner. Then time with family.
7:00 PM Start getting ready for bed.
8:30 PM–in bed 

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2 thoughts on “Brayden Preteen Summary: 8.5 Years Old”

  1. Thanks for those chapter post links as i'm definitely going to follow those!I love your idea of chores in the AM. Unfortunatley our school starts at 8:15 AM so we leave the house early. i would definitely prefer to do it in the AM like you and like you said I don't like to leave it all day. For now they have some more personal chores to do in the AM and in the evening more general (setting the table,etc) but we do the most on Saturday. However I'm not quite pleased with it as sometimes we have a lot of things going on Saturday (more so because of the holiday season now) so i'm not sure it's the best but it's working out so-so. I think it'd be better to spread it out more in the week ideally vs a longer time of chores on the weekend (which i break up in the AM and PM but there is lots of complaining and grumbling, expecially from DD2. I tell her that means she isn't used to chores and needs to do more then!:) But she'll shriek "But we just vaccummed our room last Saturday!" Yup, that's how it goes kiddo:) she's lucky it's only once a week!

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  2. Yvonne that is definitely tricky. I am sure you will find something that works. It took me really until this year to find the perfect chore grove during school for us.

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