Brayden Preteen Summary: 9 Years Old

He is a little bit in love with all things
LEGO

This is a summary for Brayden from 8.75-9 years old. You know, when it comes to Brayden, I always feel like a first time mom trying to figure out what to do. Well, that’s because I am. I might feel confident with Brinley, but everything is new and questionable with Brayden.

EATING

Eating continues on as usual. He basically eats as much as a full grown adult. That isn’t as impressive as a growing adult–but it is way more than I would have imagined a child to eat, especially back when he was a toddler. 

SLEEPING

Sleeping is good. You may have read in other posts that he is no longer sharing a room with Kaitlyn and moved into his own room (Kaitlyn and McKenna are sharing). He is loving being in his own room. He says it is so nice and quiet :). And remember how I talked about last time how he will come out of his room ever night for a few days, the doesn’t for a few months, then does? A nice thing is that his room is now next to Brinley’s, so him being concerned about waking Brinley up as he is getting in and out and in and out of bed is helping encourage him to stay in bed. 

EXTRA ACTIVITIES

During the last three months, Brayden has continued in his piano and swimming lessons. He also does scouting and has moved on to the next level of scouts. He played soccer and is just starting baseball. 

SPIRITUAL GIANT

I really hope that all children start to come up with great ideas of ways to be really helpful or improve themselves at this age. It is so heartwarming to see. At our house, we don’t watch TV on Sunday in order to keep the Sabbath holy. We also don’t shop, go to restaurants, or do anything that would require someone to work. There are also many recreational activities we avoid on Sundays. We have always allowed the children to read whatever books they want to on Sundays, but a couple of weeks ago, Brayden told me he wants to only read church materials on Sunday to help keep the Sabbath Day holy. I thought that was so sweet! It was one of those rewarding moments as a parent. 

BODY ODOR

Last time, I talked about how body odor had not become an issue yet. Well, it came! It hasn’t been bad enough for me to be able to smell him, but he could smell himself and asked me to check him out and yes, there it was. See Deodorant and Children for more.

HELPING IN SCHOOL

Brayden still enjoys me helping in school at this age. I am interested to see if in the next year or two if he will start to not really want me in the classroom. I really enjoy going and getting to know different kids.

SCHOOL TEST SCORES/GIFTEDNESS
School has ended and Brayden’s test scores have come in. He is reading above a 12th grade reading level. Isn’t that crazy? It is both exciting and daunting for me at the same time. I am so glad that he reads well. It has been a huge passion of mine as a parent as you may know from reading this blog. Brayden is in the Gifted and Talented program at school, and now I really need to look into parenting practices for parenting gifted children. I know there are a lot of books on it, so I will be doing some research. I haven’t really ever known just how smart Brayden is. I think he is really smart and amazing, as I do all of my kids. But I kind of always figured that is just me being the typical parent who thinks her child is the most amazing thing to grace the earth. I think that of all of my children. They say you can’t really recognize giftedness until 3rd grade, so he is at the age we can start taking it more seriously.

To see what we have done with reading, see reading

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):

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 

Related Posts

6 thoughts on “Brayden Preteen Summary: 9 Years Old”

  1. Hi, I don't where to post my questions but I hope you will see this. I have a 8-month old who has been waking up twice at night to eat (11-12am and 4-5am). I know she is hungry because she usually will finish a full feed. She goes to daycare full time 7am-5pm and I noticed that she doesn't eat that much duirng the day, thats why she wakes up at night to eat. We started babywise early on, but bc of "life", we were never really got it down. I like for her to sleep from 7pm-7am. Naptimes and bedtimes are war times too. I think they rock her to sleep at daycare, and because she's gotten used to that, I find myself having to soothe her a lot for bedtime and naptimes on weekends. I think we have lots of problems we are dealing with 1) sleep props- me, daycare, pacifier. To make things even harder, she sleeps on a floor bed and is quite the crawler now. when she wakes up (crying bc she's hungry), she will crawl to the door and bang on it until i go get her. 2) she will typically take a short nap in the morning like 20-30mins around 10am, which i think is too late already since she wakes up consistently at 7am. so she's got a shortened nap, probably bc she's hungry. her 2nd nap is around 1pm and she usualy will take a longer nap. sometimes another short one, which she will take another catnap around 4-5pm. 3) not eating enough during the day leading to 2 wake ups in the middle of the night to eat… She gets 3 bottles of 4-5 oz of formula/BM but very rarely finishes all her bottles. So I'm guessing she gets about 10-11oz btw 7am-5pm, and makes up the rest with 1-2 nursings btw 5pm-7pm and 2 more nursings at 11pm and 4-5pm. I just dont know where to begin. I let her cry it out on and off, but most times, I'm so tired that I just give in. My goal is for her to sleep 7pm-7am, going down for nap and bed time with very minimal soothing. I have a bedtime routine, but it's very simple. We go to her room, blinds are closed, noise machine already on, i give her bottle, and put her down in her bed. I use to sing a lullaby to her, but that doesnt seem to soothe her… 99.9% of time she cries, and then I lay in her room for a while, i leave, she cries, I let her cry it out for 20mins, go in soothe her, and the cycle starts again. I' know im a part of the problem. I just dont know where to begin…i know some sleep training needs to be involved, so im keepiing her home on thursday and friday, so i can at least have 4 days with her to "train" her. Please help. Thank you.

    Reply
    • One problem you will face is that you can't get the food in her that she needs in the day. If she is hungry in the night, she will continue to wake in the night. So a huge hurdle there is taking with daycare and figuring out how they can get her to eat more there. Doing CIO is not worth it if you will haut go in and disrupt the process.

      Reply
    • Sorry my phone stopped typing. You can do CIO before bed, but if so, you need to commit. You might find it hard if she is able to crawl around the room, though. Is there a way you can get a bed that will keep her contained?

      Reply
  2. Amazing about his reading! And I totally get you as everything with your first is a learning curve for us, isn't it? I know it's normal but i wish i was as "wise" with them as my last, but that's just life's learning experiences! So someone's got to be the guinea pig:)

    Reply
  3. Hi Valerie, thank you for writing back! My daughter is staying at home Friday plus wkend. I am commited to CIO before bedtime. Last night, she cried 33mins. Tonight maybe 10mins? In terms of her middle of night wake ups, I will continue the those feeding until I know she's getting enough during the day. I'm wondering if I should just do a dream feed , even though I stopped around 6 months. I feel like we are going backwards… Or just wait till she wakes up on her own? With the early morning feeding, I will just give less and less. I'm hoping to move that 4-5am feeding to 6:45am and just start her day. Last night she woke up at 3am to eat, woke up at 6:15, I nursed and left her in her room while I went to shower. She didn't sleep so I got her up at 7am, the time i wanted to start her day. She then slept fr 8:40-10:40; she could have slept more,But I woke her up to protect her nap #2. She got sleepy around 1pm, which was what I expected but we were in car(me being stupid), so she took a catnap. That catnap lead to a missed nap #2. I didn't want to put her to bed at 5:30pm, so I left her do a 20min catnap around 3. By 5:30, she was so tired. I fed her and left her in her room. She cried less than 10mins. If I had to redo things today, I would have made sure we were already home for the afternoon nap, Bc she probay would have woken up 1-2 hrs later. Do you think I should reintroduce the dreamfeed around 10? Or just let her wake up on her own to eat around midnight? What about the 4-5 am feed? If before 4-5am, maybe just give her 2oz so she will wake up at 6:45-7ish to eat full feed? As for daytime eating, I think if I can just push back that early morning eating to 6:45-7, and make sure daycare gives milkAnd wait 1 hr after to give solids, that should help keepHer on a routine of eating every 3 hrs. I won't even think about the 4 hr routine until we can get thisiddle of night wake ups taken care of. Any thoughts??

    Reply

Leave a Comment