12.75 year old tween girl information and helps. See all about her daily life as a preteen girl and get the tween schedule.
This is a summary for Kaitlyn from 12.5-12.75 years old.
EATING
Things are moving along as usual here.
SLEEPING
Sleep is still great! Kaitlyn is a great sleeper. She loves to sleep, so having her go to bed is never a problem. She could potentially struggle with waking up, especially since school starts so early, but she sets an alarm and wakes on her own each day.
SCHOOL
School has continued to go well. Her school does trimesters. She finished her first trimester with all A’s and is doing well in her second trimester. We are just over halfway through that.
She is taking choir and has loved that. She auditioned for the performing choir and is in that group. They just started up last week. She is loving it so far.
ATTITUDE
There was a Sunday during this period when Kaitlyn complained about what I was making for dinner. I gave her a chance to back out of the complaining, but she pressed forward.
As any of you who make dinner can understand, this was very frustrating for me. I always say to not take things personally when your kids do something they shouldn’t, but I felt some frustration on a personal level. Here I was taking the time to make dinner and she was complaining about it!
I was silent for a while. I knew I needed to get over feeling frustrated before I could respond in a healthy way. I also wanted to think of a wise way to respond. Dealing with attitude from tween/teenage group is still new for me, and I didn’t want to respond rashly.
My husband was still at the church at the time, so it was just me and my thoughts.
Inspiration hit.
I am a person who is very even-keeled. I don’t show emotion in extreme ways. I get this from my dad. I remember times as a teenager when I knew I had gone too far and him being quiet for a while after that. I knew I had overstepped and he was not happy.
Kaitlyn is very savvy socially, so I knew she understood she had overstepped, also.
I called Kaitlyn into the kitchen (I was still making dinner).
I let her know that I wanted her to have an appreciation for the fact that I spend time each day making dinner for her to eat. I have never insisted my kids love everything I make. I certainly didn’t like everything my mom made. But I do insist upon respect and gratitude.
I told her she would have the responsibility for the next 7 days to make dinner each night.
She would need to make a meal plan. The meals needed to be varied (in other words, it couldn’t be pasta each night). She would need to go through what we had as far as ingredients go and see what we needed to buy for her meal plan.
She would then put together an online grocery order that her dad could pick up on his way home from work the next day.
She very quietly accepted this consequence and got right to work.
It worked beautifully! She made dinner all week (which actually worked well for me because it was a super busy week for me).
She completely learned her lesson. A week was long enough that she really could appreciate what it is like to have to coordinate making dinner with your schedule. She had to plan the meals and how long they took to make around the family evening schedule as well as her own.
She will never complain about leftover night again! Haha.
I share this story to illustrate a couple of things.
One, as hard as it can be, maintain your calm in the face of the disrespect that can come from your kids. When they complain, talk back, are ungrateful…maintain your cool. It helps prevent things from escalating into something bigger than it is.
Think of consequences that will teach the lesson. There are a lot of things I could have done to try to prevent her from being ungrateful for her meals in the future. I could have removed technology privileges. I could have said no friends for a while.
But what I wanted and what she needed was to learn. To understand. She needed something that would teach her exactly why she her attitude was a problem on many levels.
At this point, it has been a couple of months since the incident and she has always eaten everything with gratitude.
It is very interesting to note that if you read Brayden’s summary from this same age range, there is a similar experience with him being ungrateful for what was being made for dinner. So there may be something to it at this age.
EXTRACURRICULAR
Early on in this period, Kaitlyn broke her foot at soccer practice. It was right before the final game of the official season. But she was out for 6 weeks. She loves soccer and was very sad to miss so much practice. She also couldn’t participate in an indoor league with her team.
Once she got better, she realized she had lost a lot of her fitness during the time (just her stamina and cardio health). That is normal and will come back. She is back to playing and able to do indoor now.
Piano is going well. Her teacher is about to start to help her learn how to compose music, which she is excited about.
She had a blast in the musical at school. She made so many great friends that she never knew before the musical. They still meet up each day at school at least once to say hello and stay in touch. You really grow close to people in a musical.
TWEEN DAILY SCHEDULE
5:30 AM–Get up and get ready
6:30 AM–Family scriptures
7:00 AM–Head to school
3:00 PM–Get home. Homework if she has it
5:30 PM–Dinner
8:00 PM–Start getting ready for bed. In bed between 8:30-9:00 PM
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