One day, your child is carefree, joyful, and confident, and then it feels like overnight, they have become a shell of the person you once knew.
What changed? What went wrong? Where was the pivotal point?
I have been working with children for over 20 years, and from experience, I have always noticed a big shift around 2nd year of secondary school (about 13 years of age).
So why is this?
Below are just some of the challenges they face during this time, which might help us understand their internal turmoil.
Children go from being big fish in a small, familiar pond (Primary School) to being very small fish in a big, daunting, and demanding pond (Secondary School). The first year of Secondary School is exciting, and typically, the students are ‘broken in gently', but once they reach the second year, more big shifts are happening.
Once in the second year, the workload significantly increases. The expectations to produce good-quality work each day and evening for every subject can and will feel overwhelming and sometimes impossible, yet they have no choice but to comply.
In the first year of secondary school, friendships can be broad and diverse while everyone gets to know each other. After a year, however, the children begin to recognise who they want to spend more or less time with. Friendships start to cement, which means others break. This can devastate any child, even more so if your child already has low self-esteem. Standing on the perimeter of friendship circles can lock in feelings of not feeling good enough and being an outsider.
Your child will most likely have social media accounts by now. Snapchat, TikTok, and other platforms are all riddled with messages about how we should look and what language we should use. Anyone not adhering to this will most likely be treated as an outsider. So, without a strong sense of self, your child may feel pressured to conform.
Any time around now, your child's body shape will start to change. This can leave them feeling incredibly self-conscious and comparing their bodies to those of their peers, family, or influencers. Comments from others can leave your child feeling inadequate, weird and different. Body image is one of the most challenging journeys to navigate as it can feel never-ending, even after school years.
With all of this in mind, how do you keep the conversation open so that your teen will talk to you?
As parents/carers, we must meet these challenges without judgment and instead approach our teens with compassion and an open mind.
In my next blog, I will focus on how we approach these conversations and the language we could use to keep the conversation open about confidence and body image.
Sending Light Your Way 💫
Zoë x