Life Coach for Kids (Part IV) - Years 6 Through 10

The elementary school years are often romanticized as golden days filled with innocent fun and endless adventure. Children grow taller, stronger, and increasingly agile. Their brains grow too, enabling them to learn and communicate in more sophisticated ways, retain, and use complex information, and employ reason to resolve real-life problems. As concrete thinkers, they are receptive to learning the rules and guidelines of etiquette and polite social interaction, and your teaching of social skills will accelerate.

As your child progresses through elementary school, your oversight will become more subtle. The nature of discipline will change as you begin to reason with your child and appeal to her developing awareness of others. During these years, her circle of role models will enlarge to include teachers and coaches, and peers will become her companions of choice. She will learn to adapt her behavior and manners in order to be liked by others and form friendships. Through her daily interactions with others, she will develop a more realistic image of who she is. Her identity as a social being.

As idyllic as the early school years may seem, the process of socialization is full of potholes. Your child will discover, among other things, that you are not perfect. You make mistakes and don’t know everything. But you remain her primary model, and when she needs comfort, yours is the shoulder she will lean on.

When she feels confused and helpless, you will be there to provide clarity and guidance. Your child will need all your love and support as she begins to grapple with the complicated expectations, rules, and rewards of society at large.