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The Eleven-Year-Old: Growing Up

Growth Patterns
Impulsive, moody, restless... How does your eleven-year-old grow? Click on the links below to see how.

Physical

Vast appetite for food and physical activity and talking

Growth spurt of early adolescence for some girls

Constant motion; restless

More illness: colds, flu, ear infections

Need for more sleep

Physical aggression not uncommon

Fine motor capability good

Social

Moody; sensitive

Oppositional; tests limits

Often does best away from home

Impulsive; rude; unaware

Loves to argue

Difficulty with decisions

Self-absorbed

Extremes of emotion

Inclusion/exclusion; height of cliques; seeks to belong

Language

Discovery of the telephone

Impulsive -- talks before thinking

Can be cruel

Argumentative; debater

Appreciates humor

Imitates adult language

Cognitive

Prefers new tasks and experiences to reflection or revision of previous work

Able to abstract

Deductive reasoning advances

Can establish and modify rules, develop hypotheses

Increased ability to de-center and see world from various perspectives

Loves to argue

From Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14 by Chip Wood, © 1997 by Northeast Foundation for Children (800) 360-6332. All rights reserved as permitted under the US copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.