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The Twelve-Year-Old: Growing Up

Growth Patterns
How does your twelve-year-old grow? With their friends, on the telephone, and in front of a mirror! Click below to find out about: Physical

  • High energy

  • Much rest needed

  • Growth spurt; signs of puberty

  • Menstruation for majority of girls

  • Food important, especially mid-morning in school

  • Physical education and sports valued

    Social

  • Adult personality begins to emerge

  • More reasonable, tolerant than at 11

  • Enthusiastic, uninhibited

  • Will initiate own activity

  • Empathetic

  • Self-aware, insightful

  • Can set realistic goals in the short-term

  • Appears secure

  • Peers more important than teachers

    Language

  • Sarcasm emerges

  • Double meanings, word play, jokes of intellectual interest

  • Enjoys conversation with adults and peers

  • Peer "vocabulary" (slang) important

    Cognitive

  • Increased ability to abstract in intellectual pursuits

  • May show emerging ability in a particular skill or content area

  • Can and will see both sides to an argument

  • High interest in current events, politics, social justice; also pop culture, materialism

  • Research and study skills advance with increase of organizational discipline

    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.

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