Is your home peppered with yells of ‘I hate you!’, door slamming, eye-rolling, and constant back-chat? Good news: You’re not alone. These are the staple (and expected) behaviours of teens, but did you know that it's totally 'normal' for tweens - aged between 7 and 12 - to also exhibit this behaviour?
As a teen and tween expert and author I know that there is no denying that our tweens can act in ways we find difficult to deal with. We commonly blame hormones and screens for their angriness, but the out-of-control emotions are far more related to their brain development than anything else. The area of the brain responsible for emotion regulation, empathy and impulse control, the prefrontal cortex, is not fully developed until the late twenties, until then, we should expect behaviour that is more akin to that of a toddler tantrum, than adult self-control (that said, many adults struggle to control their emotions!).
