Tween

Ever heard of this word? I first heard it a few years ago but never bother about it until I'm faced with one now.

A quick check on the wikipedia gave me this:
Tween is an American neologism and marketing term for preteen. A blend of between and teen, "tween" in this context is generally considered to cover the age range from eight to twelve years.

As you should guess.. yeap, I have two of these. One is just becoming one, and the other is very much one. As days go by, as I find it more difficult to handle these two, I realised that they are no longer babies and they shouldn't be treated like one. I suddenly remembered the TWEEN term and start googling it. It's a gradual development that you don't even noticed since you are with them all the time.

The good thing of a tween is that you can reason with them easier as they have better understanding of things as compared to little children, you can have serious talk with them, they learn to compromise and the best is you can begin to see the results of the early upbringing on them (well if you did it right in the first place). You can even roll your eyes together with him (in understanding) for the fuss the younger ones made.

The not so good thing is they are in the phase of discovering their identity hence they have some kind of mood swing which is very hard for us to decipher. You have to be gentle as not to hamper their development, at the same time you have to be strict as not to let him stray away from you. You have to watch what you are saying when they are around because they are definitely listening and trying to grasp whatever that you are saying even though it has nothing to do with them. This is also the phase where finding the right size or the right fashion for them is the hardest. They are too little for adult size or fashion but too old/big for kids fashion and size. I find this very frustrating. They want to blend in with the older kids (i.e.teenagers) but what's in the market for their age is still reflecting little children's age. The trend is now slowly changing now that some research has been done on the TWEEN market.

Google tween if you want to know more. You will find many interesting articles on it.

How time flies.. they are growing fast.. me getting old even faster!