I know firsthand how quickly that beautiful little baby in the bassinet turns into a teenager as evidenced by my past posts in the thinktanK. The childhood years before the teenage period are so fleeting and so precious, that it seems to me like they should be preserved and cherished.   I’m confused when I see parents who seem to be rushing the process – with little girls in particular.   It baffled me when my oldest was turning eight and I first heard the term “tween.”  “Oh, she’s a tween now; she’s not a little girl,” a neighbor said to me one day.    I looked at my daughter, and she sure still looked like a little girl to me.   We then began to enter a whole new phase with spa-themed birthday parties and friends wearing clothes that looked like smaller versions of more mature styles.  

This tween label was invented by marketers, not developmental psychologists, and with the nonstop onslaught of marketing to the tween demographic, it is adding another degree of difficulty to the already amazingly complex job of parenting.   In the book, Shrinking Girlhood, co-author Lyn Brown, an education professor at Colby College, states that, “It feels like the boundary between childhood and adolescence has eroded. There isnt really a childhood that is distinct anymore. Its all about looking like a grown-up girl.”   

The youngest of our three daughters just turned 13. I feel we successfully navigated our way through the tween years, which is usually defined at the 9-12 age range, although it wasn’t always easy.  One thing that has helped is having predetermined ages for things: ear piercing, hanging earrings, IPOD, cell phone, etc.  Of course, each family is different, but by determining what we feel is an appropriate age for these things ahead of time, we head off the asking for them too soon by having a set family policy. 

The Media Awareness Network provides many articles for parents on how to deal with the tween marketing trend.  In the article, Dealing With Marketing: What Parents Can Do, it is suggested that parents should challenge their children’s idea of cool when teaching them about companies’ marketing strategies by asking the following questions:

  • Do you ever feel bad about yourself for not owning something?
  • Have you ever felt that people might like you more if you owned a certain item?
  • Has an ad made you feel that you would like yourself more, or that others would like you more, if you owned the product the ad is selling?
  • Do you ever worry about your looks? Have you ever felt that people would like you more if your face, body, skin or hair looked different?
  • Has an ad ever made you feel that you would like yourself more, or others would like you more, if you changed your appearance with the product the ad was selling?

If tweens are educated about how and why companies target their age group, they may be less likely to fall victim to slick advertising directed at them.   My kids seem to be growing up too fast as it is; I certainly don’t want to speed up the process!

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