10 Years: Forming Deeper Relationships

Your child is forming stronger, more complex friendships and spending a great deal of time talking with peers. It becomes more emotionally important for children at this point to have friends, especially of the same gender. As they prepare to enter the world of adolescence, they begin to show a capacity for self-evaluation and can laugh at themselves. 

At This Stage, Your Child May Be

• Developing lasting relationships and beginning to handle peer pressure
• Beginning to develop sportsmanship and learn about winning and losing gracefully
• Becoming enthusiastic to tackle anything and working hard to develop a skill
• Developing a sense of independence, which can make them concerned about rules and can lead them to become bossy
• Seeing that relationships at school become more complicated and prone to change (This can be especially true for girls.)
• Facing more academic challenges at school
• Appearing more grown-up, especially girls who are approaching or reaching puberty
• Showing signs of being discouraged, which may lead to being shy in public performances
• Developing interest in long-range projects
• Reading widely and deeply from a range of high-quality, increasingly challenging fiction and nonfiction books
• Developing manual skills and becoming interested in things such as cooking and carpentry
• Doing some writing work on the computer
• Showing the capability to multiply big numbers quickly and accurately, as well as multiply and divide fractions in simple cases
• Begin using information from print and digital sources to answer questions and solve problems

Safety First! Key Guidelines for Your 10-Year-Old

At this stage, children are doing more things away from home and will not always see the need for their parents to watch over them. Here are some vital rules that will keep your child safe and lead to good safety habits:

• Your child must always wear a seatbelt and must sit on a booster seat in the car until they reach a height of 4 feet, 9 inches, and weigh at least 80 pounds. Your child should always ride in the backseat until they’re 12.
• Your child may want to ride their bike farther distances from home. Make sure they always wear a helmet and know the “rules of the road.” It is very dangerous to ride a bike after dusk—make sure your child is home as soon as the sun begins to set.
• Always know where your child is and whether a responsible adult is with them.
• Try to avoid having your child home alone. If they are home alone, make sure you have established rules for those times.
• It is best to keep all firearms, especially handguns, out of your home. If you choose to keep a gun, keep it unloaded in a locked place.

Things You Can Do Every Day to Help Your Child Develop

At home, you can play an important role in setting expectations and helping your child meet them. Here are some activities and suggestions to help your child maintain a strong and steady development:

• Sit down with them at least once a week for 15 to 30 minutes while they’re working on homework. That will keep you informed and will allow you to know if your child needs help in a subject.
• Invite them to read their writings out loud to family members. Ask questions about your child’s word choices and ideas.
• Go to a play or musical with them, and discuss the way the actors bring the world to life.
• Look for word problems in real life. Example: Have them help you measure the length, width and depth of a garden to determine how many bags of soil you need to purchase. 
• Meet the families of your child’s friends.
• Talk with your child about the normal physical and emotional changes of puberty.
• Notice how your child is responding to changes in themselves and in their friends. 

School Success

To see what to expect in fifth grade and to learn how you can support your child’s school success, visit PTA.org.