Characteristics of 9 and 10 Year Olds
Here are some characteristics your preteen may have:
- Individual variation in skills and personality
- Tools used and handled appropriately
- Handwriting now a tool
- Drawings often detailed
- Does complete job of dressing.
- Boys and girls interested in doing own hair, but majority doesn’t do it completely until age 10 and then only if it is uncomplicated
- Rhymes words
- Finished products in carpentry and cooking
- Uses table utensils well; uses table manners
- Language now used more as a tool, less for its own sake
- May return to many incorrect grammatical uses
- Writes out lists and plans
- Uses language to express subtle and refined emotions; disgust; self-criticism
- Considerable verbal criticism of parents’ actions
- Extended use of code language
- Emergence of independent critical thinking
- Increasingly realistic conception of the world
- Becoming more independent, self-sufficient, dependable
- Busies self with own concerns; may prefer work to play
- Interested in many activities
- At times puts on an "I don’t care" attitude at others
- Anxious to please and to be liked
- Self-conscious about own activities, body, home, behavior of parents and siblings
- Self-critical, may demand too much of self
- Sensitive and embarrassed by correction
- Beginning to have crushes on others
- Beginning to become peer-oriented rather than parent-oriented; may have conflicts between values of adults and peers
- Few fears, but worries a great deal about mistakes he has made, failing in studies, doing wrong thing, not measuring up to other children
- Complains a great deal, but forgets complaints quickly
- Involvement with mother prevalent at 8 years has disappeared
- Stronger tendency to have special friend
- Great interest in team games and in learning to perform skillfully
