Is Year 9 the hardest?

[Fleckle]

My DD13 has gone from a lovely child to pushing the boundaries on a daily basis. I know that’s all part of being a teenager but I need some reassurance that things get better!

I keep seeing/hearing that year 9 is notoriously hard. She’s also with a group of friends that aren’t really interested in school and have been making some dubious choices outside of school too (vaping, drinking). She has told me she has tried it but some of the other kids seem to be on a slippery slope so that concerns me too.

She’s a clever girl but lacks confidence. There have been so many demerits, detentions, late for class this year. The change is quite noticeable and I’m wondering if it’s a normal transition or something more.

In my experience, year 9 is very hard. Children spend their school days rushing from one difficult topic to another, with no time between to recover or reflect. I remember my middle son coming home very sad and quiet one day: it transpired that he’d spent an hour learning about the holocaust, then an hour on knife crime (with graphic, upsetting stories and images), followed by an hour on the saddest section of ‘Of Mice and Men’. Every difficult social issue that schools are expected to cover gets piled into the year 9 PHSE curriculum, and no-one seems to consider the overall picture of what pupils are having to cope with in any one day.

On top of all this, there’s the pressure to choose subjects for GCSE - and some schools start working on GCSE topics early as there’s just too much content to squeeze into years 10 and 11. Add in constant lectures and warnings about how important the choices they’re making are, and how hard the next four years are going to be… It’s rough.

Year 9 is tough. it sounds like she’s feeling pressure. Since she’s tried vaping please suggest her to try www.puffstats.com just once. it’s a really good app for teens and can actually help her get back on track.

Dtds are year 9 (August babies so youngest in the year). It’s quite a transitional year where they’re settled/confident and figuring out a new level of independence in a world where some parents totally step back and stop parenting/allow dc to swear at them and stay out at the park until 10pm and others have strict rules, then the spectrum in between. Peer pressure in year 9 is strong imo. One thing we seem to have cracked here (we also have a very compliant 17yo who has helped us set the boundaries so 13yo dc aren’t getting any surprises), is good communication. Communicate and build my trust and you will have freedom… break my trust and I’ll get strict because it’s my job to keep you safe. I also tell dc to use me as an excuse if they don’t want to go somewhere or feel unsafe they are to say “mum messaged and said I need to get home”.

The friends they are around have a big impact. DD’s old best friend now swears and screams at her mum. Dd is horrified and tells me she’d never speak to me like that. (She’s not perfect and has screamed at me but Is rare).

I don’t do grounding but I do remove devices occasionally. It seems to help them to reset. But when things calm, we chat through what happened and I listen. I’m open, we are navigating their teen years together.

@Fleckle I’m finding it the opposite with my sons, they seem to be getting easier, for now! Was your daughter generally quite well behaved in primary? Think it can be a shock when the hormones kick in ! Hopefully it’ll be ok when my younger sons get there too. Good luck op !