How to make my ten year old more mature

[HidingInTheBathroom]

My ds 10 is having really bad emotional problems at the minute. I have been seeing a doctor about him regarding a small soiling problem. But this has turned out to be more medical than emotional.

My problem is at minute ds seems to get so upset at the littlest problems. If a teacher critises his work he will cry. He is finding hard to keep friends because he can't stick to there rules during games and cries if loses. He has poor organisation skills.

He going secondary next year and I'm so worried he will get bullied. He is clever but has low confidence in himself and will not push himself to try harder. This low self of steam has only become a these last two years. There has been no family issues and there is no one bullying him at school. Also there has definitely been no abuse before anyone says that.

School have said he needs to become more mature before he hits secondary. So I am looking for tips or advice on how I can do this. How can I make my ds less sensitive.

You can't make him less sensitive you can only build his confidence. His sensitivity is what makes him who he is and clever children are often the feeling type.

Does he excell at anything in particular? My DD excells in art so to build her confidence I encouraged her to enter a lot of art contests and she won some...really built her up.

Praise, praise and more praise. And opportunities for doing praise worthy things. And noticing when he does them and praising him! And reassuring him when things go wring that its not the end of the world. 7 habits of highly effective teenagers, Covey would be a good read for you and enable you to support him.

My ds was like this, this time last year I had some serious concerns. We did lots of praise, talking about tactics to deal with friendship, a a bit of tough love when he got too over the top. All in conjunction with school. By the end of the year he was better but, I felt, not robust enough for secondary. I worried a lot over the summer.

We were lucky enough to have got ds into the school he set his heart on where only a few of his primary peers were going. All I can say is he has bloomed. From the end of day one the difference was measurable. His big sister walked in and asked what had happened to him! He has gone from strength to strength and is a totally different child. He is confident, self assured, he joins in at breaks, contributes in class. ... I could go on!

Obviously it may not work this way for your son but I just wanted to say sometimes secondary just suits them better. The playground games stop which is a huge help and they are treated like and expected to act like young teens not children.

Residential holiday camps help children grow up fast - away from parents, they find new resources in friendships which become much more important to maintain. Basically you need to wean him away from being cared for by adults to learning to care for himself.

I do feel for you, I have a sensitive artistic 10 year old, he is also my "baby" so I do take responsibility for being partly responsible.

We are just giving him lots of emotional support and praise for doing well but pulling him up when he starts getting unnecessarily dramatic. I'm certainly not of the school that boys shouldn't cry but they shouldn't cry in public unless the situation really merits it and definitely not when they don't get their own way in a game!

Is he young in the year? One of my older son's friends had a lot of issues at this age and I do think it was partly that he only just squeaked into that year so was almost a year younger than some of the other boys (again he was "Mums baby" too)

Luckily my son has a week long residential trip coming up with school which I think they do partly to make them more independent and partly in the hope that their friend pool will get bigger ready for secondary.

Thank you for the comments.

He is doing street dance and has started the competion classes. He is extlemly good at computers but I don't like him spending too much time on his laptop. I feel the computer has given him this poor interaction and social skills.

He is the youngest in his class and has always struggled. He is now however obtaining a average grade for his year.

We do praise but at the minute it's like treading on egg shells with him. If he does a piece of homework and it is wroung because he has rushed it and we pull him up on it he starts crying.

I love him to bits he is my first born my big boy. He has chores he has to do he plays out with friends. I do not overly fuss on him and make him take responablity for his things.

I am just so worried about him being bullied at secondary and would love him to grow up a little.

The summer camps sound good do you recomend any?

I do think sometimes the "young in the year" ones struggle

I think its a good thing our school do the year 6 residential trip - it does help them grow up a bit, although my son is already worrying himself silly about it as he doesn't like "activities" much.