Between ages 11 and 14, your child will be engaged in an amazing and often difficult process of change. During this period, which coincides roughly with the middle school years, he will leave childhood behind and enter adolescence. His body, mind, and emotions are growing and readying him for adulthood, and the changes he experiences can be welcome and painful at the same time.

These years can be tempestuous for children and parents, comparable in many ways to the highs and lows of toddlerhood. As your child struggles toward independence, it may sometimes seem that all notions of good manners and civility have been tossed aside. But have faith. With a clear-eyed understanding of the normal developmental imperatives of early adolescence, you will ride out the storms and guide your child into late adolescence.

Growth will be governed by the arrival of puberty. Children shoot up in height, and their bodies alter as nature readies them for reproduction. Physical changes triggered by hormones are accompanied by equally dramatic intellectual and emotional developments. You will see abstract thinking emerge as early as the seventh or eighth grade, when your child begins to explore a variety of possibilities and to apply the basics of logic. Intellectually, he is no longer limited to what is but begins to explore the world of what might be. His new cognitive abilities will enable him to think and plan ahead. As you continue to teach and enhance the concepts of respect, courtesy and consideration for others, his inner voice of conscience will increasingly confirm your teaching. The road may be bumpy, but the changes he and you must weather now will lead to the day when your child enters the world as a self-governing, compassionate, and mannerly adult.