what's up with age 10?

I don’t know, but I hope not. My daughter turns 10 in November.

actually Id always heard that about 3rd grade, not fifth.

but I see middle school looming-which makes me think of high school and I get very worried about the future

a little preteen attitude perhaps?

Some class changing so one teacher isnt looking out for them anymore?

good question-I noticed the same thing!

fourth grade (10) was a terrible year. I think it was because its an age and a grade where the kids are very aware of their peers and what they think. Also, some kids are starting to go through the beginnings of puberty (at least in my son’s) class and they are very insecure and really begin to pick kids with problems to divert attention from themselves.

Ages 10 to 12 has been wonderful at our house for both our boys. Less temper tantrums; more reasonable behavior. Our roughest years so were elementary school when they were dealing with not being like every one else. I kept looking forward to age 7 (“the age of reason”) thinking we would be able to get through to them then, but it wasn’t until 10 that the age of reason finally visited our house.

I think it is a combination of puberty and more demanding work at school. I’m hoping high school will be better. At least the kid will have gotten used to the new body by then.

I think 10 must be starting a bunch of growing pains and hormone changes. We have fun ahead now.

The work is much harder in 4th and 5th grade, and most of the subjects require the students to be able to read age-appropriate textbooks for all subjects. They have real Science and Social Studies books. They start expository writing, which is tough for kids with auditory, organizational, or motor skills issues. They have to be comfortable with their times tables and be able to divide, and they learn fractions. If you live in a state that mandates yearly testing, then both of these grades are used by state administrators to assess skills, which makes the kids and the teachers overstressed and neurotic. And then they’ve got hormones, hormones, hormones!

Yeah, 10, the start of stinky armpits and all that attitude. 5th grade is one of the transition years too for school so I think school is a bit harder. Then there’s girls (or boys) that you like but aren’t yet supposed to, not quite a little kid but not quite a big kid either.

It went rather quietly for my older son but my younger one has been in his 10 yrs and a half goofy phase overtime. He’ll be 11 in Oct. I say 10 and a half since I read in a book called ‘Your 3 yr old, friend or enemy?’ about the half years being a time of disequilibrium ( a fancy word to say out of balance I guess), it rang true at the time when he was 3 and a half and I was able to read it and go ‘Oh…this is normal, he’s supposed to be doing this’ (he was making me crazy at the time).

Ya know, some days they both are just as calm,pleasant and mature sounding as can be and others, well…you know, one day the oldest(13) gets stuck in the security turnstile on his bike which entails military police and the fire dept. and the youngest(10) one is giggly/hyper and talking gibberish to everyone he sees. I must say today has been a pleasant one.

No… I guess 10 is the midpoint between kid and pre-teen adolecense. Just gotta live with the funny behaviors.

Gotten used to the new body by high school?? You must be kidding! It settles down in the late teens, and then they move away and complain to the boyfriend instead of you anyway.

I think TiredMom has the main idea here. In Grades 4 and 5, you’re out of being a little kid and starting to be a big kid.

This is where there is the big brick wall in reading — up to Grade 3 you can memorize, fake, and con the teacher with your sweet smile; in Grade 4 you get handed a real book with large blocks of text and a written assignment to do and oops, if you’ve had a bad program where the teacher read to you and all you had to do was memorize and spit back, you’re in big trouble. (I tutored one very bright but totally untaught boy who arrived at Grade 4 with less than a 50-word reading vocabulary, but great people skills … )
This is where you are expected to write paragraphs and essays and book reports.
This is where math starts to involve more multi-step problems, another big textbook, and jobs where you have to understand the process and make decisions, where you can’t just copy the teacher.
This is where science and social studies stop being games and start being academic subjects, with more big books.
This is where you may in many schools be expected to deal with several different subject teachers, with different rules and expectations. You may be asked to move around the building and there will be less constant supervision.

Then this is also the end of the “concrete operational” Piaget stage, where logical operations should be pretty well organized in concrete form, and the beginning of the “abstract operational” development (should continue developing through adolescence, from age 10 or 11 through 16 or 18). Whole new worlds of abstraction are beginning to open up, but are just glimpsed in bits and pieces as of this time. Kids at this age are starting over again to ask about questions of right and wrong, and to ask “why?” all the time. They know enough logic to argue with you but not enough to accept logical defeat in an argument (makes them annoying at times).

Adolescence is starting — and earlier every year. And then there is the effect of the media, pushing even young children to be sexually alluring. I was shocked at my daughter’s sixth grade graduation to see girls in full-scale ball gowns. How can a school tell kids all day that they are little kids, and control every aspect of their day far too much, and then allow or even encourage them to dress up like pop stars in the evening? No wonder the kids are confused, if the adults in their lives can’t get their own acts together.

Don’t worry, it will pass. And then you have the joys of junior high to contend with.