Tweens and the Cognitive Process

Tweens and the Cognitive Process

By Denise Carlin M.S., family Coach at The UCLA Family Commons
July 23rd, 2011

I’d like to talk with you about tweens and their cognitive processes. One of the things that we offer here in family coaching is a cognitive behavioral approach to balancing one’s life and creating more joy in one’s life.  How we think about a problem affects how we feel and how we approach a problem.  When I’m working with a family where there’s a tween, and they’re wanting to approach problems with peers or how each other communicates, we might do an exercise that involves “I” statements. So, for example, if a tween says, “That person is really mean” or “She was so rude.” I would ask the tween to make an “I” statement instead, to say “I didn’t like what she did” or “I think that what she did was mean or unfriendly.” When we help tweens make “I” statements, it helps them to pay more attention to how they feel, and to get more of a grip on what they like and don’t like, what they want and don’t want, so that they can be more proactive in meeting their needs.