"Mom, you just don’t understand!"
Classic statement of alienation, huh? By fifth grade, your child’s brain has created a unique "self" due to its one-of-a-kind neural pathways. The upgraded analytic ability also enables fifth graders’ noggins to become keenly, painfully aware of how they fit, or don’t fit, into certain social groups. Partnered with dramatic imagination, your child may feel lonely and unaccepted, a social failure with fragile self-esteem.
The reason for all this fifth grade angst? Your child’s friendships are probably rising in importance. This shift toward friends can make things alarmingly nasty if accompanied by peer group pressure, cliques, jealousy, possessiveness, and bullying. Children who feel rejected in the savagely swirling fifth grade frog pond can become melancholy and nervous. What can you do?
You can’t keep your child from trying to locate their place in their peer group. Children this age need to discover how their "self" fits into the world — in terms of gender, social status, ethnicity, and belief systems. During this traumatic tween time, parents can be loving and wise guides, offering advice and support to boost their quavering egos. That’s why it’s helpful to know, anatomically, what’s changing in their evolving fifth grade brains.
Mental shift
By fifth grade, the brain is slowing its previously furious development of new axons and dendrites — thus reducing its openness to new connections. However, the brain is also accelerating the myelination process that builds sheaths around axons, speeding up the neural pathways that are already well established. The consequence of this shift is that abstract thinking (like algebra) becomes easier, thanks to increased quickness, efficiency, and capacity of information processing, plus integration of brain regions. But the wind-down in new connections can reduce an ability to learn a new language. If your fifth grader wants to forge ahead in math at this time, don’t hold your child back. Conversely, don’t be frustrated if your child is slower memorizing those Spanish conjugations.
The brains and the brawn
Studies suggest 10-year-olds who are physically fit perform better on a variety of tests than their less aerobically fit peers. indicates that aerobic exercise enhances children鈥檚 working memory by increasing brain activation in the left hippocampus, bilateral cerebellum, and bilateral parietal cortices. using MRI scans determined that the hippocampus — a region of the brain that contributes to spatial reasoning and memory — was 12 percent larger in the children who exercised more. An additional study published in the journal found that aerobic fitness increases the volume of a child鈥檚 basal ganglia, a region associated with attention and executive function. Conclusion? Engage your child in physically challenging activities, from 30 to 60 minutes per day. Team sports are superb for fifth graders, and parents should work out with them, if possible, to provide healthy role models.
A safe space
Fifth graders should not be over-exposed to violent episodes of murder, bloody mayhem, rape, and general violence, in any real or imaginary form. So don’t devote the bulk of your dinner table conversation to violent news topics, and keep real and screen-related violence to a minimum. Scary scenarios that create traumatic stress in the child , a hormone that can weaken the immune system and structure of the hippocampus. A determined that early adolescent stress negatively affects the limbic and cortical brain regions, increasing the risk of anxiety and depression. Additional research indicates that children who experience chronic stress regard the world as an unsafe place and that this distraction impairs their learning ability. You can also reduce the threat of violence in the home by avoiding conflicts where family members yell at and physically hurt each other.
Food for thought
Many fifth graders love nothing more than devouring unhealthy "junk food" and soda pop, because the pleasure centers of their brain develop sooner than their ability to calculate long-term consequences. They’ll beg for it. But don’t cave in: fast food contains . Instead, guide your child towards wholesome, healthy food — and explain that it fosters brain development. Go for fruit, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein, low-fat dairy, and healthy fats within three nutritious meals daily — and snacks in between to keep energy levels up. (Learn about other tasty brain foods kids will love.) Avoid the obesity that weighs down almost 20 percent of U.S. children this age. indicates that obesity can cause a decline in the brain鈥檚 cognitive abilities, particularly in learning and memory.
Screen violent screens
used MRI to view brain regions that were stimulated when kids played an assortment of video games. When kids played "Need for Speed: Underground" — a non-violent game — activity in the frontal area was observed; this zone is associated with concentration and self-control. But when kids played "Medal of Honor: Frontline" — a violent game — there was no frontal area activation; instead, the amygdala was excited, in the least-cerebral, "reptilian" part of the brain. The amygdala is associated with emotional arousal, especially anger, and is responsible for aggressive, impulsive behaviors. Repeated "firing up" of reptilian zones could "hardwire" a developing brain for less self-control. If you purchase video games for your kid, make sure the focus is on racing or skill, not violence.
Blossoming now
Yikes! Your child is probably sliding into adolescence now, especially if she’s a girl. shows that puberty causes significant changes in the adolescent brain via the release of sex hormones and reorganization in the amygdala, visual cortex, and hippocampus regions. Growth in the fifth grader鈥檚 prefrontal cortex accelerates as the brain prepares for adolescent changes. Talk to your child about all the physical changes of puberty: breast development, pimples, bras, pubic and underarm hair, menstruation, larger testicles, etc. Fifth graders might want a private area, like in a locked box or drawer, for secret items or a journal. The need for personal space also includes a quiet, clean, individualized place for homework, time alone in their bedroom, and more independence.
Fifth grade brain gender gaps
Fifth grade boys and girls are often quite hostile to each other. This rudeness has a neurological excuse. recently revealed, via MRI scanners, that girl and boy brains, at this age, are wildly dissimilar in the structure of their cerebral cortexes. Girls are often taller than boys at this age, with superior fine motor skills. Girls also tend to be vastly more mature. The NIMH discovered that the inflection point (a halfway mark in brain development) occurs in females just before they turn 11, but males don’t reach this point until they’re nearly 15.
Rebel control
Strengthened interconnectedness in fifth grade brain architecture improves ability in planning, problem solving, and information processing. This upgrade allows kids to recognize that authority figures are not always right, a new insight that could mean they defy or ridicule adult authority when they hadn’t before. An interesting epiphany, but not advantageous to parents! To combat this insurrection, make your rules clear and carefully explain your reasons. Talk about respect and how you expect to get it, involve your fifth grader in household chores, and inform your child that he’s now mature enough to be responsible for his actions.
Risky social media
A found that frequent social media usage (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc.) by adolescents ages 10 to 19 is associated with multiple risky behaviors, like drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, vaping, drugs, gambling, unhealthy dietary behavior, and risky sexual behavior. Read more about how social media negatively affects the developing brain. Parents need to manage their child鈥檚 participation on social media to keep them safe.
Fear factor
A using MRI images from 2,490 10-year-old non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic white boys indicated a link between poverty status and amygdala response to a 鈥渘egative face,鈥� particularly in non-Hispanic Black youth. The research suggested Black youth who live in low-income neighborhoods are at a higher risk of having less emotional regulation. Read more about how parents can help their fifth graders learn to process and manage their anger.
Who’s the boss?
A fifth grader’s evolving, disoriented brain with shaky self-esteem requires firm, but gentle guidance from diligent adults. Developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind, author of the paper, (1966), recommends "authoritative parenting” because it provides consistent, compassionate, goal-clarifying direction and allows the child to build self-esteem by making intelligent choices. Over-controlling “authoritarian” parents who scold incessantly can instill a sense of inadequacy in their offspring, and over-indulgent “permissive” parents that heap praise without justification just give their kids a false sense of attainment. A on authoritative parenting also showed it was strongly correlated to life satisfaction in youth and adults between the ages of 14 and 29.
Even keel
Children’s brains at this age can waffle wildly between recklessness and paranoia. Tell the timid ones that it’s alright to make mistakes and encourage them to try new experiences and challenges. Conversely, warn the daredevils about drugs, smoking, alcohol, and skateboarding without a helmet, emphasizing the catastrophic harm that can happen to their most prized possession: the mind.
Additional reading on the developing 5th grade brain
by Gareth Moore and Chris Dickason
by Jordan Moore
by Callie Noble
by Shawn Marie Edgington and Emily Scheinberg
