Sit down. Hold on to your seats. In case you hadn’t noticed, plenty of kids 9 to 13 are more than dabbling in sex, drugs and all things once thought “teenage only.” Or so argues–convincingly–Sylvia Rimm, child psychologist and author of the best-selling “See Jane Win,” in “Growing Up Too Fast: The Rimm Report on the Secret World of America’s Middle Schoolers” (Rodale, $23.95).
In just one of the eyebrow-raising statistics she cites, Rimm (whose book also draws heavily from her own survey of 5,400 U.S. middle schoolers) calculates that of 4 million 5th graders, 176,000 smoked cigarettes, 256,000 drank beer and 48,000 used marijuana during the 2002-03 academic year.
By the end of the book, where Rimm piles on wisdom in a chapter that ought to be passed out with every school supply list, I found myself wishing she were grandmother to all the nation’s middle schoolers. The woman is wise; the book seems invaluable.
Rx: “Visualize the letter V as a model for guiding the extent of praise, power and freedom given to your children. . . . If you open the V gradually, your kids will feel trusted and continue to respect guidance from you and their teachers.”