As your child sets into a more mature stage of life, you will find more things in him that will amaze you or even put you to be worried about his behavior. But then as a parent, you should have a more thorough understanding about this stage of his life so that you are able to relate and understand the way your child behaves.

Your nine year old child now shows more independence and self organization in which positive emotions are most often felt. You are there to get involved as a parent so that he will be guided by you accordingly.

Physical or Motor skills

• You may notice that your child begins to experience early signs of puberty. Your child at this stage tends to gain a lot of weight and becomes significantly taller.
• Since your child is going through the initial stages of puberty, he shows more interest in competitive sports, he works hard and plays even harder. He can write for an extended period of time without his hands getting tired. Your child wants to try things and experience them for himself.
• These days, nine is considered the beginning of the” teen” years, the age where children initiate into puberty so things right here are starting to shift and they seem to be leaving the childhood behind and looking forward to the upcoming years of adolescence.
• Your child at this age has a great interest in team games. He has a good body control and is interested in developing strength, skills and speed and likes more complicated crafts and artworks.

• You will notice that your kid will undergo moodiness where there was once a light hearted child. He might be so critical for everyone and everything including his own self but this is just normal for a child at this age to undergo such psychological change.
• He has become more aware of being with peers and wants to be very much like them because they wouldn’t want to be different and belongingness to a group is very important to them.
• Since your child is in the onset of puberty, preferences in clothes and being anxious on how they look becomes more important to them. They may have some behavioral problems especially when others will not accept them. In this case you should let your child know and make him feel that you love him for who he is but then be specific that you do not approve some of his  bad behavior.

Language Development

• At the age of nine, he is capable of prolonged interest and can do more abstract thinking and reasoning, your support is a must by giving him specific information and facts that put him to think, meditate and discuss. Everytime he asks questions on some things, you should answer him clearly.
• Your child may develop his inclination in reading, writing and using books and other preferences to feed his interest. You should however as a parent provide opportunities for reading, writing but remember not to burden the child.
• He learns to value things and loves collecting stuffs he likes and treasures.

Routines that your nine year old should practice

• Your child’s appetite at this stage becomes good. He becomes more interested in food, cooking and eating and usually comes home from school hungry.
• A table manner is difficult for him to remember and hand washing should always be a big reminder for him before eating.
• They sleep very well but oftentimes have nightmares because of some activities of the day wherein someone would have frightened them or some other things such as fires, storms, snakes, being chased or someone being killed may upset his sleep. This can also be referred to as a general anxiety of this age. Nine year old kids need to have ten hours of sleep as per what research recommends.
• At nine, your child needs help in organizing his clothes and dressing up routine since they are not neat with their clothes and sometimes pick up dirty clothes from the day before and even try wearing them without noticing whether it is dirty or clean.

The Nine Year Old and School

• Shows cooperation and works cooperatively with the group to complete school project. In this way a child shows his empathy and develops his friendship skills.
• He can now master his reading skills fluently and can comprehend it with what he reads. He also shows mastery in his writing skills with a very good structure of sentence formation and is able to determine what punctuation he is going to use.
• He can now understand the use of books in the library and with that your child will automatically go there and do research on assignments or just simply read books for his own pleasure and information.
• He has mastery of basic math operations, knows basic scientific thinking and facts about life cycles, motion, gravity and matters. He is able to understand the uses of maps and recognize countries, states and capitals.

Health and Nutrition
Nutritional reminders for a nine year old child vary on the activity level of a child.

• A nine-year old girl child should consume over 1,600 calories for each day; while a lively child should take in between 1,800 and 2,200 calories everyday and a reasonable stamina child should consume between 1,600 and 2,000 calories per day.
• A nine year old boy child will consume more number of calories when compared to the same age girl child. An inactive nine year old boy child should at a maximum consume in and around 1,800 calories on a day to day basis. A reasonably lively child should intake in and around 1,800 and 2,200 calories on a day to day basis while a complete energetic child should take in between 2,000 and 2,600 calories every day.
• It is significant that a parent should keep a track of their child’s nutritional intake on a daily basis which in turn helps his growth.
• Understanding the child’s growing years will help parents relate to their child’s activities and growing self. Initially, it is at this age of a child where awareness is growing and imaginations and fantasies are becoming more untrue to them.

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